IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pie/dsedps/2021-279.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Endowment effects at different time scenarios: the role of ownership and possession

Author

Listed:
  • Domenico Colucci
  • Chiara Franco
  • Vincenzo Valori

Abstract

The central issue of the wide literature about the endowment effect is the search for an explanation of the fact that the selling price of a good will be higher than that at which a person is willing to buy that same good, once they own it. The experimental evidence is not unanimous in replicating the results found by Kahneman et al. (1990 and 1991). The challenge is that of disentangling the several determinants that may be at work in generating the final effect, as the loss aversion is not considered the only explanation. We dig deeper by examining two of these likely determinants which remain understudied: the first is the impact that the amount of time of ownership can have on the endowment effect. The second is the type of item (non-material good and exchange goods) used to test the effect. Through an online questionnaire we investigate these aspects by using three different goods: a mug, an Amazon Gift Card and a quarterly subscription to Spotify. We also test whether the endowment effect occurs in different time scenarios, that is if participants imagine to own the good for one day, one week or one month. We find that the endowment effect clearly appears for all types of goods while less clear results take shape when considering the duration of the ownership.

Suggested Citation

  • Domenico Colucci & Chiara Franco & Vincenzo Valori, 2021. "Endowment effects at different time scenarios: the role of ownership and possession," Discussion Papers 2021/279, Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
    • Handle: RePEc:pie:dsedps:2021/279
    Note: ISSN 2039-1854
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ec.unipi.it/documents/Ricerca/papers/2021-279.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. van de Ven, Niels & Zeelenberg, Marcel & van Dijk, Eric, 2005. "Buying and selling exchange goods: Outcome information, curiosity and the endowment effect," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 459-468, June.
    2. George Loewenstein & Ted O'Donoghue & Matthew Rabin, 2003. "Projection Bias in Predicting Future Utility," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(4), pages 1209-1248.
    3. Camerer, Colin F & Hogarth, Robin M, 1999. "The Effects of Financial Incentives in Experiments: A Review and Capital-Labor-Production Framework," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 19(1-3), pages 7-42, December.
    4. Botond Kőszegi & Matthew Rabin, 2006. "A Model of Reference-Dependent Preferences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(4), pages 1133-1165.
    5. Knetsch, Jack L, 1989. "The Endowment Effect and Evidence of Nonreversible Indifference Curves," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(5), pages 1277-1284, December.
    6. Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman, 1991. "Loss Aversion in Riskless Choice: A Reference-Dependent Model," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(4), pages 1039-1061.
    7. Brebner, Sarah & Sonnemans, Joep, 2018. "Does the elicitation method impact the WTA/WTP disparity?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 40-45.
    8. Charles R. Plott & Kathryn Zeiler, 2005. "The Willingness to Pay–Willingness to Accept Gap, the "Endowment Effect," Subject Misconceptions, and Experimental Procedures for Eliciting Valuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 530-545, June.
    9. Svirsky, Daniel, 2014. "Money is no object: Testing the endowment effect in exchange goods," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 227-234.
    10. van Dijk, Eric & van Knippenberg, Daan, 1996. "Buying and selling exchange goods: Loss aversion and the endowment effect," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 517-524, August.
    11. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    12. repec:cup:judgdm:v:1:y:2006:i::p:23-32 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Joshua C. Teitelbaum & Kathryn Zeiler (ed.), 2018. "Research Handbook on Behavioral Law and Economics," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14176.
    14. repec:cup:judgdm:v:2:y:2007:i::p:107-114 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. (Xiao-Tian) Wang, X.T. & Ong, Lay See & Tan, Jolene H., 2015. "Sense and sensibility of ownership: Type of ownership experience and valuation of goods," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 171-177.
    16. Samuelson, William & Zeckhauser, Richard, 1988. "Status Quo Bias in Decision Making," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 7-59, March.
    17. Charles R. Plott & Kathryn Zeiler, 2007. "Exchange Asymmetries Incorrectly Interpreted as Evidence of Endowment Effect Theory and Prospect Theory?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(4), pages 1449-1466, September.
    18. Kahneman, Daniel & Knetsch, Jack L & Thaler, Richard H, 1990. "Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect and the Coase Theorem," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1325-1348, December.
    19. Daniel Kahneman & Jack L. Knetsch & Richard H. Thaler, 1991. "Anomalies: The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 193-206, Winter.
