Ana Carina Castagna, a Ph.D. student at NOVA IMS and researcher at the Information Management Research Center (MagIC), was awarded the prestigious Schumann Dissertation Award at the 2023 Society for Consumer Psychology (SCP) Annual Conference, held in San Juan, Puerto Rico, from 2 to 4 March 2023.
The Schumann Dissertation Award is the highest recognition a doctoral student can receive from the Society for Consumer Psychology, the premier international society devoted to advancing the psychological study of consumers. The award is granted to the most promising dissertation proposal in the field, offering both recognition and scholarly feedback from leading experts prior to the defense stage.
Ana Carina’s dissertation, titled “Disarming the Scarcity Trap: How Perceptions of Resource Immutability Reduce Scarcity-Induced Present Bias,” investigates how consumers facing financial resource scarcity often fall into a cycle where diminished psychological well-being leads to present-biased financial decisions, perpetuating their condition. Through six experiments involving 1,801 participants and analysis of a secondary dataset comprising 51,288 observations, her research demonstrates that fostering perceptions of resource immutability—believing that one's resources will remain stable over time—can mitigate present bias. This effect is particularly pronounced among consumers who perceive themselves as socioeconomically vulnerable and is mediated by positive appraisals of scarcity episodes.
Supervised by Professor Diego Costa Pinto, Ana Carina’s work contributes to the literature on resource scarcity and offers substantial implications for interventions aimed at helping consumers disarm the scarcity trap.
The recognition of Ana Carina’s work at SCP underscores NOVA IMS’s commitment to fostering high-impact, interdisciplinary research in consumer behavior. The SCP Annual Conference is a leading academic venue in this field, convening scholars from psychology, marketing, and behavioral science to exchange cutting-edge research and advance the discipline.