Consumer tendency to regret: evidence for individual differences in the experience of regret

Regret is defined as the painful emotion that is experienced when a consumer realizes that the outcome he or she experiences as a consequence of a purchase decision is worse than the outcome he could have experienced had he chosen differently. The scientific studies on regret have provided useful information on the antecedents and consequences of regret. But except for a few studies, none of these works have analyzed individual differences in the propensity to regret one's decisions. In the present research, we argue that some people regret their decisions more often than others. We conceptualize and measure this individual difference as a personality trait, calling it Consumer Tendency to Regret (CTR) and explore its links with several personality and demographic variables.