Anchoring, the biasing of estimates toward a previously considered value, is a long-standing and oft-studied phenomenon in consumer research. However, most anchoring work has been in the lab, and the results from field work have been mixed. Here, the authors use real transactions from an empirically investigated and commercially-employed pricing scheme (“pay what you want”) to better understand how anchors influence payments. Sixteen field studies (N = 21,997) and four hypothetical studies (N = 3,174) reveal four main points: (1) Although anchoring replicates both with and without financial consequences (Studies 1–2), the percentile rank gap between anchors in the distribution of payments is a much stronger predictor of anchoring emerging than merely the absolute gap between the anchors on a number line (Studies 3–5). (2) Low anchors influence payments more than high anchors (Studies 6a–b). (3) Findings from the literature that should enhance anchoring effects—anchor precision, descriptive and injunctive norms, nonsuggestions—yield null results in payment (Studies 7–13). (4) The above patterns do not emerge in hypothetical settings (Studies 14a–d), in which anchoring is as big and reliable as the literature has previously suggested.
AlpizarFrancisco, CarlssonFredrik, and Johansson-StenmanOlof (2008), “Anonymity, Reciprocity, and Conformity: Evidence from Voluntary Contributions to a National Park in Costa Rica,”Journal of Public Economics, 92 (5), 1047–60.
2.
ArielyDan, LoewensteinGeorge, and PrelecDrazen (2003), “‘Coherent Arbitrariness’: Stable Demand Curves Without Stable Preferences,”Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118 (1), 73–106.
3.
Armstrong SouleCatherine A. and MadrigalRobert (2015), “Anchors and Norms in Anonymous Pay-What-You-Want Pricing Contexts,”Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 57 (August), 167–75.
4.
BettmanJames R., LuceMary Frances, and PayneJohn W. (1998), “Constructive Consumer Choice Processes,”Journal of Consumer Research, 25 (3), 187–217.
5.
BrewerNoel T. and ChapmanGretchen B. (2002), “The Fragile Basic Anchoring Effect,”Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 15 (1), 65–77.
6.
Carson, Timothy N. and Charles R. Plott (2012), “Misconceptions and Game Form Recognition of the BDM Method: Challenges to Theories of Revealed Preference and Framing,” working paper, Purdue University.
7.
ChapmanGretchen B. and JohnsonEric J. (2002), “Incorporating the Irrelevant: Anchors in Judgments of Belief and Value,” in Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment, GilovichThomas, GriffinDale, and KahnemanDaniel, eds. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 120–28.
8.
CritcherClayton R. and GilovichThomas (2008), “Incidental Environmental Anchors,”Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 21 (3), 241–51.
9.
CrosonRachel and ShangJen Yue (2008), “The Impact of Downward Social Information on Contribution Decisions,”Experimental Economics, 11 (3), 221–33.
10.
Danilowitz, Jennifer, Shane W. Frederick, and Daniel Mochon, “Anchoring as Inference,” working paper, Yale School of Management, Yale University.
11.
DesmetPierre and FeinbergFred M. (2003), “Ask and Ye Shall Receive: The Effect of the Appeals Scale on Consumers’ Donation Behavior,”Journal of Economic Psychology, 24 (3), 349–76.
12.
EpleyNicholas and GilovichThomas (2005), “When Effortful Thinking Influences Judgmental Anchoring: Differential Effects of Forewarning and Incentives on Self-Generated and Externally Provided Anchors,”Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 18 (3), 199–212.
13.
FrederickShane W. and MochonDaniel (2012), “A Scale Distortion Theory of Anchoring,”Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 141 (1), 124–33.
14.
GautierPieter A. and van der KlaauwBas (2012), “Selection in a Field Experiment with Voluntary Participation,”Journal of Applied Econometrics, 27 (1), 63–84.
15.
GneezyAyelet, GneezyUri, RienerGerhard, and NelsonLeif D. (2012), “Pay-What-You-Want, Identity, and Self-Signaling in Markets,”Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109 (19), 7236–40.
16.
HardestyDavid M. and SuterTracy A. (2013), “Maximizing Willingness to Bid Within ‘Buy It Now’ Auctions,”Journal of Business Research, 66 (4), 554–58.
17.
JacowitzKaren E. and KahnemanDaniel (1995), “Measures of Anchoring in Estimation Tasks,”Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21 (11), 1161–66.
18.
JaniszewskiChris and UyDan (2008), “Precision of the Anchor Influences the Amount of Adjustment,”Psychological Science, 19 (2), 121–27.
19.
JungMinah H., NelsonLeif D., GneezyAyelet, and GneezyUri (2014), “Paying More When Paying for Others: Consumer Elective Pricing with Pay-It-Forward Framing,”Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107(3), 414–31.
20.
KaminsMichael A., DrezeXavier, and FolkesValerie S. (2004), “Effects of Seller-Supplied Prices on Buyers’ Product Evaluations: Reference Prices in an Internet Auction Context,”Journal of Consumer Research, 30 (4), 622–28.
