‘It’s like sunk cost fallacy or something they call it’: The role of symbolic,social and economic capital in worker motivations for staying in the UK television production sector

Abstract

This paper seeks to explain why workers stay within the UK TV production sector, despite its well-documented problems. By drawing together literature around Bourdieu’s forms of capital with the concept of sunk costs, the paper argues that sunk cost fallacy (i.e. the time, effort and investments already incurred by the individual worker) is a central motivation for professionals retaining their place within the industry. It is particularly the notion of the sunk cost fallacy, in relation to their previous investments of cultural, social and symbolic capital, which drives TV workers to stay. The paper explores this notion of sunk costs through in-depth interviews conducted with 30 workers involved in TV production in the UK conducted from March 2024 to December 2024, as part of the AHRC-funded ReCARE TV Project (grant number AH/X00676X/1). The findings suggest a new conceptual framework through which to understand worker motivation in the creative industries, at a moment when the relationship between labour and capital is being redefined.