Banking Happiness

Abstract Merely anticipating a future sad event motivates consumers to “accumulate happiness” in order to enhance their ability to cope with the anticipated sadness later—a phenomenon that we call banking happiness. To bank happiness, consumers not only choose positive stimuli over non-positive stimuli when given the choice, but even when such a choice does not exist, tend to recall more positive memories. Consumers bank happiness because of the lay theory that happiness is a resource that can be accumulated (i.e., banked) and consumed later. As a proactive mood-regulation strategy, banking happiness differs from reactive mood regulation: (a) the strength of consumers’ happiness-is-bankable lay belief predicts their tendency to bank happiness, but not their propensity to repair their negative moods after actually experiencing sadness; (b) consumers who are more future-oriented are more likely to bank happiness in the face of anticipated sadness, whereas those who are more present-oriented are more likely to regulate their negative mood when they actually experience sadness. Further, believing that happiness is bankable may increase consumers’ engagement with positive stimuli when anticipating sadness, possibly boosting the hedonic utility consumers obtain from the positive stimuli and helping them to build a stronger buffer against the negative stimuli.