The moderating effect of regulatory focus on the effect of inaction inertia: The mediating effect of anticipated regret and satisfaction

Abstract

Inaction inertia occurs when bypassing an initial action opportunity has the effect of decreasing the likelihood that subsequent similar action opportunities will be taken. The primary purpose of this study was to examine the moderating role of individual difference of regulatory focus on the inaction inertia effect. We conducted an experiment using a scenario in order to examine the proposed ideas: 2(regulatory focus: promotion vs. prevention) * 2(difference in attractiveness: large vs. small) subject-between design. Subjects experienced regret higher when a more attractive previous opportunity was forgone rather than a relatively less attractive one. For prevention-focused people, the changes in the levels of anticipated inaction regret, anticipated inaction and action satisfaction were not significant regardless of differences in the magnitude of attractiveness between a missed opportunity in the past and the current, new opportunity. However, changes in these three variables were quite significant for promotion-focused people based on differences in attractiveness. In other words, if the change in discount rates is large compared to when it is small, the level of anticipated inaction regret for promotion-focused people was reduced and that of anticipated inaction satisfaction increased while that of anticipated action satisfaction was also reduced. Further, anticipated inaction satisfaction functioned as a mediator between the interaction of difference in attractiveness and regulatory focus and the likelihood to act taking the current opportunity. Several theoretical and practical implications were discussed based on those results.