Beyond duration: the effect of temporal category boundaries on consumers’ verification decisions

Tourism pre-sales often suffer from inadequate post-purchase verification. Drawing on temporal categorization and temporal motivation theory, four experiments show that crossing a temporal category boundary reduces consumers’ verification tendency by increasing perceived temporal distance. This negative effect is stronger for less seasonal products because consumers rely more on expiration dates as temporal cues. It is also stronger when product value is indivisible because consumers must realize the entire benefit at once and thus depend more on a single deadline. These findings reveal how temporal category boundaries shape post-purchase verification decisions and inform validity period setting and benefit-realization design.