Search Fatigue, Choice Deferral, and Closure

When gathering information to make decisions, individuals often have to delay making a decision because the process of gathering information is interrupted, and the individual is not yet ready to make a decision. The paper considers a model of choice deferral based on time-varying search costs, potentially based on search fatigue, in which individuals have to strategically decide whether to defer choice when information gathering is interrupted, taking into account the current available information, and when they will be able to resume gathering information. We find that individuals are more likely to defer choice when information gathering is interrupted less frequently, when individuals can resume gathering information sooner, and when they discount the future less. We also consider the case in which individuals incur costs of restarting a process of information gathering and cases in which the individual has greater or less information about the extent of search fatigue. The paper also considers optimal pricing, user interface design, and retargeting decisions, and it shows how they should respond to the length of consumer browsing sessions and gaps between browsing sessions. The paper illustrates the importance of modeling fatigue and interruptions in the search process.

History: Anthony Dukes served as the senior editor.

Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2023.0275.