When being wasteful appears better than feeling wasteful

“Waste not want not” expresses our culture’s aversion to waste. “I could have gotten the samething for less” is a sentiment that can diminish pleasure in a transaction. We study people’s willingnessto “pay” to avoid this spoiler. In one scenario, participants imagined they were lookingfor a rental apartment, and had bought a subscription to an apartment listing. If a cheaper subscriptionhad been declined, respondents preferred not to discover post hoc that it would havesufficed. Specifically, they preferred ending their quest for the ideal apartment after seeing more,rather than fewer, apartments, so that the length of the search exceeds that available within thecheaper subscription. Other scenarios produced similar results. We conclude that people maysometimes prefer to be wasteful in order to avoid feeling wasteful.