Pay What You Want for Theatre Tickets before and after watching it

1. ‟If I can set my own price for tonight’s
show I will pay more after watching it!” 
evidence from Pay What You Want
experiment.
Anna Kukla-Gryz and Katarzyna Zagórska

2. Research question
Does the experience character of the good significantly
affect the difference between the voluntary ex post
and ex ante payments?
2

3. Theatres
3
The Studio Theater: a city drama
theater with three stages: 300, 100
and 80 seats.
Price of a ticket varies from
8.35€ to 23.80€, with an occasional
promotion tickets for 4.75€.
The Ochoty Theater: is known for
educational projects and the support it
provides to young artists and playwrights.
Theater has two stages: with 50-70 and
40-50 unnumbered seats. The prices are
fixed at 7.15 € for regular and 4.75 € for
reduced ticket.

4. Recruitment
4
PWYW Participants:
20%-30% of the whole audience.

5. Recruitment
The recruitment process was conducted through a
short online survey distributed through the online
service specialized in selling a tickets for different
cultural events.
5
1225 invitations sent
239 attendace confirmations

6. Recruitment
1) P WYW ex ante performance :
“We give you the possibility to decide about the amount of
money you want to pay yourself. The price that you pay will be a
valuable clue for us about your expectations towards the
performance.”
2) PWYW ex post performance:
“We give you the possibility to decide about the amount of
money you want to pay yourself after the performance. The price
that you pay will be a valuable clue for us about whether the
performance met you expectations.”
6
PWYW Participants: 126

7. Differences in ex post and ex ante the show PWYW
payments (values in €)
7
VARIABLES PWYW ex ante PWYW ex post
Min 0.24 0.24
Max 7.14 11.90
Mean 4.10 5.01
Standard Dev. 1.61 2.30
Pr(T > t) (1) 0.0054
Observations 70 56
There is a significant difference between mean ex ante and ex post
payments with higher mean (slightly above the cheapest ticket price, 4.75 €)
in case of ex post payments.

8. PWYW ex post payments and the characteristics of
audience experience
8
The sentences below describe certain experiences associated with the performance you have just viewed
(For each pair of sentences please select an appropriate answer from the 1-5 scale.)
1 2 3 4 5
My concentration was wandering
    
I was completely absorbed by what
was happening
I do not feel as if I learned anything new     
My eyes were opened up to new
ideas.
The performance did not captivate me     
The performance captivated me with
its images and sounds
There was no sensible atmosphere within the
audience
    
I was moved by the emotion of the
audience
I didn’t feel much connection with the
characters/story
    
I felt I could really identify with the
characters/story
I did not have fun. I am not happy with how I
spend my time
     It was fun
Significant correlation with all characteristics

9. PWYW ex ante payments and expectations
9
What are your expectations for today’s performance? (please circle only one rating)
I’m sure I will not
like it
I will probably not
like it
I don’t know if I
will like it or not
I will probably enjoy it I’m sure I will like it
1 2 3 4 5
No correlation

10. 10
Ex post vs. ex ante voluntary payments
The difference between ex post and ex ante voluntary
payments could be even greater if consumers
considered filling the survey as a form of favor.
After watching the show PWYW ex ante ticket holders
were informed about the possibility to pay more for a
ticket and 11.4 percent of those participants took
advantage of this chance.

11. Regular ticket holders
If you can make an independent decision to pay
whatever price you deem appropriate for the ticket to
the performance, what do you think the average,
willing payment for the ticket would be?
Declared PWYW payments are almost twice higher
than real ex post voluntary payments (on average
9,5 € compared to 5 €).
11

12. Declared vs. real PWYW payments
1) Declared payments are usually overestimates of
real payments.
2) Declared payments were anchored with prices
already paid for the ticket (the correlation
between price paid and declared PWYW ex post
payments is positive and significant).
3) Experiment was attended mostly by people with
lower willingness to pay for the ticket.
12

13. Declared vs. real PWYW payments
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Perceived financial
situation: normal ticket
holders vs. PWYW ticket
holders, percent of
participants.
Theatre performances
attendances frequency in
the last 12 months: normal
ticket holders vs. PWYW
ticket holders, percent of
participants.

14. Conclusions
14
PWYW ex post payments were:
- significantly correlated with all of the aspects of audience
experience,
- significantly higher than payments made before seeing the
show,
- slightly above the cheapest ticket price.
PWYW ex ante payments were:
- independent of the expectations regarding the show, which
may suggest that additional advertising campaigns may have
no effect on voluntary ex ante performance payments.

15. Conclusions, cont.
15
If voluntary payments are considered by live
performance institutions as a short or a long term
alternative pricing method, we would suggest a
payments to be made after rather than before the
show.

16. Thank you for your attention!
More about our research on
http://grape.uw.edu.pl
This work was supported by the National Science Centre [UMO-
2014/14/E/HS4/00389]
Twitter: @GrapeUW