Truck, barter and exchange versus the endowment effect: virtual field experiments in an online game environment

Alistair Munro and Yannick Ferreira De Sousa

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: We examine the feasibility of using a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) to test economic theories. As a test vehicle we use the well-known hypothesis about the relationship between market experience and the endowment effect. Our results confirm earlier field experiments that individuals with more trading experience are less likely to exhibit status quo behaviour in trade. However, we also find evidence that highly experienced individuals are more likely to swap the item rather than keep it – i.e. there appears to be a propensity to ‘truck, barter and exchange’. A further experiments suggests that this feature is robust and is unlikely to be due to subject misperception or experimenter demand effects. We conclude that virtual economies may be a useful venue for field experiments.

Keywords: Endowment effect; virtual field experiment; Runescape; MMORPG (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D01 D11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-01-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Truck, barter and exchange versus the endowment effect: Virtual field experiments in an online game environment (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:8977

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