Latest / Behavioral Economics with Fexingo: Decision Making, Bias, and How People Really Spend
Why Your Brain Treats a Subscription as a Sunk Cost
In this episode of Behavioral Economics with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna dig into the sunk cost fallacy as it applies to subscription services. Why do we keep paying for a gym we never visit or a streaming platform we barely watch? They explore the psychology of recurring payments, the 'membership effect,' and how companies design subscriptions to exploit our aversion to waste. The conversation is anchored by a 2025 study from the Journal of Consumer Research that found people are 23 percent more likely to cancel a subscription after a price increase than after a period of non-use. They…
The skinny
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