Psychological reactance is a theory that when consumers learn that something they have enjoyed may be taken from them, they discover how much they actually like whatever it was. One example of this was the decision by the Britain's Department of Transport in 2012 to award the new contract for west coast train services to First Group. Virgin Trains had held the contract for the previous 15 years and had fought hard to retain the franchise.
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| Photograph from The Guardian |
Almost as soon as the announcement had been made, Virgin customers started to campaign via social media to have the decision reversed. Despite Virgin Rail being the country's second most complained about train operator (Osborne 2012), users rushed to its defence; there were suggestions that there was an implicit anti-Virgin bias in the bidding process (Topham 2012). Whatever the official figures on complaints, when the service was threatened with withdrawal users discovered that they could not imagine life without it. Over 100,000 people signed an ePetition calling for the First Group award to be reconsidered (Topham 2012).
Within weeks the government's decision to award the contract to First Group had to be reversed, although ostensibly the reason had nothing to do with the public backlash (Topham 2013).
References
Osborne, Hilary (2012), “Virgin Trains v FirstGroup: which is best?”, The Guardian, 15 August
Topham, Gwyn (2013), “MPs blame west coast mainline fiasco on 'complete lack of common sense'”, The Guardian, 26 February
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