An experimental study on choices deferral behaviors of investors under uncertain conditions

People tend to postpone judgment and choose to wait for additional information when they experience choice conflict. The purpose of present study is to examine how choice deferral cost and sunk cost affect investor' choice delay behavior under uncertainty conditions. Seven between-subjects experimental conditions concerning uncertain investment decision are designed in this research. It has shown that in an investment decision process with the presence of a dominant option, the uncertainty event would lead to choice conflict and deferral behavior of investors; the temporal cost of the choice deferral can help investors identify the relation between uncertainty event and decision, and then reduce the behaviors of choice deferral and information seeking. The experimental results also showed that the sunk cost of the investment project sometimes can restrain the behavior of choice deferral. However, it is not found that the cost of delay and sunk cost have combined effects on the choice deferral behavior of investors.