The Life you Save (For): Experiences Dominate Goods in Motivating Savings

Prior research suggests that experiences can have stronger appeal to consumers than goods, prompting them to spend more and be more impatient. But does this experiential dominance extend to savings? Using field studies and experiments, we will examine the experiential dominance in savings across contexts, including initiating saving goals, retirement savings, tradeoffs between larger, better and smaller, worse saving goals, protecting savings by drawing less for emergency expenses, as well as real saving behavior at a large central bank in Australia. We propose that experiential (vs. material) saving goals will be perceived more versatile, satisfying different needs and better accommodating uncertain future preferences, and thus motivate savings. We will examine boundary conditions such as whether consumers can be more motivated to save for material goals when encouraged to engage in thinking about and prioritize the experiential aspects of that goal, or equally likely to save for experiential and material goals when being reminded of the versatility of both goals.