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Background: While previous work in higher education documents the impact of high tuition costs of attending graduate school as a key motivator in attrition decisions, in engineering, most graduate students are fully funded on research fellowships, indicating there are different issues causing individuals to consider departure. There has been little work characterizing nonfinancial costs for students in engineering graduate programs and the impact these costs may have on persistence or attrition. Purpose/Hypothesis: Framed through the lens of cost as a component of the expectancy–value theory framework and the graduate attrition decisions (GrAD) model conceptual framework specific to engineering attrition, the purpose of this article is to characterize the costs engineering graduate students associate with attending graduate school and document how costs affect students' decisions to persist or depart. Design/Method: Data were collected through semistructured interviews with 42 engineering graduate students from R1 engineering doctoral programs across the United States who have considered, are currently considering, or have chosen to depart from their engineering PhD programs with a master's degree. Results: In addition to time and money, which are costs previously captured in research, participants identified costs to life balance, costs to well‐being, and identify‐informed opportunity costs framed in terms of what "could have been" if they had chosen to not go to graduate school. As these costs relate to persistence, students primarily identified their expended effort and already‐incurred costs as the primary motivator for persistence, rather than any expected benefits of a graduate degree. Conclusion: The findings of this work expand the cost component of the GrAD model conceptual framework, providing a deeper understanding of the costs that graduate students relate to their persistence in engineering graduate programs. It evidences that motivation to persist may not be due to particularly strong goals but may result from costs already incurred. Through this research, the scholarly community, students, advisors, and university policymakers can better understand the needs of engineering graduate students as they navigate graduate study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing uptake of electric vehicles, and the established practice of long-term parking at stations and airports, offers an opportunity to develop a flexible approach to help with the energy storage dilemma. This paper investigates the feasibility of using a number of EV batteries as an energy storage and grid balancing solution within the UK Central Hub area. Here, the capital cost of the vehicle is a sunk cost to the EV owner. The potential income generated, or discount on long-term parking, is an additional benefit of ownership. This paper considers the income available to a small and large size car park from the different market mechanisms to offer grid support in the UK and contrasts this with the complexity and costs of the EV charging infrastructure required within these types of scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While human beings embody a unique ability for planned behaviour, they also often act automatically. In this study, we draw on the automatic thinking perspective as a meta-theoretic lens to explain why online auction bidders succumb to both trait impulsiveness and sunk cost, ultimately leading them to experience winner's regret. Based on a survey of 301 online auction participants, we demonstrate that both trait impulsiveness as an emotional trigger and sunk cost as a cognitive trigger promote winner's regret. By grounding our research model in the automatic thinking view, we provide an alternative meta-theoretical lens from which to view online bidder behaviour, thus bolstering our current understanding of winner's regret. We also investigate the moderating effects of competition intensity on the relationships between the triggers of automatic thinking and winner's regret. Our results show that both trait impulsiveness and sunk cost have significant impacts on winner's regret. We also found that the relationship between these two triggers and winner's regret is moderated by competition intensity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sunk cost effect is the bias or tendency to persist in a course of action due to prior investments of effort, money or time. At the time of the only review on the sunk cost effect across species (Arkes & Ayton, 1999), research with nonhuman animals had been ecological in its nature, and the findings about the effect of past investments on current choice were inconclusive. However, in the last decade a new line of experimental laboratory-based research has emerged with the promise of revolutionizing the way we approach the study of the sunk cost effect in nonhumans. In the present review we challenge Arkes and Ayton's conclusion that the sunk cost effect is exclusive to humans, and describe evidence for the sunk cost effect in nonhuman animals. By doing so, we also challenge the current explanations for the sunk cost effect in humans, as they are not applicable to nonhumans. We argue that a unified theory is called for, because different independent variables, in particular, investment amount, have the same influence on the sunk cost effect across species. Finally, we suggest possible psychological mechanisms shared across different species, contrast and depreciation, that could explain the sunk cost effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twelve adult human subjects were exposed to a sunk-cost procedure with two options: a mixed-ratio schedule of points later exchangeable for money, and an escape schedule that