All You Can Eat Is A Sham

February 28, 2014 in Daily Bulletin

All you can eat restaurants make you unhappy writes Alice Robb:

  • In one experiment economists found that the higher the price that people pay for the same food at an all you can eat restaurant, the more they eat.
  • However since all you can eat restaurants charge an upfront flat fee the amount of consumption shouldn’t vary by the price paid for entry.
  • But people are susceptible to the ‘sunk cost’ fallacy, where they feel that if they pay more they somehow have to make it ‘worth’ more.
  • In fact those who ate more ultimately enjoyed their meal less as they overstuffed themselves.
  • Thus at all you can eat restaurants it’s possible the more you pay the less happy you’ll be with your food.

Read more about the study, its methodology, and its implications over here.

Source: New Republic