title: Pay What You Want! A Pilot Study on Neural Correlates of Voluntary Payments for Music.
abstract: Pay-what-you-want (PWYW) is an alternative pricing mechanism for consumer goods. It describes an exchange situation in which the price for a given good is not set by the seller but freely chosen by the buyer. In recent years, many enterprises have made use of PWYW auctions. The somewhat contra-intuitive success of PWYW has sparked a great deal of behavioral work on economical decision making in PWYW contexts in the past. Empirical studies on the neural basis of PWYW decisions, however, are scarce. In the present paper, we present an experimental protocol to study PWYW decision making while simultaneously acquiring functional magnetic resonance imaging data. Participants have the possibility to buy music either under a traditional "fixed-price" (FP) condition or in a condition that allows them to freely decide on the price. The behavioral data from our experiment replicate previous results on the general feasibility of the PWYW mechanism. On the neural level, we observe distinct differences between the two conditions: In the FP-condition, neural activity in frontal areas during decision-making correlates positively with the participants' willingness to pay. No such relationship was observed under PWYW conditions in any neural structure. Directly comparing neural activity during PWYW and the FP-condition we observed stronger activity of the lingual gyrus during PWYW decisions. Results demonstrate the usability of our experimental paradigm for future investigations into PWYW decision-making and provides first insights into neural mechanisms during self-determined pricing decisions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of BonnBonn, Germany; Department of Philosophy, University of BonnBonn, Germany.
authors.forename: Simon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Waskow
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of BonnBonn, Germany; Center for Economics and Neuroscience, University of BonnBonn, Germany.
authors.forename: Sebastian
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Markett
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychology and Education, Ulm UniversityUlm, Germany; Key Laboratory for NeuroInformation, Center for Information in Medicine, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of ChinaChengdu, China.
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Montag
authors.affiliation: Center for Economics and Neuroscience, University of BonnBonn, Germany; Department of Epileptology, University Hospital BonnBonn, Germany; Department of NeuroCognition, Life and Brain Center BonnBonn, Germany.
authors.forename: Bernd
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Weber
authors.affiliation: Center for Economics and Neuroscience, University of BonnBonn, Germany; Department of NeuroCognition, Life and Brain Center BonnBonn, Germany.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Trautner
authors.affiliation: Department of Sound Studies, University of Bonn Bonn, Germany.
authors.forename: Volkmar
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Kramarz
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of BonnBonn, Germany; Center for Economics and Neuroscience, University of BonnBonn, Germany.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Reuter
keywords: decision-making and neuroeconomics; emotional utility; music cognition; pay what you want; pricing mechanism