Informed Consent

 

Background and purpose

This is a request for you to participate in a week-long study aimed at reducing your non-essential purchasing behavior. The goal of the study is to gain a better understanding of ways to reduce excessive consumption.

 

 

What does the study entail?

In order to participate in this intervention study, you have been asked to download a free application to your smartphone. All participation will take place through this app.

 

The intervention will last for 7 days. The first and the last day will require the most participation from you, namely 10-15 minutes. Each of the 5 remaining days will only demand 5 minutes of your time.

 

• On the first day, you will be asked to answer some questions about your spending habits and some questions related to your personality. We will also ask you about some demographical information, such as age, gender, income, and education.

• On each of the following days, you will be asked to answer a couple of questions about your mood. You might also be presented with some additional material. Finally, you will be asked to recall the number and costs of some of your recent purchases, if any.

• On the last day of the study, we will again ask you about your spending habits and personality. Lastly, you will be asked to reflect on your own consumption behavior. Throughout the study, your smartphone application will ping you once a day, kindly reminding you to continue your participation.

 

After one month following your participation in the intervention, we will send you an email containing a link to a short online questionnaire.

 

 

Lottery prize and additional benefits

Upon completion of participation, you will be eligible to win a lottery prize of 100 euro. In order to be eligible to take part in the lottery, you must have completed the full one-week intervention and your one-month follow-up assessment. One winner will be randomly selected from all complete survey responses. The research team will email the winner to coordinate the prize transfer. You will also receive information about your personal progress relating to your spending behavior upon study completion.

 

The lottery prize winner has been contacted (October 30th).

 

*Disclaimer: Neither Apple nor Google are involved in any way with this lottery.

 

 

Requirements of participation

In order for you to participate in this study, you need to fulfill a few requirements. You must agree with the following criteria:

 

• I am over 18 years of age

• I have a desire to reduce my non-essential spending (e.g., clothes)

• I have not previously followed the social media trend promoting “Minimalism” (i.e., simplistic living)

• I have no clinical diagnosis related to impulse control or addictions (such as compulsive buying disorder and hoarding)

 

 

Potential advantages and disadvantages

This intervention aspires to help you with reducing your non-essential spending behavior, although no such guarantees can be made. If you are not committed to the 7-day study program, there will be a small chance for behavioral change. Although it is unlikely that participation in this study will harm you in any way, please contact the research team immediately if you feel that you are being negatively affected. We will remove you from the study program and provide you with some further support.

 

What will happen to the information about you?

The data that are registered about you will only be used in accordance with the purpose of the study as described above. It will not be possible to identify you in the results of the study when these are published.

 

 

Voluntary participation
Participation in the study is voluntary. You can withdraw your consent to participate in the study at any time and without stating any particular reason. This will not have any consequences for you.

 

 

Privacy and data storage

The information that is retained about you from the answers that you provide in the application is the only data from you that will be included in the analyses. Some personal information, like your email address, will be stored while the study is running. However, when the analyses have been performed and the results have been disseminated, this personal information will be deleted.

 

The data will be stored electronically within a research software program and analyzed on the encrypted and password-secured private computers of the research team.

 

 

Releasing material and data to other parties

Your answers are merged with the answers of the other participants in a large database; your answers can not be traced back to you. This database will be kept available for other researchers in the event of replication- or meta-analysis studies.

 

 

Right to access and right to delete your data

If you agree to participate in the study, you will be entitled to request access to any information or data collected about you. You will further be entitled to correct any mistakes in the information we have registered. If you withdraw from the study, you will be entitled to demand that the collected data are deleted, unless the data have already been incorporated in analyses or used in scientific publications.

 

 

Funding

This study is not supported by any funding organization.

 

Ethical Approval

Ethical approval received from the Cambridge Psychology Research Ethics Committee on 29/3/17. PRE.2016.098; http://www.bio.cam.ac.uk/psyres .

 

 

Information about the outcome of the study

You are entitled to receive information about the result of the study. Please contact the research team to do so.

 

 

Contact information

An international team, led by principal investigator Atar Herziger of the University of Cologne, Germany, are conducting this research. Please do not hesitate to contact us at consumption.jrp@gmail.com or by filling in a form in the "Contact" section of the website.

 

 

 

For more online psychology studies visit:

www.onlinepsychresearch.co.uk and http://psych.hanover.edu/research/exponnet.html