Not all anchors are created equal
Sugden, Zheng and Zizzo ran the experiment that establishes when an anchor actually moves money. Rather than asking people to estimate an unknown quantity, they used real buying and selling decisions on familiar consumer products, where participants bought or sold at given prices, and they varied the kind of number met first. Anchoring appeared only where the anchor was framed as a plausible price for the good being valued. Numbers that were simply present did nothing. Effects were also stronger for willingness to accept, when people were selling, than for willingness to pay. The conclusion the authors draw is deliberately narrow: anchoring can affect market behaviour, and not all anchors are effective. That condition is the reason this publication separates the estimating case, where a number generated by a rigged wheel still works, from the paying case, where the number has to be admissible as a price.
Sugden, Zheng and Zizzo ran the experiment that establishes when an anchor actually moves money. Rather than asking people to estimate an unknown quantity, they used real buying and selling decisions on familiar consumer products, where participants bought or sold at given prices, and they varied the kind of number met first. Anchoring appeared only where the anchor was framed as a plausible price for the good being valued. Numbers that were simply present did nothing. Effects were also stronger for willingness to accept, when people were selling, than for willingness to pay. The conclusion the authors draw is deliberately narrow: anchoring can affect market behaviour, and not all anchors are effective. That condition is the reason this publication separates the estimating case, where a number generated by a rigged wheel still works, from the paying case, where the number has to be admissible as a price.
Written from the abstract, OpenAlex.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
39, 21-31. Anchoring effects appeared only where the anchor was framed as a plausible price for the good, and were stronger for willingness to accept than willingness to pay. doi:10.1016/j.joep.2013.06.008
Where we use it
- Why the First Price You See Decides What You Pay, Why We Act
Reliability of this reference
The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2013.06.008
DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2013.06.008