On the Psychology of Consumer Resource Allocation in Prosocial and Commercial Contexts

Consumers constantly face decisions on allocating their limited resources including time and financial assets between themselves and others. This session brings together four papers that uncover new antecedents for consumers' voluntary resource allocation decisions in prosocial contexts and demonstrate the positive effect of social motivation on the efficiency of resource allocation in a commercial context. Taken together, the present findings advance and challenge several key assumptions about resource allocation and altruism such as the standard impure altruism model. They spark a lively discussion on the ubiquitous yet unexplored cognitive and social antecedents of consumer resource allocation. The primary audience for this session will be basic and applied researchers interested in resource allocation, altruism, financial decision making, and pro-social behaviors.