Decoupling the past from the present attenuates inaction inertia

Inaction inertia is the phenomenon that one is not likely to act upon an attractive opportunity after having bypassed an even more attractive opportunity. We investigated the boundary conditions of this inaction inertia effect. Based on the mental accounting literature and the transaction decoupling literature we predicted and found in three experiments that tight coupling of the forgone to the current opportunity is a necessary condition for inaction inertia to occur. Inaction inertia decreased when information about the missed opportunity was ambiguous (Experiment 1), when the past opportunity required an extra step to obtain (Experiment 2) and when the past and present opportunity decreased in comparability (Experiment 3). The theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed in view of the literature on inaction inertia and on judgment and decision-making. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.