sunk costs fallacy

noun

sunk costs fallacy

noun
1

The phenomenon where somebody justifies an increased investment of money or other resources based on the cumulative prior investment (the sunk costs), despite new evidence suggesting that the cost of continuing now outweighs the expected benefit.

Related terms
throw good money after bad, double down

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.