Experiments Testing the Effectiveness of Purposeful Anchoring on Reference Price in the Context of Public Leisure Services

Abstract

Many leisure managers are under political pressure to raise more revenues from fees without arousing protests from users. Purposeful anchoring is a potential strategy for accomplishing this goal. Three experiments using student subjects in a laboratory context were designed to investigate four research questions that explored the anchoring effect on price of decoys, contextual relevant numbers and noncontextual numbers, and the range of reference prices. Results were mixed. Some treatments in experiments 1 and 2 indicated a decoy and a contextual relevant numeric effect, while others did not. Results from experiment 3 were unequivocal in showing no anchoring effect when noncontextual numbers were used. Contrary to expectations, among subjects reporting different levels of participation, no consistent differences in responses to the treatment anchors emerged and, unexpectedly, variation in the range of reference prices tended to be greater among these reporting frequent, rather than infrequent, participation.