Spending Windfall (“Found”) Time on Hedonic versus Utilitarian Activities

Abstract

Abstract Consumers often gain extra free time unexpectedly. Given the increasing time pressure that consumers experience in their daily lives, it is important to understand how they spend windfall (or unexpected) free time, which we term found time. In a series of five laboratory experiments and naturalistic field studies, we found that consumers spend more of their free time on hedonic activities than on utilitarian activities when they gain the time unexpectedly (i.e., found time), but not when they know about the free time in advance. This pattern occurs consistently regardless of whether consumers gain the time from canceled work-related or leisure activities. In addition, our studies uncovered perceived busyness as a ubiquitous yet unexplored moderator for the windfall gain literature: the inclination to allocate found time to hedonic consumption decreases when consumers perceive themselves to be busy at the moment. We discuss several potential accounts for the effect of unexpectedness on time expenditure, including a perceived fit between the nature of found time (a fun windfall gain) and hedonic consumption, need for justification, and planning.