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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Behav. Econ.
Sec. Culture and Ethics
Volume 4 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frbhe.2025.1536983
This article is part of the Research TopicImage Concerns in Economic BehaviorView all articles
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This study explores the interplay between two key drivers of prosocial behavior: social image concerns and interpersonal closeness. By disentangling their independent and combined effects in a Pay-What-You-Want setting, we provide new insights into their roles in shaping prosocial behavior.Methods: Using a 4 x 2 between-subjects design, we disentangled the effect of interpersonal closeness between the buyers on four levels (closeness effect) and the effect of social image concerns on two levels of payment observability (audience effect). We conducted two large-scale online experiments involving voluntary payments for a hypothetical purchase of an entrance ticket to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Study 1 included 1034 participants, and Study 2 (a replication study) included 995 participants.We found that both channels, interpersonal closeness and social image concerns, independently increase voluntary payments significantly. Hence, their effects on prosocial behavior are additive.Discussion: Our findings validate prior research through high external validity, the use of innovative methodological approaches, and large non-student samples. The findings offer practical insights for structuring payment environments when implementing Pay-What-You-Want pricing strategies in market-based settings. Specifically, Pay-What-You-Want settings can be designed either to enable the observability of payments or to allow buyers to consume alongside interpersonally close others. Both approaches could independently enhance revenue.
Keywords: Pay-what-you-want, Prosocial Behavior, Interpersonal closeness, social image concerns, payment observability, experiment
Received: 29 Nov 2024; Accepted: 15 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Hofmann. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Elisa Hofmann, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
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