Understanding the Willingness-to-pay — Willingness-to-accept gap: Materialism as a moderator of the endowment effect

A discrepancy exists between people’s willingness to pay and willingness to accept. This paper proposes materialism as a moderating factor of this endowment effect. In two experiments evidence is found for a differential influence of chronic materialistic values on buying and selling prices. Materialistic sellers demand higher prices for endowments than less materialistic sellers. Materialistic values, however, do not predict buying prices. In addition, evidence is found that materialistic advertisements may increase the WTP-WTA gap over and above chronically accessible materialistic values.