Waskow Simon, Markett Sebastian, Montag Christian, Weber Bernd, Trautner Peter, Kramarz Volkmar, Reuter Martin
Department of Psychology, University of BonnBonn, Germany; Department of Philosophy, University of BonnBonn, Germany.
Department of Psychology, University of BonnBonn, Germany; Center for Economics and Neuroscience, University of BonnBonn, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2016 Jul 6;7:1023. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01023. eCollection 2016.
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.
随你付（PWYW）是一种针对消费品的替代性定价机制。它描述了一种交易情形，即特定商品的价格不由卖家设定，而是由买家自由选择。近年来，许多企业采用了随你付拍卖方式。随你付这种有些违反直觉的成功在过去引发了大量关于随你付情境下经济决策的行为学研究。然而，关于随你付决策神经基础的实证研究却很匮乏。在本文中，我们提出了一个实验方案，用于研究随你付决策，同时获取功能磁共振成像数据。参与者有可能在传统的“固定价格”（FP）条件下购买音乐，或者在允许他们自由决定价格的条件下购买。我们实验的行为数据复制了先前关于随你付机制总体可行性的结果。在神经层面，我们观察到两种条件之间存在明显差异：在FP条件下，决策过程中额叶区域的神经活动与参与者的支付意愿呈正相关。在随你付条件下，在任何神经结构中都未观察到这种关系。直接比较随你付和FP条件下的神经活动，我们发现在随你付决策过程中舌回的活动更强。结果证明了我们的实验范式对于未来随你付决策研究的可用性，并为自主定价决策过程中的神经机制提供了初步见解。
