We had two conditions. In the upgrade condition, participants were shown a nicer-looking mug (with a retail value of about $10), which they inspected before playing the game. They were told they would have the opportunity to purchase the upgraded mug at a special price at the end of the study. In contrast, participants in the no-upgrade condition were not shown another mug before playing the game. The result? Among those in the upgrade condition, 61% dropped the mug during the game, as compared to only 37% of those in the no-upgrade condition. It seems that exposure to mug upgrades led participants to become more careless with their owned mugs. Why? Careless behavior allowed participants to justify buying an upgrade without having to consciously admit to themselves or others that they had been intentionally wasteful.

In search of other evidence, we turned to the field. We acquired an international dataset of about 3,000 lost Apple iPhones. Every Apple iPhone in the world has a unique code, known as the IMEI number. After losing a phone, consumers can visit the IMEI Detective website to report the loss and check if their phone has been found by anyone. We used not reporting a loss on the IMEI Detective website as a proxy for carelessness. We found that fewer people go online to look for their phones when a newer iPhone model is about to be released or is newly available for purchase. For example, we observed fewer reported losses of the iPhone5s when the iPhone6 was about to be released or was newly on the market.

And what if there was a crack on your phone? Our research shows that you’d consider the damage to be much more serious if an upgrade is available on the market than if it is not.