Abstract: Default effect refers to a phenomenon that people tend to maintain the default and do not change the choice in decision making. Default effect widely exists in organ donations, retirement savings plans, consumer decision and other decision-making fields and has great application values in these fields. Currently, there are four ways for researchers to illustrate the formation mechanism of default effect: loss aversion, query theory, implicit recommendations and neural psychological mechanism. The factors to influence default effect include such as follows: effort, the framing of default and personal experience. Further research on default effect needs to deeply investigate our understanding of its causes, to strengthen cross-cultural research and to expand its application values.

Key words: default effect, loss aversion, query theory, implicit recommendations