The nonfungibility of mental accounting: A revision

Nonfungibility is taken to be the fundamental characteristic of mental accounting. We put forward the hypothesis that nonfungibility is not absolute: that there is a flow of money from an account containing consumer items of low psychological value to an account containing consumer items of high psychological value. To evaluate the hypothesis we designed 2 related experiments, and invited 236 undergraduates and 240 male workers to participate in the research. It was shown in Study 1 that there was a flow of money from a luxury account to either a communication or a food account, and from a communication account to a food account, but not in the opposite directions. In Study 2 it was found that with the increased attractiveness of a gamble, the flow of money into an entertainment account from other accounts became more likely. The results in this study offer preliminary evidence of the agility of mental accounts.