Alignment of Affective and Economic Valuations for Positive and Negative Experiences
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Mentor Information
Dr. Sandra Schneider-Wright
Description
This exploratory study examined how closely participants’ monetary and emotional valuations align for both positive and negative experiences of varying types and intensity. Participants were randomly assigned to a positive or negative condition in an online experiment involving eight scenarios of lower- and higher-intensity outcomes. Participants reported their willingness to pay to engage in or avoid each experience, as well as their affect rating of how much they would enjoy or be upset by the experience. They also provided affective ratings for a set of monetary outcomes of roughly the same economic value as the experiences. As expected, we found that economic value increases as affective value increases. However, when the economic value was held constant, experience outcomes were valued higher in affect than monetary outcomes. This difference was especially large for lower economic values, wherein affective ratings were much higher for experiences than equivalent monetary outcomes. The higher affect ratings for experience outcomes may be due to their qualitative nature and the fact that willingness to pay is an unbounded measure. These findings highlight concerns regarding the practice of using willingness to pay and affect ratings interchangeably without addressing potential discrepancies in valuation methods.
Alignment of Affective and Economic Valuations for Positive and Negative Experiences
This exploratory study examined how closely participants’ monetary and emotional valuations align for both positive and negative experiences of varying types and intensity. Participants were randomly assigned to a positive or negative condition in an online experiment involving eight scenarios of lower- and higher-intensity outcomes. Participants reported their willingness to pay to engage in or avoid each experience, as well as their affect rating of how much they would enjoy or be upset by the experience. They also provided affective ratings for a set of monetary outcomes of roughly the same economic value as the experiences. As expected, we found that economic value increases as affective value increases. However, when the economic value was held constant, experience outcomes were valued higher in affect than monetary outcomes. This difference was especially large for lower economic values, wherein affective ratings were much higher for experiences than equivalent monetary outcomes. The higher affect ratings for experience outcomes may be due to their qualitative nature and the fact that willingness to pay is an unbounded measure. These findings highlight concerns regarding the practice of using willingness to pay and affect ratings interchangeably without addressing potential discrepancies in valuation methods.
