Haptic-payment: Exploring vibration feedback as a means of reducing overspending in mobile payment

The proliferation of mobile payment applications in recent years has decoupled the physical act of paying from the consumption experience. Prior research suggests that this decreases the psychological sense of loss or ‘pain’ that consumers feel when making a purchase with more direct payment types (such as cash) and leads them to spend more money. To help address this issue, the present research explores, designs, and tests haptic vibration feedback configurations aimed at restoring the ‘pain’ of paying with cashless payment options (i.e., online and mobile payment). Counter-intuitively, the present research finds that lower- (vs. higher-) intensity vibration feedback reduces participants’ reported willingness-to-spend when compared to a control group that does not receive any vibration feedback. This work is one of the first to explore the role of haptic vibration feedback in nudging consumers to reduce their spending when using cashless payment methods.