According to the Principle of Scarcity, people assign more value to opportunities when they are less available. The use of this principle for profit can be seen in such techniques as the “limited number” and “deadline” tactics, wherein practitioners try to convince us that access to what they are offering is restricted by amount or time.
The scarcity principle holds for two reasons:
1. Things that are difficult to attain are typically more valuable, the availability of an item or experience can serve as a shortcut cue to its quality.
2. As things become less accessible, we lose freedoms.
According to psychological reactance theory, people respond to the loss of freedoms by wanting to have them (along with the goods and services connected to them) more than before.
As a motivator, psychological reactance is present throughout the great majority of the life span. However, it is especially evident at a pair of ages: “the terrible twos” and the teenage years. Both of these periods are characterized by an emerging sense of individuality, which brings to prominence such issues as control, rights, and freedom. Consequently, individuals at these ages are especially sensitive to restrictions.
In addition to its effect on the valuation of commodities, the Principle of Scarcity also applies to the way that information is evaluated. Research indicates that the act of limiting access to a message causes individuals to want to receive it more and to become more favourable to it. The latter of these findings - that limited information is more persuasive - seems the more surprising. In the case of censorship, this effect occurs even when the message has not been received. When a message has been received, it is more effective if it is perceived as consisting of exclusive information.
The scarcity principle is more likely to hold true under two optimizing conditions:
1. Scarce items are heightened in value when they are newly scarce. That is, we value those things that have become recently restricted more than those than those that were restricted all along have.
2. We are most attracted to scarce resources when we compete with others for them.
It is difficult to steel ourselves cognitively against scarcity pressures because they have an emotion-arousing quality that makes thinking difficult. In defence, we might try to be alert to a rush of arousal in situations involving scarcity. Once alerted, we can take steps to calm the arousal and assess the merits of the opportunity in terms of why we want it.
Posted by Jonathan in Psychology