When do perceptions of wastefulness affect how people make choices?

Dear Dr. Feldman,

Thank you for submitting your Stage 2 registered report entitled “Revisiting the Psychology of Waste: Replication and Extensions Registered Report of Arkes (1996)” to PCI: Registered Reports. I have received comments from the same reviewers from Round 1 and have reviewed the report myself. Overall, we are in agreement that the updated submission largely meets the Stage 2 review criteria, and that the resulting report is impressive in its clarity, attention to detail, and thorough documentation of the methods and analyses. 

There are a few details related to the results and discussion that are in need of revision before moving to a final acceptance. Please address the following points in your revision:

1. Address the inconsistencies in the results noted by reviewer TC below.
2. Clarify details of the order effect analyses:
   1. There appears to be an incomplete footnote on pg. 59. Please correct with the justification for any departure from the Stage 1 submission. Wasn’t the intention simply to use a stricter .005 threshold for any significance tests? 
   2. “We suggest caution in over-interpreting these effects, and as we noted in the peer review in Stage 1.” — I’d recommend providing a brief explanation of this point rather than alluding to an external document. You might consider instead providing a link to the PCI:RR page in the footnote.

3. Clarify interpretation and discussion of “reasons” for choice:
   1. Pg. 49: “Thus, we found support for minimizing waste as the most important reason, with no support for differences between the waste and no waste conditions.” — This obscures the finding that waste and value were indistinguishable as reported reasons for this scenario.
   2. While there is discussion of the reported reasons for Scenario 1, the discussion for Scenarios 2 and 3 focuses only on differences between conditions. For example there is no discussion of the notable finding that waste was the least endorsed reason in Scenario 2, an interesting result that appears to be at odds with the intention of the target article. I’d recommend providing further discussion of these results that revisits the “Exploratory competing hypotheses” listed in Table 1 for all 3 scenarios.
   3. Pg. 62: “The absence of significant effects suggests that the influence of various decision-making factors does not substantially vary across different conditions. This finding indicates that the decision-making process is stable, with participants consistently applying the same reasoning regardless of variations in the level of wastefulness.” — This conclusion seems tenuous in light of the manipulation checks, particularly in the case of Scenario 2 where there was no difference in perceived wastefulness. You might consider discussing the manipulation checks earlier, since they are important to the interpretation of the other effects. But absent such a change, I recommend revising this statement to reflect the actual variation in perceived wastefulness (or lack thereof) seen in these scenarios.

Best wishes,
Doug Markant