Title: Scarcity (social psychology) - Wikipedia
Headings: Scarcity (social psychology)
Scarcity (social psychology)
Contents
Examples
Heuristics
Quantity
Rarity
Time
Restriction and censorship
Studies
Conditional variations
New scarcity
Quantifying value in scarce and competitive situations
Other applications
Competition
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References
Bibliography
Further reading

Content: Scarcity (social psychology) - Wikipedia
Scarcity (social psychology)
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Scarcity, in the area of social psychology, works much like scarcity in the area of economics. Simply put, humans place a higher value on an object that is scarce, and a lower value on those that are in abundance. For example diamonds are more valuable than rocks because diamonds are not as abundant. The scarcity heuristic is a mental shortcut that places a value on an item based on how easily it might be lost, especially to competitors. The scarcity heuristic stems from the idea that the more difficult it is to acquire an item the more value that item has. In many situations we use an item’s availability, its perceived abundance, to quickly estimate quality and/or utility. This can lead to systemic errors or cognitive bias. There are two social psychology principles that work with scarcity that increase its powerful force. One is social proof. This is a contributing factor to the effectiveness of scarcity, because if a product is sold out, or inventory is extremely low, humans interpret that to mean the product must be good since everyone else appears to be buying it.