Mental accounting matters
Richard Thaler reviews a decade of research on mental accounting, the mental operations people use to organise, evaluate and keep track of money. He describes three parts: how outcomes are perceived and decisions evaluated, how money and spending are assigned to labelled accounts and budgets, and how often and how broadly accounts are reviewed. Each part departs from the economic principle that money is interchangeable, and his conclusion is that mental accounting therefore changes what people choose.
Richard Thaler reviews a decade of research on mental accounting, the mental operations people use to organise, evaluate and keep track of money. He describes three parts: how outcomes are perceived and decisions evaluated, how money and spending are assigned to labelled accounts and budgets, and how often and how broadly accounts are reviewed. Each part departs from the economic principle that money is interchangeable, and his conclusion is that mental accounting therefore changes what people choose.
Written from the abstract as published with the paper in its OpenAlex record, read 2026-10-29.
What our sources record
Recorded when this source was checked, figures included, with page references and quotation marks removed.
Thaler, R. H. (1999). 'Mental accounting matters.' Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 12(3), 183-206. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1099-0771(199909)12:3<183::AID-BDM318>3.0.CO;2-F.