Exploring Escalation of Commitment Situation in the Internet C2C Auction

Most Internet auction studies have focused on examining the determinants of auction success or closing price. However, there has been little previous research which investigates dark-side factors such as overbidding behavior in the Internet C2C transactions. For this reason, this study attempts to find situations with the escalation of commitment to bids using Internet auction systems and also examines whether the bidder's bidding is irrational. Therefore, this study applies escalation of commitment to explain the auction process such as the "going, going, gone period" with competition in Internet C2C auctions. In order to describe the auction process in terms of escalation of commitment, this study proposes psychological sunk costs, completion effect, and self-justification as the key factors of escalation of commitment and also willingness to continue bidding reflecting the decision maker's escalation behavior in terms of persistence perspective as final dependent variable. The results of PLS analysis indicate that a bidder's overbidding behavior is explained by the escalation of commitment.