The leftmost digit bias refers to the tendency to anchor price judgments on the leftmost digit (for example, consumers evaluate the difference between $5.00 and $3.99 as larger than the difference between $5.01 and $4.00). In the current research, I propose a leftmost digit bias that people demonstrate when they budget and spend their money, and show that people are more likely to both budget and spend their money based on the leftmost digit, which makes the portion of their money represented by the digits to the right more likely to be spent on discretionary items.

Join us for this interesting conversation!