The Willingness to Pay-Willingness to Accept Gap Revisited: The Role of Emotions and Moral Satisfaction

Anders Biel, Olof Johansson-Stenman () and Andreas Nilsson
Additional contact information
Anders Biel: Department of Psychology, Postal: Göteborg University, Box 640, SE 40530 GÖTEBORG
Andreas Nilsson: Department of Psychology, Postal: Göteborg University, Box 640, SE 40530 GÖTEBORG

No 497, Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics

Abstract: While many earlier studies have found that people’s maximum willingness to pay for having a good is often substantially lower than their minimum willingness to accept not having it, more recent experimental evidence suggests that this discrepancy vanishes for standard consumption goods when an incentive-compatible design without misconceptions is used. This paper hypothesises that there is nevertheless a discrepancy for goods with a perceived moral character, such as contributions to a good cause, and moreover that the reason for this discrepancy can largely be explained by differences in emotions and moral perceptions. The results from a real-money dichotomous-choice experiment, combined with measurements of emotions and morality, are consistent with these hypotheses.

Keywords: Willingness to pay-Willingness to accept gap; Endowment effect; Emotions; Ethics; Experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2011-04-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-dcm, nep-exp and nep-neu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/25390 (text/html)

Related works:
Journal Article: The willingness to pay–willingness to accept gap revisited: The role of emotions and moral satisfaction (2011)
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:hhs:gunwpe:0497

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Box 640, SE 405 30 GÖTEBORG, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jessica Oscarsson ().