In Search of a Theoretical Explanation for the Credit Card Effect

Abstract

Feinberg (1986) conducted a series of experiments in which he manipulated the presence or absence of credit card stimuli in context of experimental tasks requiring subjects to evaluate the worth of products, indicate how much they would be willing to donate to a charity, or to actually donate money. In all experiments, he detected that the mere presence of credit card paraphernalia led to greater valuations and donations. Feinberg proffered two theoretical explanations to account for his findings: classical conditioning and a weapons effect. These were merely conjectured rather than empirically tested. Hence, although Feinberg's research is well known to many consumer behavior scholars, his fascinating finding remains absent of a compelling theoretical explanation. Moreover, Feinberg (1990) himself and Hunt et al. (1990) have failed to replicate Feinberg's (1986) original findings. The purpose of the present research is to attempt to replicate Feinberg's (1986) results and also to test the theoretical explanations that he proposed. To this end, two studies were conducted. Study 1 tested the classical conditioning mechanism. Although this study obtained some support for Feinberg's original credit card effect, the results clearly reveal that classical conditioning is not the explanatory mechanism underlying this result. Study 2 tested the weapons effect mechanism. Findings from this study failed to replicate the credit card effect, thereby also rejecting the weapons effect as a suitable explanation for his original results.