Time is an amazingly variable amount of money: Endowment and ownership effects in the subjective value of working time

Abstract

The endowment effect in the evaluation of time was examined in a series of five studies. Subjects indicated that they should get a higher wage for doing household and academic chores for others than the wage they considered fair to pay to the same others for doing identical chores. In studies disentangling the target and transaction dimensions that are usually intertwined in demonstrations of the endowment effect, it was found that subjects indicated both higher fair wages for oneself than for another person (target effect) and higher fair wages for selling time than for buying time (transaction effect). It is concluded that the endowment effect in the evaluation of time is based on the joint action of mere ownership (causing the target person effect) and loss aversion (causing the transaction effect). PsycINFO classification: 3020