Research Overview

How consumers partition their resources is a fundamental yet often overlooked aspect of their everyday lives. These partitions manifest in many forms, from how employers distribute income across multiple and sometimes irregular paychecks to how individuals mentally allocate their earnings across different budgets and even how governments market benefit amounts using

shorter or longer time intervals. My research delves into this critical area, focusing on how resource partitioning (the mental or actual fragmentation of resources) influences consumers’ judgments and decision-making, particularly the financial decisions of lower-income consumers. This exploration is divided into two interconnected research streams: 

1. The first stream investigates how consumers’ mental partitioning of their resources influences their resource-seeking behaviors. For example, how do consumers’ budget partitions affect what types of income they seek out (large lump sums or distributed income streams) or their intentions to claim government benefits (e.g., tax credits, food assistance vouchers)? 
2. The second stream investigates how the partitioning of resources influences consumers’ allocation decisions. For example, how do different payment frequencies or budgeting strategies affect consumer spending? 

By employing a mixed-methods approach that includes large-scale field studies, extensive data analysis of large financial datasets, and preregistered lab and online experiments, my research aims to bridge the gap between existing theoretical models and the lived realities of financially vulnerable populations. My research often extends prevailing theories, illuminating the importance of income or financial constraints as an essential moderator to previously documented main effects. This interest is fueled by my insatiable research curiosity and my lived experience growing up in a lower-income household.

Wendy De La Rosa and Christopher Bechler (2024), “Unveiling the Adverse Effects of Artificial Intelligence on Financial Decisions Via the AI-IMPACT Model," Current Opinion in Psychology, 101843 

[ Paper Link ]

Wendy De La Rosa, Abigail B. Sussman, Eric Giannella^, and Maximilian Hell^ (2022), “Communicating Amounts in Terms of Commonly Used Budgeting Periods Increases Intentions to Claim Government Benefits,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(37), e2205877119. 

[ Paper Link ]  [ Data, Materials, and preregistrations ] 

• AMA-EBSCO-RRBM Award for Responsible Research in Marketing (May 2024)

Wendy De La Rosa and Stephanie M. Tully (2022), “The Impact of Payment Frequency on Consumer Spending and Subjective Wealth Perceptions,” Journal of Consumer Research, 48(6), 991-1009. 

[ Paper Link ]  [ Data, Materials, and preregistrations ]

• AMA CBSIG Consumer Research in Practice Award (Oct 2023)
• Journal of Consumer Research Ferber Award (Oct 2022)
• Journal of Consumer Research Editor’s Choice (2022)
• Best Competitive Paper Award at the Society for Consumer Psychology Conference (Mar 2020) 
• First-Place Award at the Marketing Doctoral Student Association Conference (Aug 2019)

Wendy De La Rosa*, Eesha Sharma*, Stephanie M. Tully*, Eric Giannella^, and Gwen Rino^ (2021), “Psychological Ownership Interventions Increase Interest in Claiming Government Benefits,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(35), e2106357118. 

[ Paper Link ]  [ Data, Materials, and preregistrations ]

• Behavioral Science & Policy Association’s Best Paper Award (May 2022)
• Runner-Up Best Competitive Paper at the Association for Consumer Research Conference (Nov 2021) 
• Runner-Up Best Competitive Paper at the Society for Consumer Psychology Conference (Mar 2021) 

Wendy De La Rosa, Jackie Silverman, Abigail Sussman, Vince Dorie^, Gwen Rino^, Maximilian Hell^, Eric Giannella^, and Lisa Dillman^, “Using Expenditure Reframes to Increase Interest in Claiming Government Benefits: Evidence from Three Large-Scale Field Experiments,” conditional accept at Journal of Marketing

Wendy De La Rosa, Christopher J. Bechler, Hal E. Hershfield, Gwen Rino^, Ryan Hatch^, Chris Chan^, and Eric Giannella^, “Improving Income Elicitation to Increase Income Reporting: Evidence from Two Large-Scale Field Experiments Among Benefit Applicants,” revise and resubmit at Management Science

Goncharova, Ekaterina Y. (PhD Student) and Wendy De La Rosa, “The Impact of Income Volatility on Subjective Wealth and Financial Decisions,”revise and resubmit at Journal of Marketing Research

• Puri-Bharadwaj $5,000 Research Award, October 2024
• Best Short Competitive Paper Runner-Up, Association for Consumer Research, September 2024

