Abstract
In everyday life, free products have a strong appeal to us, even if we do not need them. Behavioral studies demonstrated that people have a tendency to switch their preference from preferred more expensive products to less preferable, cheaper alternatives, when the cheaper option becomes free. However, the neural representation of this behavioral anomaly called “Zero price” is still unclear. Using fMRI, we studied subjects while they performed binary preference choice task for items with different prices. We found that zero-related change of preference was associated with activation of the choice network, which includes inferior parietal lobule (IPL), posterior cingulate cortex and medial prefrontal cortex. Moreover, the amount of activation in medial prefrontal cortex was positively correlated with the subjective happiness score of getting free products. Our findings suggest that the Zero-price effect is driven by affective evaluations during decision-making.
Highlights
IntroductionThe waiter appears with a large plate full of desserts and says, ‘‘Today is a special day
Suppose you finish an excellent dinner at a nice restaurant
Price Conditions vs. Control Condition Brain activations associated with price evaluation tasks compared to the visual-motor control task were characterized by a similar pattern across all four conditions, with peak activity observed in the anterior insula, supplementary motor area (SMA) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC, Brodmann Area 46)
Summary
The waiter appears with a large plate full of desserts and says, ‘‘Today is a special day. To get something for free has a very special effect on us, human beings. In accordance with these everyday experiences, recent studies consistently demonstrated that people respond to free products far more enthusiastically and tend to change their preference from preferred more expensive products to less preferable, cheaper alternatives, when the cheaper option becomes free (Shampanier et al, 2007; Nicolau and Sellers, 2012; Nicolau, 2012). Results from behavioral studies demonstrated that the zero-price effect is unique, it is currently unknown which neural mechanisms underlie such switches of preferences driven by the zero-price effect
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