IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/igg/rmj000/v20y2007i3p1-18.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Meta-Analysis Comparing the Sunk Cost Effect for IT and Non-IT Projects

Author

Listed:
  • Jijie Wang

    (Georgia State University, USA)

  • Mark Keil

    (Georgia State University, USA)

Abstract

Escalation is a serious management problem, and sunk costs are believed to be a key factor in promoting escalation behavior. While many laboratory experiments have been conducted to examine the effect of sunk costs on escalation, there has been no effort to examine these studies as a group in order to determine the effect size associated with the so-called “sunk cost effect.” Using meta-analysis, we analyzed the results of 20 sunk cost experiments and found: (1) a large effect size associated with sunk costs, and (2) stronger effects in experiments involving information technology (IT) projects as opposed to non-IT projects. Implications of the results and future research directions are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Jijie Wang & Mark Keil, 2007. "A Meta-Analysis Comparing the Sunk Cost Effect for IT and Non-IT Projects," Information Resources Management Journal (IRMJ), IGI Global, vol. 20(3), pages 1-18, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:igg:rmj000:v:20:y:2007:i:3:p:1-18
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://services.igi-global.com/resolvedoi/resolve.aspx?doi=10.4018/irmj.2007070101
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:igg:rmj000:v:20:y:2007:i:3:p:1-18. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journal Editor (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.igi-global.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.