Wendy De La Rosa, Ron Berman, Christophe Van den Bulte, Nidhi Agrawal, Adam L. Alter, Christopher J. Bechler, Jonathan E. Bogard, J. Anthony Cookson, Kylie Davis, Ayelet Fishbach, Craig R. Fox, Ayelet Gneezy, Hal E. Hershfield, Tatiana Homonoff, Aziza C. Jones, Lena Kim, John G. Lynch, Tamutswa Mahari, Erick M. Mas, Eesha Sharma, Anya Shchetkina, Jackie Silverman, Abigail B. Sussman, Patricia Torres, Stephanie M. Tully, Broderick L. Turner, Jr., Esther Uduehi, Oleg Urminsky, Adrian F. Ward, Vince Dorie^, Gwen Rino^, Maximilian Hell^, and Eric Giannella^, “Increasing Interest in Claiming a Tax Credit Among Lower-Income People: Evidence from Two Large-Scale A/B/nField Experiments,” reject and resubmit at Marketing Science

Wendy De La Rosa and Abigail B. Sussman, “The Frequency-Cost Matrix (FCM): A New Paradigm for Financial Decision-Making,” reject and resubmit at Journal of Marketing

Yin, Siyuan (PhD Student) and Wendy De La Rosa, “The Impact of (Dis)Aggregated Budgeting on Consumer Spending” 

Wendy De La Rosa, Broderick L. Turner Jr., Jennifer Aaker, and Prashant Mishra, “Intraweek Payday Timing and Consumer Spending” 

• $10,600 Wharton Dean’s Research Fund Award (Mar 2022)
• Best Competitive Paper Award (Financial Decision-Making Track) at the Society for Consumer Psychology Conference (Feb 2022) 
• Diversity Dissertation Research Opportunity $5,000 Award (Dec 2019)
• Wheeler Institute for Business and Development Research $15,000 Award (Sept 2019)

Ekaterina Goncharova (PhD Student), Rohan Garg (PhD Student), and Wendy De La Rosa, “Income Volatility and Prosocial Behavior”

Ekaterina Goncharova (PhD Student), Rohan Garg (PhD Student), and Wendy De La Rosa “Marketing (Mis)trust and its Influence on Civic Engagement”

Wendy De La Rosa and Christopher J. Bechler, “Need Help? When Marketing Assistance Backfires”

Raffi Garcia, Sen Li, and Wendy De La Rosa, “The Impact of Mass Shootings on Borrower Behavior”

Alicia Johnson, Wendy De La Rosa, Anastasiya Gosh, and Bikram Gosh, “The Impact of Payment Frequency on Budgeting Behavior”

Austin S. Kilaru, Aliza Haider, Joseph Harrison, Erica L. Dixon, Lauren Southwick, Charles Rareshide, Melissa Berkowitz, Conor Carroll, Clayton Kaledin, Grace McDermott, Michael Mehta, Alisa Stephens-Shields, Wendy De La Rosa, Anish K. Agarwal, and Raina M. Merchant, “Linkage of Emergency Department Patients with Public Benefits Navigators via Automated Text Messaging: A Randomized Controlled Trial”

Wendy De La Rosa, Stephanie M. Tully, and Itamar Simonson, “Financial Self-Deception and Spending”

Wendy De La Rosa and Itamar Simonson, “Contingent Nudges: Impact of Anchoring on Saving” 

Katherine A. Mason, Kayley Okst, Jan Voelkel, Danielle Goldwert, Robb Willer, Don Green, Todd Rogers, Erika Weisz, Jamie Druckman, Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Hannah J. Birnbaum, Jonathan E. Bogard, Craig Brimhall, Danielle Cosme, Wendy De La Rosa, Andrea G. Dittmann, Emily Falk, Craig R. Fox, Rohan Garg (PhD Student), Noah J. Goldstein, Ekaterina Y. Goncharova (PhD Student), John T. Jost, Eric D. Knowles, Noah M. Laskey, Spike W. S. Lee, Jackson G. Lu, Vincent Pons, Aneesh Rai, Joseph Reiff, Claire Robertson, Amitai Shenhav, Yi-Hsin Su, Hannah B. Waldfogel, Megan Weber, Sara Constantino, and Madalina Vlasceanu, “Evaluating Interventions to Improve Voter Registration in the 2024 U.S. Election”