The Fewer the Better: Number of Goals and Savings Behaviour

The Fewer the Better: Number of Goals and Savings Behaviour

7 July, 2020    

This article examines the effect of the number of goals on consumers’ savings behavior. Drawing from research on implementation intention, the authors show that under certain conditions, presenting a single savings goal leads to greater savings intention and actual savings than presenting multiple savings goals. Multiple goals typically evoke trade-offs among competing goals and thus increase the likelihood that people will remain in a deliberative mind-set and defer actions. In contrast, the authors pro pose and demonstrate that a single goal evokes a stronger implementation intention, which in turn has a greater effect on behavior change. They also show that the advantage of a single goal over multiple goals on saving is attenuated when saving is easier to implement or when the multiple savings goals are integrated rather than competing among themselves. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Similar Articles
The Cost of Convenience? Transaction Costs, Bargaining Power, and Savings Account Use in Kenya
Individuals across the world often use high-transaction-cost savings devices, even when lower-cost technologies are available. I study this phenome...
Choice Architecture Versus Price: Comparing the Effects of Changes in the U.S. Student Loan Market
We show that changes in choice architecture have a large effect on student loan decisions while we do not find significant effects of sizeable inte...
Improving Retirement Savings Through Anchoring
Some have argued that there is a “retirement savings crisis” (Munnell, Webb, & Golub-Sass, 2007). Accordingly, a number of approaches have...