cancelled the current trial and initiated a new one. The mixed ratio included four values, arranged probabilistically in such a way that the expected ratios favored either persistence or escape. These probabilities were varied systematically on a within-subject basis across conditions. Absolute ratio size was thus varied across four groups of three subjects each, yielding unique combinations of expected ratios from escaping and persisting. When the differences between escaping and persisting differed the least, subjects tended to persist, committing the sunk-cost error. When the differences between persisting and escaping differed by a larger margin, choice patterns tended toward optimal-escaping or persisting as a function of the contingencies. These findings demonstrate that sunk-cost decision-making errors in humans are sensitive to their relative costs and benefits, and illustrate a promising set of methods for bringing such behavior under experimental control in the laboratory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explored the potential for a sunk-cost effect in the realm of time. Questionnaire studies (Experiments 1–4) obtained a sunk-time effect that was robust to manipulations of prospective value, individual versus group consequences, and the effort or enjoyment inherent in the time. Behavioral experiments (Experiments 5–7) also suggested a sunk-time effect and found support for a personal responsibility by sunk-cost interaction on choice behavior. We discuss theoretical implications and a potential connection to animal sunk-cost phenomena. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Farm-level adaptation to changing economic environments is often slower than expected. Technological innovations, for instance, are frequently adopted at a later date than the net present value of investment suggests. This can be explained by a model of “investment under uncertainty,” which consistently accounts for uncertainty, sunk costs, and the flexibility of investment timing. Its essential conclusion is that, due to temporal opportunity costs, critical incremental cash flows that trigger investments might be higher than those needed for simple cost recovery. This accounts for an ostensible reluctance to invest (economic hysteresis). In this article, we demonstrate how slow conversion to organic farming in general, and the different rates of conversion in Germany and Austria in particular, can be explained by the new investment theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sunk cost effect is the increased tendency to persist in an endeavor once an investment of money, effort, or time has been made. To date, humans are the only animal in which this effect has been observed unambiguously. We developed a behavior-analytic model of the sunk cost effect to explore the potential for this behavior in pigeons as well as in humans. Each trial started out with a short expected ratio, but on some trials assumed a longer expected ratio part way through the trial. Subjects had the (usually preferable) option of ‘escaping’ the trial if the longer expected ratio had come into effect in order to bring on a new trial that again had a short expected ratio. In Experiments 1 through 3, we manipulated two independent variables that we hypothesized would affect the pigeons' ability to discriminate the increase in the expected ratio within a trial: (a) the presence or absence of stimuli that signal an increase in the expected ratio, and (b) the severity of the increase in the expected ratio. We found that the pigeons were most likely to persist nonoptimally through the longer expected ratios when stimulus changes were absent and when the increase in the expected ratio was less severe. Experiment 4 employed a similar procedure with human subjects that manipulated only the severity of the increase in the expected ratio and found a result similar to that of the pigeon experiment. In Experiment 5, we tested the hypothesis that a particular history of reinforcement would induce pigeons to persist through the longer expected ratios; the results suggested instead that the history of reinforcement caused the pigeons to persist less compared to pigeons that did not have that history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article models and estimates the forces behind farm exits and changes in herd-size among Connecticut dairy farms under the New England Dairy Compact. A model of sunk costs and farm capital investment is used to specify two econometric estimations: a random effects probit model of farm entry and exit and an autocorrelated generalized least squares panel data model of farm size. The Dairy Compact's price strategy reduced farm exits and moderately increased cow numbers. In contrast, development pressures and historically low unemployment rates increased farm exits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sunk cost effect is manifested in a tendency to continue an endeavor once an investment has been made. Arkes and Blumer (1985) showed that a sunk cost increases one's estimated probability that the endeavor will succeed [p(s)]. Is this p(s) increase a cause of the sunk cost effect, a consequence of the effect, or both? In Experiment 1 participants read a scenario in which a sunk cost was or was not present. Half of each group read what the precise p(s) of the project would be, thereby discouraging p(s) inflation. Nevertheless these participants manifested the sunk cost effect, suggesting p(s) inflation is not necessary for the effect to occur. In Experiment 2 participants gave p(s) estimates before or after the investment decision. The latter group manifested higher P(s), suggesting that the inflated estimate is a consequence of the decision to invest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]