Persuasion of Loss-Averse Receivers Through Early Offers

We study a simple bargaining model in which the sender can make an early offer to the receiver. Initially, the sender has private information about the value of the receiver's outside option. The receiver learns this value before she chooses between the sender's early offer and her outside option. Nevertheless, if the receiver is expectation-based loss averse, the sender can persuade her to accept an offer that is inferior to her outside option. This result is due to the interaction of two effects: the attachment effect that makes it costly for the receiver to reject an offer that she planned to accept, and the uncertainty effect which renders the acceptance of the sender's offer as the preferred plan since it creates peace of mind at an early stage. If the receiver faces uncertainty in multiple dimensions, the main result holds for all degrees of loss aversion. Thus, expectation-based loss-averse preferences imply that there is scope for persuasion through signaling even if the receiver has all payoff-relevant information at the decision stage.