Best-Laid Plans…: Understanding the Processes Underlying the Planning Fallacy

The planning fallacy refers to the systematic tendency to hold a confident belief that one’s own task will proceed as planned. Research has provided evidence of the tendency to underestimate the completion time for future tasks. The purpose of this research is to extend the previous research to a consumer behavior context and examine possible underlying processes. Our findings suggest that people underestimate their shopping completion times but overestimate their shopping duration times. Our findings also indicate that people with a high interpersonal locus of control tend to underestimate the shopping times more so than those with a low interpersonal locus of control.

Citation:

Jaehoon Lee, L. J. Shrum, and Jongwon Park (2009) ,"Best-Laid Plans…: Understanding the Processes Underlying the Planning Fallacy", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 36, eds. Ann L. McGill and Sharon Shavitt, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 1034-1035.