Guidelines for Theory Selection: The IMPACT Framework

ABSTRACT Though the role of adopting an appropriate theory in shaping the publishability and impact of research has long been recognized, psychology and marketing researchers lack specific guidance on how to choose a theory to frame their work. Addressing this gap in the literature, this article proposes a set of guidelines for the selection of relevant macro‐foundational theory to guide research projects addressing specific meso‐ or micro‐foundational theoretical entities (e.g., constructs or individual decision‐making) for research impact. Specifically, we develop a set of six guidelines to select an appropriate macro‐foundational theory for research impact, including Interestingness , Matching , Parsimony ,…