The influence of mood on the WTA-TWP gap

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2016-08-25
Language
en
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The concepts of WTA, WTP and the resulting gap have been known to economists for centuries. Many potential explanations have been put forward but to no prevail. We focus on behavioral explanations such as an individual’s mood on their WTA or WTP. In order to analyze the impact of happiness, sadness or neutrality on the persons WTA or WTP we conduct an experiment in which we elicit prices from more than 100 US Americans for several goods. Mood indication is accomplished by means of short films. To verify the mood indication results we utilize a PANAS scale. The experiment is run fully automated through the online databases of Qualtrics and CrowdFlower. On the resulting data several regression models are run and analyzed. Eventually we compare our gap observations with previously found ones by other authors. We confirm previous findings of decreasing gap observations over time and high good specificity. Our analyses prove that mood has a significant influence on the gap, especially on WTP. Happiness appears to increase WTP whereas sadness decreases WTP for time and leisure goods. For risky goods such as lotteries, happiness leads our participants to increase their maximum WTP, which confirms previous findings of happiness increasing risk seeking behavior.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen
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