When managing joint finances, couples need to have candid conversations about money. But what happens when one partner is feeling financially stressed? Our research investigates this question, exploring how an individual's perception of their current financial situation impacts their willingness to discuss money with their partner. Across eight studies (N = 8474), we found that when individuals experience high (vs. low) financial stress, they are less likely to communicate with their partner about finances due to greater anticipated conflict. The effect of financial stress on communication is attenuated when individuals do not anticipate conflict. Further, we demonstrate that viewing conflicts as solvable rather than perpetual increases the likelihood of engaging in financial communication with one's partner. These findings have notable implications for both individuals' financial well-being and couples' relationship satisfaction.

We conducted a randomized control trial to study the impact of two information messages aimed at reducing the stigma associated with mental illness on the willingness to seek mental healthcare among adults in Nepal. The first intervention shares information about the prevalence of mental health issues and the efficacy of treatment. The second intervention shares information about the mental health struggles of a Nepali celebrity and how he benefited from treatment. We find three results. First, compared to a no-information control group, both interventions increase participants’ stated willingness to seek mental health treatment. This effect is driven by participants with high personal and anticipated stigma, less severe symptoms of depression and anxiety, and who hold high-masculinity beliefs. Second, the impact on participants’ stated willingness to seek mental health treatment mirrors their willingness to pay for counseling. Third, participants are, on average, more likely to report willingness to seek help when the enumerator is female.

The phenomenal growth in rentals, with the advent of access-based platforms, has made it possible for consumers to rent products from person providers (e.g., Alex on Airbnb) as well as company providers (e.g., Green Vacations on Airbnb). However, does the identity of the rental provider matter for consumers in the context of access-based rentals, and if so, how? Despite the product being the same, consumers differ in how they feel about it depending on “who” they are renting from. Consumers exhibit stronger psychological ownership for a rented product when renting from a company provider than a person provider. These feelings of psychological ownership prompt consumers to engage in “territorial” behaviors aimed at exerting their claim over the rented product. Consequently, consumers are more willing to engage in territorial behaviors towards products rented from company providers than person providers. We highlight common managerial tactics that can impact consumers’ engagement in these territorial behaviors by altering consumer psychological ownership or the provider’s providers’ connection to the rental product. Our findings have significant implications for rental providers as access-based platforms become more professionalized, especially since these territorial behaviors are detrimental both to the rented product and the rental provider.

, participants are, on average, more likely to report willingness to seek help when the enumerator is female.

In a mixed-method approach, using qualitative interviews and experiments, we explore how publicly posting content to social media influences its perceived value. Consumers report they publicly post user-generated content with the goal to share it with others in their social network. We theorize (and find) that this goal leads them to perceive it as a means to facilitate a social exchange and a social signal but inhibits the goal to use that content to preserve memories. Consequently, publicly posting content can increase its perceived value in the short term, but over the long-term and in the aggregate, consumers perceive content that is publicly posted to have less value than similar or identical content that is privately stored on their devices or in cloud, even though that content is highly curated sample of all the content they create and it is embellished by positive social feedback and comments. Our goal-based theory helps explain the little value that consumers appear to attach to the content that they post on social mediate platforms and identifies new strategies that platforms can use to increase user loyalty, and create new revenue streams.

Is the influence of online social relationships weaker than comparable offline social relationships? Comparing online social relationships across a variety of social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Instagram) with offline social relationships, we find their relative influence depends on the evaluative context––whether offline social relationships are also salient. When online relationships are evaluated in explicit comparison to offline relationships in joint evaluation (e.g., hybrid social networks), differences in the social distance associated with different social networks becomes salient and influence the social distance of individual dyads. Consequently, people perceive online social relations to be more distant and become less influential: they are less likely to share economic resources, or share (disclose) personal information, and engage in shared actions due to being persuaded by their recommendations. When online social relationships are evaluated in separate evaluation (e.g., completely virtual social networks), networks are not salient, so relations are similar in perceived social distance and in their influence. In addition, we find that online social relationships do not spontaneously evoke offline relationships as a natural comparison standard; separate evaluation is the default. Our findings yield theoretical and practical insights for the study of social distance and the design and management of online, offline, and hybrid social networks.