21.
KimJu-Young, KaufmannKatharina, and StegemannManuel (2013), “The Impact of Buyer–Seller Relationships and Reference Prices on the Effectiveness of the Pay What You Want Pricing Mechanism,”Marketing Letters, 25 (4), 409–42.
22.
KimJu-Young, NatterMartin, and SpannMartin (2009), “Pay What You Want: A New Participative Pricing Mechanism,”Journal of Marketing, 73 (January), 44–58.
23.
LeónFrancisco J., NogueraJosé A., and Tena-SánchezJordi (2012), “How Much Would You Like to Pay? Trust, Reciprocity, and Prosocial Motivations in El Trato,”Social Sciences Information, 5 (3), 389–417.
24.
ManiadisZacharias, TufanoFabio, and ListJohn A. (2014), “One Swallow Doesn't Make a Summer: New Evidence on Anchoring Effects,”American Economic Review, 104 (1), 277–90.
25.
MartinRichard and RandalJohn (2008), “How Is Donation Behaviour Affected by the Donations of Others?”Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 67 (1), 228–38.
26.
MasonMalia F., LeeAlice J., WileyElizabeth A., and AmesDaniel R. (2013), “Precise Offers are Potent Anchors: Conciliatory Counteroffers and Attributions of Knowledge in Negotiations,”Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49 (4), 759–63.
27.
McKenzieCraig R.M., LierschMichael J., and FinkelsteinStacey R. (2006), “Recommendations Implicit in Policy Defaults,”Psychological Science, 17 (5), 414–20.
28.
MochonDaniel and FrederickShane (2013), “Anchoring in Sequential Judgments,”Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 122 (1), 69–79.
29.
MussweilerThomas and StrackFritz (2001), “Considering the Impossible: Explaining the Effects of Implausible Anchors,”Social Cognition, 19 (2), 145–60.
30.
NunesJoseph C. and BoatwrightPeter (2004), “Incidental Prices and Their Effect on Willingness to Pay,”Journal of Marketing Research, 41 (November), 457–66.
31.
RegnerTobias and BarriaJavier A. (2009), “Do Consumers Pay Voluntarily? The Case of Online Music,”Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 71 (2), 395–406.
32.
RienerGerhard and TraxlerChristian (2012), “Norms, Moods, and Free Lunch: Longitudinal Evidence on Payments from a Pay-What-You-Want Restaurant,”Journal of Socio-Economics, 41 (4), 476–83.
33.
ShangJen Yue and CrosonRachel (2009), “A Field Experiment in Charitable Contribution: The Impact of Social Information on the Voluntary Provision of Public Good,”Economic Journal, 119 (540), 1422–39.
34.
SimmonsJoseph P., LeBoeufRobyn A., and NelsonLeif D. (2010), “The Effect of Accuracy Motivation on Anchoring and Adjustment: Do People Adjust from Provided Anchors?”Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99 (6), 917–32.
35.
Simonsohn, Uri and Joseph P. Simmons and Leif D. Nelson (2014), “Anchoring Is Not a False-Positive: Maniadis, Tufano, and List's (2014) ‘Failure-to-Replicate’ Is Actually Entirely Consistent with the Original,” working paper, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
36.
SimonsonItamar and DroletAimee (2004), “Anchoring Effects on Consumers’ Willingness-to-Pay and Willingness-to-Accept,”Journal of Consumer Research, 31 (3), 681–90.
37.
SmallDeborah A. and LoewensteinGeorge (2003), “Helping a Victim or Helping the Victim: Altruism and Identifiability,”Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 26 (1), 5–16.
38.
SmithGerald E. and BergerPaul D. (1996), “The Impact of Direct Marketing Appeals on Charitable Marketing Effectiveness,”Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 24 (3), 219–31.
39.
SmithSarah, WindmeijerFrank, and WrightEdmund (2014), “Peer Effects in Charitable Giving: Evidence from the (Running) Field,”Economic Journal, 125 (585), 1053–71.
40.
SpannMartin, HäublGerald, SkieraBernd, and BernhardtMartin (2012), “Bid-Elicitation Interfaces and Bidding Behavior in Retail Interactive Pricing,”Journal of Retailing, 88 (1), 131–44.
41.
StewartNeil (2009), “The Cost of Anchoring on Credit-Card Minimum Repayments,”Psychological Science, 20 (1), 39–41.
42.
StrackFritz and MussweilerThomas (1997), “Explaining the Enigmatic Anchoring Effect: Mechanisms of Selective Accessibility,”Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73 (3), 437–46.
43.
TverskyAmos and KahnemanDaniel (1974), “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases,”Science, 185 (4157), 1124–31.
44.
WilsonTimothy D., HoustonChristopher E., EtlingKathryn M., and BrekkeNancy (1996), “A New Look at Anchoring Effects: Basic Anchoring and Its Antecedents,”Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 125 (4), 387–402.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
