A Mega-Replication of the Effect of Cash Versus Card Payment on Pain of Paying: Magnitude, Behavioral Outcomes, and Moderators

Abstract

We revisit the widely accepted finding that paying with cash is more painful than paying with card by conducting the first systematic mega-replication (including 13 large-scale preregistered replications; a total of 32,371 participants, 65 products, and 57 price points ranging from $1.09 to $400). The aggregate evidence reveals four insights: (1) leveraging a broad set of established paradigms, we replicate the finding that paying with cash is more psychologically painful than paying with card, even among today’s consumers who own multiple cards, digital wallets, and virtual currencies; (2) comparing two outcome variables—amount spent and willingness-to-pay (WTP), we find a more reliable and larger overall direct effect of payment method on amount spent than on WTP; (3) these direct effects of payment method on outcome variables are mediated by pain of paying; (4) the mode-of-payment effect on pain of paying (and thereby on outcome variables) is moderated by individual differences, particularly the relative frequency of using cash versus card. We outline actionable guidance and future directions for researchers and practitioners interested in examining mode-of-payment effects, and discuss the value of and suitable approaches for future theory-driven large-scale replications.