Scarcity, Urgency & How Traumatic Past Experience Can Shape Our Behaviour.
I. About Scarcity
“If you live in a developed country where abundance is the norm rather than the exception, you can begin to safely make the assumption that if someone is telling you supplies are low, they probably are trying to sell you something”
- Coffee Break, 2018. Scarcity… I’m deleting this soon
The human mental model in reaction to scarcity could be explained in the cookie jars experiment (Worchel, 1975). People were asked to give cookies in two jars (one full and one with only a couple of cookies) a value, and the people who have the full jar give the cookies a lesser value than the ones who were given the almost empty jar.
When you think about it, scarcity is actually the basis of the human social economy. How do you determine the value of a piece of paper and the value of a country’s currency? How do you price a house on the market? The value we created? Sure, but also how many of them are available. Scarcity adds more artificial value to an item and gives people the incentive to act. This bias is most applied in marketing and business to impact consumers’ behaviours and increase sales. Most of the time, it works: Black Friday, Lightning Deals, Limited release for a pair of shoes, all of these are examples of scarcity.
II. So what does this mean for UX Designers?
My whole feud with marketing and product branding/designing comes from my personal belief in essentialism and sustainability. Naturally, when learning about behavioural economics, I had trouble finding a morally good application for scarcity, something that I could design that would not contribute to the overconsumption of goods and manipulate people into buying stuff that they don’t really need for the sake of making profits (Which is unfortunately what most Graphic Designers do unconsciously).
I found one example: Climate action. This topic is where all three of these models: loss aversion, scarcity and social proofing can be applied. Activists nudge action by showing people the amount of natural landscape we are losing (loss aversion), only a certain amount of species left (scarcity), the number of years left that we have to save the Earth (Time-limited) and therefore we need to urgently do something about it. This movement did not make it big in the previous generation because of that lack of urgency, but as we are reaching the deadline, people are more motivated to take action.
“When an individual’s freedom to engage in a specific behaviour is threatened, the threatened behaviour becomes more attractive”
-Brehm, 1966. A theory of psychological reactance.
Furthermore, because of social proofing, more and more people join in the movement and eventually influenced the entire Gen Z to participate. In return, this movement has forced the entire economy industry to rethink its statements, business models and the way they produce and advertise products.
Nowadays, successful brands are shifting their products’ position back to their value and taking action to move forward in a sustainable way, as transparency is valued now more than ever and people are tired of being manipulated by salesman, the media and the people in power. That could be how I come to terms with designing for scarcity. I think that it would be okay if we prioritize the product and its value, as well as clarity, honesty and transparency when pushing sales. I would rather have a sale and put a disclaimer that they should only buy if they need it, despite it being on sale. As extravagant as it sounds, this action would show that the manufacturer care and believe in the product values, which would further increase consumers’ trust in the product.
With that being said, I could not tell you what I would do if I were put in that gatekeeping decision in my first few companies in the future, because as much as it’s manipulative, going against your employers right from the start might not be the brightest idea. However, this might be my line, and on the other side of that line are dark patterns, which I know I would not agree to do under any circumstances.
III. Even if we are aware, can we even rewire the brain?
Now as a consumer, people might not be aware of these tactics, or are aware of them but find it too difficult to resist. It is hard to rewire your brain because it’s how we have been programmed as humans. It’s even harder if the way you grow up and the world surrounding you forced you to be prepared for the future where that item is not available anymore.
In a conversation I had recently with my mom about the Ukraine and Russia war, she shared her stories about growing up, having to carry her one-year-old brother (my uncle) in one hand, and the other hand is her little sister, hiding in a bunker waiting for the rumbling from the bombing to stop. On one occasion in an evacuated location outside the city, the bombing was so close that she had to rush to the jungle, again with her siblings, and stay with strangers who lived under those trees. It was scary, food was scarce.
The experience shaped how her generation, the previous generation and all the generations living in war behave in the modern world of abundance.
Another historical event in Vietnam is the 1945 famine where around 1 million people died from starvation (Sciences Po portal, 2011). Food security was a great issue, so much that in 1946, when rice is given out for free to combat famine, people were so hungry that they ate the rice raw, or ate too much that their stomachs exploded. Their brain, learning from the previous experience, tried their best to prevent it from happening again. And even though it is not a threat anymore now, our grandparents are still so threatened that they kept that habit of extreme saving overspending on things that are cheap or are on sale.
All of these are extreme cases, but they also shine the light on how we can avoid being manipulated by the scarcity tactics. We have to really be aware of the environment we are in, analyze if the threat is real, or in this case, do we really need it and if this item is really limited. In most cases in the developed world, they are not.
References:
Brehm, J. W. (1966). A theory of psychological reactance. Academic Press.
Coffee Break. (2018, Jan 31). Scarcity…I’M DELETING THIS SOON [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRSBjFkbH0I
The great Vietnamese famine of 1944–45 revisited. Sciences Po portal. (2011, May 12). Retrieved February 25, 2022, from https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-warmassacre-resistance/en/document/great-vietnamese-famine-1944-45-revisited.html
Worchel, S., Lee, J., & Adewole, A. (1975). Effects of supply and demand on ratings of object value. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32(5), 906–914. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.32.5.906
