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When it comes to guilty purchases, cash is king.
That's according to new research from the University of Notre Dame - who found that people tend to pay cash when buying something this is "hard to justify."
The idea being: with no lingering evidence, like a credit card bill, shoppers feel better about it.
“When a purchase is difficult to justify — like buying an overpriced bottle of water at the airport, cigarettes or candy — consumers pay with less-trackable methods, like cash, so they can eliminate the paper or electronic trail and ‘forget’ this guilty purchase,” says Christopher Bechler, who specializes in consumer behavior and social psychology with an emphasis on attitudes, persuasion, and financial decision-making, in a University of Notre Dame release. “When a purchase is easy to justify, consumers have no problem paying with trackable methods like credit cards that create paper or electronic trails.”
Read more about the research here.
Listen to the Morning Breeze with Carolyn and Cort talk about it here: