How behavioral economics can help you save on airfare
When booking flights, navigating extra fees and upgrades can be overwhelming, which is no accident It’s not just you: Shopping for airfare is harder than ever. Choosing between basic economy and regular economy fares and navigating add-on fees makes booking more complicated, and that’s no accident. Airlines are harnessing lessons from a still-emerging academic field known as behavioral economics to nudge customers into spending more. “Behavioral economics was developed by incorporating ideas from psychology into standard economic theories,” says Cait Lamberton, a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “If you see a deal that is available for only a short amount of time, and you pay more than you usually would, standard economics would say you’ve made an irrational decision. Behavioral economics says that no, what your brain is doing is responding to scarcity.” These seemingly irrational choices are called “biases," many of which can affect h...