Mental Accounting Effects on Overspending Behavior: A Study with Brazilian Individuals

Abstract

This research aimed to analyze Mental Accounting effects on the Overspending Behaviors of Brazilian individuals. This is a qualitative, descriptive and explanatory study, carried out through bibliographical research and case study, using the Content Analysis method, with pre-defined analysis categories. Data collection took place through semi-structured interviews with 27 Brazilian individuals, from the 27 states of Brazil and the research corpus was composed of transcriptions of the 27 interviews. The results indicate evidence of occurrences of the cognitive process of Mental Accounting and its biases in the three dimensions of domestic finance -. planning, income and credit card - and, in these three dimensions, stages of coding, categorization and evaluation were identified. In the coding stage, evidence was found that the dimensions of planning, income and credit card are all coded together, because they are all within the scope of planning. Still at the coding stage, the results seem to confirm the idea that the card bill would be a cluster of several smaller losses, being edited hedonically in loss integration form. In the categorization stage, interviewees cited labels for their income and expenses. In the evaluation stage, it was possible to observe that in Planning, planned individuals tend to ex ante evaluation and unplanned individuals tend to ex post evaluation; in income, the majority tends towards ex ante assessment; and in credit cards, everyone tends to ex post evaluation. Finally, the category of overspending behaviors with the greatest number of signs of the occurrence of Mental Accounting and its biases was the category of balanced behaviors, contradicting the idea that excessive behaviors would have a greater relationship with Mental Accounting.