Have you ever cherished an object you put together with your own hands – no matter how simple it may be, or how clumsy the job you did?
A new working paper* indicates that people place a higher monetary value on objects they successfully assembled than they do on objects made by others. The basic premise is effectively empirical confirmation of common sense, but that is still perfectly valid – common sense, after all, is not necessarily correct. And the researchers’ findings weren’t limited to that. Here were some of the other highlights:
- Aesthetic appeal alone apparently does not explain the phenomenon: the researchers ran their experiments with objects that ranged from purely functional (IKEA boxes) to decorative (origami animals and Lego sets);
- The amount people were willing to pay for origami animals they’d made themselves was almost equal to the amount third parties would pay for origami made by experts;
- Success mattered. Participants who successfully assembled the product valued it significantly more highly than those who left the last steps undone, or those who had to take the object apart again;
- Even people who didn’t identify themselves as DIY-ers were willing to pay more for objects that they had completed themselves; and
- This phenomenon only applied once people had actually assembled something: respondents to a survey, who had not built anything yet, said they’d pay more for preassembled products than for those that required some assembly.
The researchers pose a number of follow-up questions; for example, would the same phenomenon apply to “big ticket†items as well? And they muse as to whether it could explain the sunk-cost effect (willingness to throw good money after bad) and “not invented here†syndrome.
All in all, an interesting piece of reading – and it made me reflect on my own time with Lego, miniatures kits, and (sadly unaesthetic) high school crafts projects…
* “The ‘IKEA Effect’: When Labour Leads to Loveâ€, by Michael I Norton (Harvard Business School), Daniel Mochon (University of California, San Diego) and Dan Ariely (Duke University).