Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much

by Sendhil Mullainathan

You plan to spend the evening in the library working on a short paper due the following day. As you walk across campus, you discover that an author you have always admired is about to give a public lecture and that—in another hall—they are about to screen a foreign movie that you have been wanting to see. Do you proceed to the library anyway or go to the lecture or to the movie instead? Given only one appealing alternative, the lecture, 60 percent stuck with the library. But given two appealing alternatives, even more people (80 percent) chose the library. This looks like a peculiar outcome: people are given more attractive options, yet, they are less likely to choose any of them. It happens because choice is hard. When the choice is between the lecture and the library, you can decide which is more important that day—studying or leisure. But when there are two leisure activities, you have one more choice: which is the leisure activity that’s right for you? Faced with this additional choice, people simply say, “Forget it. I’ll just stick with the library.” They avoid the burden of choosing by sticking with the original plan, in effect choosing not to choose. Slack provides an easy way to avoid the burden of choosing. The only reason you must choose between the lecture and the movie is that your time budget is tight. If you had slack, you could do both. When you’re shopping for clothes and see two things you like, a tight budget forces you to choose.