인터넷 경매과정에서 입찰자의 입찰지속의지 영향요인에 관한 연구: 몰입의 에스컬레이션을 중심으로

The growth of the Internet C2C transactions continues because it provides an effective mechanism for an exchange of information between buyers and sellers. As the results, Internet C2C auction markets have become the most active segment of Internet markets. Most previous Internet auction studies have focused on examining the determinants of auction success or closing prices. However, there has been little previous research which investigates dark-side factors such as overbidding behavior in the Internet C2C transactions. For this reason, this study attempted to find situations with the escalation of commitment to bid using Internet auction systems and also examines whether the bidder’s bidding is irrational or not. In particular, it can be explained by applying escalation of commitment in order to explain the auction process such as the “going, going, gone period” with competition in Internet C2C auctions. In order to verify the research model, this study, firstly, considered the following constructs such as product involvement, and perceived fairness of opening price on a listed product as the necessary determinants for bidding efforts into a specific auction. Secondly, this study considered willingness to continue bidding as a final dependent variable in order to explain the escalation of commitment. It reflects a decision maker’s escalation behavior in terms of persistence perspective. The key factors of escalation of commitment–psychological sunk costs and self-justification may surface the internet auction sites. Thus, a bidder’s behavior also views a behavior as highly affected by the escalation of commitment as an irrational product of human motivational systems. From this surrounding, this study found that there exist the escalation satiations in the internet auction market. It implies irrational charged overbidding because of psychological sunk costs (for example, invested time, bids and energy etc), self-justification (bidding behavior which may feel a need to justify actions) and completion effect (for example, time pressure)as the moderating role in the relationships among psychological sunk costs, self-justification and willingness to continue bidding in drawing an inference from those findings. The escalation of commitment in this study can capture a kind of a bidder’s irrational behavior in the auction process. According to the results of this study, internet auction bidders do not behave rationally at all times especially those using internet C2C auctions. Based upon these results, this study could suggest that escalation of commitment in the auction would provide another step toward understanding influences of cognitive and emotional factors in decision-making in the auction sites.