The Role of Materialism in the Endowment Effect

Past research documents an asymmetry between consumers’ willingness to pay for an object and their willingness to accept to give up this object. The current paper presents three studies which demonstrate that materialism moderates this “endowment effect”. Although materialism is not related to willingness-to-pay, materialism is positively related to minimum selling prices for endowed objects. Increasing the attachment to material values with a mortality salience procedure augments the endowment effect even more, particularly for materialists. Our findings validate minimum selling prices for endowed objects as an indirect measure of materialism and qualify the prevalence of the endowment effect.