The Endowment Effect

= 擁有偏誤

People tend to value items that they own more highly than they would if they did not own the same items

People often demand more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it.

This bias keeps us overcommitted to the status quo.


In 1990, behavioral economists Richard Thaler, Daniel Kahneman, and Jack Knetsch conducted an experiment using a simple coffee mug.

They split the participants into two groups:

Sellers: Given a coffee mug and told they owned it.

Buyers: Given nothing and told they could buy a mug if they wanted to.

Then, the researchers asked each participant a question:

Sellers: What is the minimum price you’d be willing to sell the mug for?

Buyers: What is the maximum price you’d be willing to pay for the mug?

The results were fascinating:

Sellers wanted 7onaveragetosellthemug,whileBuyerswereonlywillingtopay7 on average to sell the mug, while Buyers were only willing to pay 3 on average to buy a mug.

The mugs were all identical in every way, but the two groups placed very different value on the item.

This revealed a striking cognitive bias: The Endowment Effect.

The Endowment Effect describes our tendency to assign more value to things simply because we own them. Once people possess something, they value it more highly, purely because it’s theirs.

It provides the scientific basis for an irrational attachment to the things that are ours.

Thanks for reading! If you found this page useful, consider buying me a coffee.
© 2025 Hua-Ming Huang · licensed under CC BY 4.0