A lengthy literature in economics and psychology indicates that prolonged exposure to a tempting stimulus can lead people to “succumb” to that temptation. Here we develop a model of decision under temptation, and test its predictions using a natural experiment. We take advantage of exogenous variations in the amount of time over 2800 individual consumers spent exposed to tempting items while waiting in grocery store checkout lines. Because we passively observe these consumers’ naturally occurring purchase decisions, our approach avoids confounds that can arise in designed experiments on temptation and self-control. Our main finding is that time spent in line economically and statistically significantly increases the probability that a consumer purchases a tempting item. Our results provide novel quantitative content to the rapidly expanding literature on decisions under temptation.

经济学和心理学领域的冗长文献表明，长期暴露在诱人的刺激下会导致人们“屈服”于这种诱惑。在这里，我们开发了一个受诱惑的决策模型，并使用自然实验测试其预测。我们利用了超过 2800 名个人消费者在杂货店收银台等待时接触诱人商品的时间的外生变化。因为我们被动地观察这些消费者自然发生的购买决定，我们的方法避免了在诱惑和自我控制的设计实验中可能出现的混淆。我们的主要发现是，在经济上和统计上花费的排队时间显着增加了消费者购买诱人商品的可能性。