Abstract

The consequences of overconsumption and the recent popularity of simple living point to consumer interest in reducing belongings. They also raise an interesting question—what is a useful approach to downsizing and decluttering? We investigate how dis/order (messy vs. tidy items) affects downsizing and find, across nine focal studies, that (a) consumers retain fewer items when choosing from a disordered set because (b) order facilitates the comparisons within category that underlie the tendency to retain items. The impact of dis/order is altered by consumers’ comparison tendencies, waste aversion, and decision strategy (selection vs. rejection), which serve as theoretically and pragmatically relevant moderators. Though consumers’ lay beliefs favor rejecting from order (i.e., choosing what to get rid of from tidy items), our findings point to the usefulness of selecting from disorder (i.e., choosing what to keep from messy items) as a downsizing strategy. Together, this research has implications for consumer downsizing activities, the burgeoning home organization and storage industries, as well as sustainability.

中文翻译：

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失序和缩小

摘要

过度消费的后果和最近简单生活的普及表明消费者对减少财产的兴趣。他们还提出了一个有趣的问题-缩小尺寸和整理的有效方法是什么？我们调查了杂乱无章（杂乱与整齐的物品）如何影响精简，并在九项重点研究中发现：（a）消费者在从无序集合中进行选择时保留的物品更少，因为（b）顺序有助于进行分类的基础保留物品的倾向。消费者的比较倾向，浪费厌恶情绪和决策策略（选择与否决）改变了混乱/秩序的影响，这些行为在理论上和实际上都是相关的主持人。尽管消费者的外行信念倾向于拒绝接受订单（即，选择要从整洁的物品中去除的东西），我们的研究结果表明，从失调中进行选择（即选择从杂乱物品中选择要保留的物品）作为缩小策略的有用性。总之，这项研究对减少消费者规模的活动，迅速发展的家庭组织和存储行业以及可持续性具有影响。