Denial Without Determination: The Impact of Systemic Market Access Denial on Consumer Power and Market Engagement

Despite growing evidence showing that people are denied access to market resources for reasons other than individual or market constraints, little research has explored the effect of such denial on the individual consumer. Building from learned helplessness, attribution theory of motivation, and consumer power theory, the current research addresses this issue by showing the impact of repeated access denial on perceptions of power and market engagement. Across five repeated-choice experiments utilizing a financial loan context, the authors show that market access and consumer power exist in a feedback loop, with lack of access leading to lower perceptions of power and, consequently, reduced market engagement or detrimental choice in the market. The authors present a norm-based intervention to encourage market engagement among those who have experienced denial by working through beliefs of market success, but demonstrate the detrimental effect of this intervention on those who have experienced repeated access prior to denial. In response, the authors present an education intervention to encourage smarter choices once consumers have entered the market. They conclude with implications for market access policy.