Participants
Forty-two master’s students from a large state university were recruited by in-class announcements for participation in this experiment. Thirty-six of these participants were M.B.A. students who had completed their core financial accounting courses. The remaining six were students in a Master of Quantitative and Computational Finance program and had completed coursework that dealt with leases. On average, participants were 28.4 years of age (S.D. ¼ 3.25
years) and had 5.25 years of full-time work experience (S.D. ¼ 3.14 years). Neither age nor work experience differs significantly by condition. Participants took, on average, approximately 20 minutes to complete the materials, which were administered to them in an experimental laboratory. Participants did not receive any compensation for their participation.