    20. Fehr, Dietmar & Hakimov, Rustamdjan & Kübler, Dorothea, 2015. "The willingness to pay–willingness to accept gap: A failed replication of Plott and Zeiler," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 120-128.
    21. Mandy Ryan & Cristina Ubach, 2003. "Testing for an experience endowment effect in health care," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(7), pages 407-410.
    22. Strahilevitz, Michal A & Loewenstein, George, 1998. "The Effect of Ownership History on the Valuation of Objects," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 25(3), pages 276-289, December.
    23. Martinez, Luis F. & Zeelenberg, Marcel & Rijsman, John B., 2011. "Regret, disappointment and the endowment effect," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 962-968.
    24. Alexopoulos, Theodore & Šimleša, Milija & Francis, Mélanie, 2015. "Good self, bad self: Initial success and failure moderate the endowment effect," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 32-40.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Botond Kőszegi & Matthew Rabin, 2006. "A Model of Reference-Dependent Preferences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(4), pages 1133-1165.
    2. Jacobs Martin, 2016. "Accounting for Changing Tastes: Approaches to Explaining Unstable Individual Preferences," Review of Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 67(2), pages 121-183, August.
    3. Daniel Villanova, 2019. "The extended self, product valuation, and the endowment effect," AMS Review, Springer;Academy of Marketing Science, vol. 9(3), pages 357-371, December.
    4. Kogler, Christoph & Kühberger, Anton & Gilhofer, Rainer, 2013. "Real and hypothetical endowment effects when exchanging lottery tickets: Is regret a better explanation than loss aversion?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 42-53.
    5. Dertwinkel-Kalt, Markus & Köhler, Katrin, 2016. "Exchange asymmetries for bads? Experimental evidence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 231-241.
    6. Bélyácz, Iván & Kovács, Kármen, 2018. "A birtoklási hatás megnyilvánulásának háttere és következményei. A kilátáselmélet alkalmazása fogyasztási döntésekre [Background and consequences of the endowment effect. Applying prospect theory t," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(4), pages 382-401.
    7. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2017. "Richard H. Thaler: Integrating Economics with Psychology," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2017-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    8. Pavlo Blavatskyy & Ganna Pogrebna, 2010. "Endowment effects? “Even” with half a million on the table!," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 68(1), pages 173-192, February.
    9. Jose Apesteguia & Miguel Ballester, 2009. "A theory of reference-dependent behavior," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 40(3), pages 427-455, September.
    10. Simon Gächter & Eric J. Johnson & Andreas Herrmann, 2022. "Individual-level loss aversion in riskless and risky choices," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 92(3), pages 599-624, April.
    11. Raphaël Giraud, 2012. "Money matters: an axiomatic theory of the endowment effect," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 50(2), pages 303-339, June.
    12. Yan, Jinming & Yang, Yumeng & Xia, Fangzhou, 2021. "Subjective land ownership and the endowment effect in land markets: A case study of the farmland “three rights separation” reform in China," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    13. Peter D. Lunn, 2013. "Telecommunications Consumers: A Behavioral Economic Analysis," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(1), pages 167-189, April.
    14. Dietz, Simon & Venmans, Frank, 2019. "The endowment effect, discounting and the environment," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 67-91.
    15. Eduard Marinov, 2017. "The 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics," Economic Thought journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 6, pages 117-159.
    16. Gächter, Simon & Johnson, Eric J. & Herrmann, Andreas, 2007. "Individual-Level Loss Aversion in Riskless and Risky Choices," IZA Discussion Papers 2961, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Stefano DellaVigna, 2009. "Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 315-372, June.
    18. repec:cup:judgdm:v:17:y:2022:i:5:p:988-1014 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Anbarci, Nejat & Arin, K. Peren & Kuhlenkasper, Torben & Zenker, Christina, 2018. "Revisiting loss aversion: Evidence from professional tennis," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 1-18.
    20. repec:jdm:journl:v:17:y:2022:i:5:p:988-1014 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Banzhaf, H. Spencer, 2016. "Constructing markets: environmental economics and the contingent valuation controversy," MPRA Paper 78814, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    22. D'Orlando, Fabio & Ferrante, Francesco, 2015. "The benefits of stabilization policies revisited," MPRA Paper 67321, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    WTA/WTP gap; endowment effect; ownership experience; fungible goods; services; exchange goods;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pie:dsedps:2021/279. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dspisit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.