- A-Z
- Jena Economic Resea...
- Volume 7
- Voluntary Payments,...
- Abgebildete Person
- Erschienen
- 9. September 2013
- Nummer des Discussion-Papers
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2013-032
- Schlagwort(e)
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Digital content
Internet
Natural experiment
Privacy
Public goods
PWYW
Social pressure
Voluntary contributions
Voluntary Payments
- Zusammenfsg.
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The emergence of Pay-What-You-Want (PWYW) business models as a successful alternative to conventional uniform pricing brings up new questions related to the task of pricing. We investigate the eect of a reduction of privacy on consumers' purchase decisions (whether to buy, and if so how much to pay) in a natural experiment at an online music store with PWYW-like pricing. Our study extends the empirical evidence of the reduced anonymity eect, previously established for donation or public goods contexts, to a consumption environment. We nd that revealing the name of the customer led to slightly higher payments, while it drastically reduced the number of customers purchasing. Overall, the regime led to a revenue loss of 15%. The experiment suggests that even low levels of social pressure without face to face interaction on customers leads to a reduction of welfare.
- article pub. typess JER
- Research article
- article languages JER
- Englisch
- JEL-Classification for JER
- D0 - General; D49 - Other ; H41 - Public Goods ; L82 - Entertainment; Media ; L86 - Information and Internet Services; Computer Software ; P14 - Property Rights