Summary and conclusions
There is little disagreement that capital investment decisions are among the most crucial decisions entrusted to firm
managers, yet little is known about what causes managers to deviate from the prescriptions of sophisticated capital
budgeting methods. We provide evidence about whether and why a psychologically important but normatively irrelevant
situational factor pushes managers away from making economically efficient capital investment decisions. Our results reveal
a debt-induced reluctance to part with an asset, which causes two decision errors—(1) participants forego investments that
increase firm value and (2) participants accept investments that decrease firm value. When the source of finance is equity,
participants are less likely to make either of these costly decision errors. We also find that higher unpaid principal
accentuates participants' reluctance to part with debt financed assets, but that their reluctance to part with the asset is
invariant to whether the debt is secured or unsecured. Finally, we provide evidence affirming our theory-based explanation
for why debt financing has the aforementioned effect on managers' capital investment decisions. The mediation results
not only affirm our theory-based explanation for why debt financing influences managers' capital investment decisions,
but they help rule out various alternative explanations related to risk, leverage, signaling, and liquidity. The knowledge
gained from this study may help to improve capital investment decisions in organizations