3 ms·

your reasoning is a little lacking, but you make an important point to consider: we often expect price to signal value. when making pricing decisions, "free" c

your reasoning is a little lacking, but you make an important point to consider: we often expect price to signal value. when making pricing decisions, "free" can be an important and effective marketing tool, but used indiscriminately, can just lead to market distortions and other unintended consequences (not sure vandalism is easily correlated in your example based on the evidence you present).

kpil 8y ago
I made a few generalisations based on observing the world for a while, as an attempt to understand why kids destroy things for no apparent reason other than passing time - it's not exactly a scientific study. But ok: My hypothesis is that in many cases it's simply that they do not value the things they destroy in relation to the cost, because the costs are hidden to them. As a counter example, very few kids will cut up the seats of the sofa in their living room although it's most likely as entertaining as cutting up a seat in a bus. As it's as inconvenient to sit on a cut-up bus seat as a cut-up sofa, there must be something that differs in their valuation. I guess there are many factors in play - it's a higher risk of getting caught cutting up your parents sofa; There is a disconnect between them and the community owned bus company so the sense of ownership is limited; There are many more bus seats than sitting furniture in their living room so bus seats seems abundant in relation, and finally; They probably realise that they paid a significant amount of money for the sofa while the visible cost of using the bus seat is very small - so my hypothesis is that it reduces the perceived value. The other factors are a bit hard to change, so my bet is that if the actual costs were more visible, you'd get less vandalism. I suppose you could also try to work out a way to increase the sense of ownership, but I think it's harder than playing with visible costs. (Donating thousands of canapés to schoolkids to level things out can probably be ruled out as a solution to the problem.) It would be interesting to create an experiment where school kids would get access to free bus rides . Certain cities could be handing out free bus passes, others could instead hand out money for buying a bus pass, and the effects could be evaluated. (This assumes that they have acquired a sense for the value that money represents.)

kpil 8y ago

I made a few generalisations based on observing the world for a while, as an attempt to understand why kids destroy things for no apparent reason other than passing time - it's not exactly a scientific study. But ok: My hypothesis is that in many cases it's simply that they do not value the things they destroy in relation to the cost, because the costs are hidden to them. As a counter example, very few kids will cut up the seats of the sofa in their living room although it's most likely as entertaining as cutting up a seat in a bus. As it's as inconvenient to sit on a cut-up bus seat as a cut-up sofa, there must be something that differs in their valuation. I guess there are many factors in play - it's a higher risk of getting caught cutting up your parents sofa; There is a disconnect between them and the community owned bus company so the sense of ownership is limited; There are many more bus seats than sitting furniture in their living room so bus seats seems abundant in relation, and finally; They probably realise that they paid a significant amount of money for the sofa while the visible cost of using the bus seat is very small - so my hypothesis is that it reduces the perceived value. The other factors are a bit hard to change, so my bet is that if the actual costs were more visible, you'd get less vandalism. I suppose you could also try to work out a way to increase the sense of ownership, but I think it's harder than playing with visible costs. (Donating thousands of canapés to schoolkids to level things out can probably be ruled out as a solution to the problem.) It would be interesting to create an experiment where school kids would get access to free bus rides . Certain cities could be handing out free bus passes, others could instead hand out money for buying a bus pass, and the effects could be evaluated. (This assumes that they have acquired a sense for the value that money represents.)