Lay beliefs are people’s assumptions about the nature of the self and the social world and have strong influences on a person’s cognition and behavior. My dissertation studies one fundamental lay belief, namely, the Protestant Work Ethic (PWE), an influential concept that spans nearly all social sciences but has been largely ignored by the Marketing literature. The PWE was introduced by Weber (1905) to explain the historical rise of Western capitalism, but it is now regarded as a secular concept which describes the extent to which a person believes in hard work, asceticism, frugality and self-reliance. Several Marketing scholars have alluded to the PWE as a possible explanation for their findings, but none have studied it empirically. In this dissertation, I use multiple methods...[ Read more ]

Lay beliefs are people’s assumptions about the nature of the self and the social world and have strong influences on a person’s cognition and behavior. My dissertation studies one fundamental lay belief, namely, the Protestant Work Ethic (PWE), an influential concept that spans nearly all social sciences but has been largely ignored by the Marketing literature. The PWE was introduced by Weber (1905) to explain the historical rise of Western capitalism, but it is now regarded as a secular concept which describes the extent to which a person believes in hard work, asceticism, frugality and self-reliance. Several Marketing scholars have alluded to the PWE as a possible explanation for their findings, but none have studied it empirically. In this dissertation, I use multiple methods to measure or manipulate the belief in the PWE and test whether it spills over and influences judgment and decision-making in work-unrelated consumer domains. In Essay 1, I find that a person’s usage of cost-benefit heuristics in goal pursuit is driven by the extent to which they believe in the PWE. People of higher (vs. lower) PWE are more likely to assume that costlier means lead to better outcomes, and are more likely to choose costlier means in goal pursuit. In Essay 2, using both publicly available country-level data and individual-level experimental data, I find that individuals or societies who believe strongly in the PWE show a greater preference for natural healthcare options (e.g., vaginal delivery, tree-derived drugs). In Essay 3, I find that under flat-rate pricing, people of stronger belief in the PWE consume more if they spend more money, regardless of how much they actually need. This spending-dependent overconsumption is mediated by high-PWE people’s stronger feeling of deservingness. This research contributes to Marketing and PWE literature and offers important implications for firms and policy makers.