Procrastination of Enjoyable Experiences

What it is

The usual picture of procrastination is of something unpleasant: the tax return, the dentist. Shu and Gneezy begin from the observation that people also postpone things they expect to enjoy. A visit, a meal, a treat can wait, because it will still be there next week.

They propose that models of time discounting can explain this, and they test the predictions with field data and experiments. Time discounting is the way that a reward's value falls as the wait for it grows. The less obvious consequence is that giving people more time can make them less likely to act at all.

Their tests ran on two kinds of evidence. A multicity study looked at visits to desirable landmarks, and found that people with unlimited time windows delayed, while procrastination was reduced when the window of opportunity was constrained. A set of studies looked at gift certificates and gift cards, and found that people procrastinated in redeeming those with long deadlines more than those with short deadlines, which resulted in lower redemption overall.

The results ran counter to participants' own predictions and to typical models of impulsive behaviour.

In effect

In research, the gift certificate studies are the cleanest case. Recipients of certificates with a long deadline were compared with recipients of certificates with a short one, and the long-deadline recipients redeemed less overall. The abstract does not report the sample sizes or percentages, and this page does not supply them.

In commerce, the finding bears on how long an issuer lets a certificate or a balance run. A short deadline changed what recipients did in these studies. Whether the same holds for a loyalty points balance, which in many programmes does not lapse on a fixed date, is an inference and not a result.

In everyday life, the landmark study describes the museum or the view in a person's own city that they have always meant to visit and have not, because it is always open. This is a paraphrase of the paper's field setting and not a documented case.

What it does not say

It does not say that gift cards and loyalty points behave alike. The experiments used certificates and cards, and the step from there to a points balance with no expiry date is a reading, not a finding.

For this page only the published abstract was read, so the design details, the sample sizes and the size of the redemption gap are not reported.

It does not say that deadlines are good for people or for firms. It says that a long deadline led to later and lower redemption in these studies, and that is a different claim from one about satisfaction or profit.

How it differs from ordinary procrastination

Ordinary procrastination is usually explained by the cost of the task: the tax return is put off because doing it is unpleasant. The pleasant version cannot be explained that way, because nothing about a visit to a landmark or a meal out is costly in the moment. Shu and Gneezy's explanation lies in time discounting, the way a reward loses pull as the date for it moves away. A pleasant thing with no date attached can slide, because there is always a nearer thing to do, and a closing date pulls it forward.

That is also why the finding is counterintuitive for anyone designing a reward. Giving recipients more time looks generous. In these studies it was followed by later redemption and, overall, less of it, and participants had not predicted that.

Reading it across to loyalty points

The article on this site that uses the paper puts the step in one line: gift cards are not loyalty points. The experiments used gift certificates and gift cards. A points balance with no expiry date has the same structure in one respect, since no date says when the pleasant thing should be done, and the page treats that as a reading of the paper and not as a result.

The abstract does not say whether adding an expiry date to a points balance would raise redemption, or whether customers would accept it. Those questions are open here, and the paper cannot settle them because it did not study loyalty programmes.

Which outcome the evidence measures

The outcome in the 2010 experiments is redemption of a gift certificate or card, and how late it happens. The abstract of a different paper on this site, the Dorotic study of a Dutch coalition programme, measures purchasing around redemption in a scheme with no expiry. A reader who sets the two side by side should keep the outcomes apart: one asks whether a deadline gets a reward used, the other asks what using a reward does to later buying. The first supports the idea that an open window can slide. The second is silent on it, and neither tested a lapsing against a non-lapsing points balance in the same customers.

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