CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 60Decision-Making and Behavioral EconomicsBehavioral Health and InterventionsFinancial Literacy, Pension, Retirement Analysis

The mere deadline effect: why more time might sabotage goal pursuit.

Zhu, Meng, Bagchi, Rajesh, Hock, Stefan J·2019·Journal of Consumer Research
DOI 10.1093/jcr/ucy030
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Contrary to the common belief that having more time facilitates goal pursuit by allowing for more flexibility and fewer restrictions, the current work argues that long deadlines may produce unintended detrimental consequences on goal pursuit. In particular, this research identifies a mere deadline effect, showing that longer versus shorter deadlines, once imposed, lead consumers to infer that the focal goal is more difficult, even when the deadline length results from incidental factors that cannot be meaningfully used to make any other diagnostic inferences about the task itself besides completion frame. Further, these difficulty inferences consequently lead consumers to commit more resources (e.g., time and money). Thus, while long incidental deadlines might be beneficial for essential yet often underestimated aspects of long-term well-being (e.g., when consumers exert more effort to save for college and plan for retirement), the unintended difficulty perception arising from deadline length will sometimes sabotage goal pursuit (e.g., when consumers commit more resources that are beyond their capability, and when elevated resource estimates lead to increased procrastination and higher likelihood of quitting).

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1093/jcr/ucy030

Cites

63 of 63 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Long deadlines induce an inference of the focal task as more difficult, thereby making the student allocate more time and resources to the task.

    “Recently, Zhu et al. (2019) demonstrated that long deadlines induce an inference of the focal task as more difficult, thereby making the student to allocate more time and resources to the task.”

    From How Study Environments Foster Academic Procrastination: Overview and Recommendations (2020) · cites this paper as Zhu et al., 2019

Cites

1 retracted

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Zhu, M., Bagchi, R., & Hock, S. J.
Affiliations
  • Johns Hopkins University (US)
  • Virginia Tech (US)
  • George Mason University (US)
Corresponding author
Zhu, Meng
ORCID
Venue
Journal of Consumer Research
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Published
2018-04-05
Volume
45
Issue
5
Pages
1068-1084
ISSN
  • 0093-5301 (ISSN-L)
  • 1537-5277
DOI
10.1093/jcr/ucy030
OpenAlex
W2795669759
Cited by
60
References
62
Citations by year
2026: 10 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 5 · 2015: 1
FWCI
4.36
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model (vor)
Locations
Journal of Consumer Research (publishedVersion)
Funders
  • Behavioral Experimental Research Fund
  • Johns Hopkins Carey Business School
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Behavioral Health and Interventions
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Accounting › Financial Literacy, Pension, Retirement Analysis
Keywords
goal pursuit, perceived difficulty, diagnostic inference, resource commitment, procrastination, quitting, consumer behavior

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review