Expectations, Satisfaction, and Utility from Experience Goods: A Field Experiment in Theaters

Ayelet Gneezy, Uri Gneezy, Pedro Rey-Biel and Joan Llull

No 944, Working Papers from Barcelona School of Economics

Abstract: Understanding what affects satisfaction from consumption is fundamental to studying economic behavior. However, measuring subjective hedonic experiences is not trivial, in particular when studying experience goods in which quality is difficult to observe prior to consumption. We report the results of a field experiment with a theater show in which the audience pays at the end of the show under pay-what-you-want pricing. Using questionnaires, we measure expected enjoyment before the show, as well as the realized enjoyment after. Correlating the amounts paid with the expected and realized enjoyment, we find that individuals with a larger gap between reported expectations and enjoyment pay significantly more. Once we account for the satisfaction gap, the level of expected enjoyment or realized enjoyment has no significant effect in predicting payments.

Keywords: experience goods; pay-what-you-want; expectations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C91 D81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-gth, nep-hap and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://bw.bse.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/944-file.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bge:wpaper:944

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Barcelona School of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bruno Guallar ().