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The Role of Heritage Connection
in Consumer Valuation
Katherine L. Christensen and Suzanne B. Shu
Abstract
Owners value heritage goods, items that connect them to a shared past, whether through their alma mater or their family history.
This research considers the impact of heritage on owners who wish to sell such goods. In five studies, the authors demonstrate
that sellers have a lower willingness to accept when selling heritage goods to buyers with a shared heritage connection relative to
buyers without this connection (i.e., a heritage discount). This heritage discount cannot be explained by ingroup favoritism, sen-
timental value, or appropriateness of buyer usage and persists even when sellers perceive that the buyer has a higher willingness
to pay. The authors provide process evidence that the effect of the buyer’s identity on the seller’s willingness to accept is driven
by concerns about heritage loss. The findings contribute to literatures on sharing, sentimental goods, psychological ownership,
and the endowment effect and have marketing implications for consumer goods (e.g., collectibles) that derive product value by
connecting consumers to meaningful history and traditions.
Keywords
time, sentimental goods, identity, sharing, psychological ownership, history
Online supplement: https://doi.org/10.1177/00222437231182434
Heritage—a connection to a shared past—can strengthen iden-
tity, provide stability, create meaning across time, and increase
positive affect (Baumeister 1991; Baumeister et al. 2013;
Friedman 1992; Wildschut et al. 2006). Analysis of world her-
itage sites shows that a heritage designation increases invest-
ment at local and national levels, builds civic pride, increases
social capital, develops sustainable tourism, provides promo-
tional advantage (PwC 2007), generates substantial economic
benefits (Kayahan and Vanblarcom 2012), and is a valuable
marketing tool (Caust and Vecco 2017). Airbnb has launched
heritage travel, an opportunity for hosts to share their homes
with travelers seeking their genetic roots. In an 8,000-person
survey, 57% of Americans said they would give up alcohol
for a year to enjoy one heritage trip (Killiam 2019). Closer to
home, the heritage goods consumers own and access—objects
that connect their owners to history and traditions—offer
clear well-being benefits (Fujiwara, Kudrna, and Dolan 2014;
Sarial-Abi et al. 2017).
This project examines the impact of heritage, and especially
a shared past, on how consumers value the goods they own
when thinking about selling them to others. We offer two
main sets of findings. First, our work demonstrates that there
is value in goods that connect us to the shared or archetypal
past. We find that a good’s connection to that past can increase
sellers’valuation of a good in the present. Crucially, while sen-
timental goods connect a seller to a personal memory
(Sedikides et al. 2008; Yang and Galak 2015), heritage con-
nects the owner to a shared history and to the people who
came before. This leads to a critical distinction. Heritage con-
nection can be shared between buyers and sellers, and this
shared heritage connection can exist with or without the
benefit of personal memory.
Second, our work contributes to the literature on endowment
and psychological ownership, which states that consumers
place a higher value on the goods they own than on the
goods they do not own (Thaler 1980). We find that while a
good gains value through association with an individual
owner, it also gains value through its connection to a collective
past. But, surprisingly, sellers’high personal valuations of her-
itage goods do not always result in a higher willingness to
accept (WTA); we show that a seller’s WTA for buyers who
connect to a good’s heritage is lower than the WTA for
Katherine L. Christensen is Assistant Professor of Marketing, Kelley School of
Business, Indiana University, USA (email: kachris@iu.edu). Suzanne B. Shu is John
S. Dyson Professor of Marketing, Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics
and Management, SC Johnson College of Business, and College of Agriculture and
Life Sciences, Cornell University, USA (email: suzanne.shu@cornell.edu).
Article
Journal of Marketing Research
1-16
© American Marketing Association 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00222437231182434
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nonconnected control buyers, even when sellers perceive that
connected heritage buyers have higher valuations and a
higher willingness to pay (WTP).
In the next section, we start by defining heritage connection,
and then relate how the current work on heritage connection
builds on previous findings in the literature on psychological
ownership, the literature on sharing, and the literature on senti-
mental goods. We then report results from an experiment that
examines how shared heritage connection between buyers and
sellers drives product value in market transactions. We
provide process evidence in three additional studies and vali-
date our results in a final study on Facebook Marketplace.
This research, to the best of our knowledge, is the first to quan-
tify the value of measuring connection to the shared past as a
source of product value in market transactions between
buyers and sellers.
Defining Heritage Connection and Heritage
Loss
To begin to understand the role of heritage goods in consumers’
lives, we simply asked them. To do this, we conducted a pilot
study with CloudResearch-approved participants (N =235) on
Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and told them: “We
would like to know how you think about heritage goods.
Think of a heritage good that you own, and then describe the
good you’re thinking about.”A common theme across
responses was a connection to the past, to history, and to the
people who came before (“music equipment linked to the
history of my community”;“a ticket from the opening of
Dodger Stadium”;“my great grandfather’s watch that he
bought when he worked in the PA coal mines”;“a handmade
chair carved and assembled by a workman in the 1930s”).
Although many participants had inherited their goods
(66.4%), some had received them as gifts (20.7%), and others
had purchased goods (12.8%) to connect them to a valued past.
We consider a heritage good to be a good that is connected,
whether symbolically, historically, or otherwise, to the shared
past of a meaningful group identity for the buyer or seller.
Heritage goods provide value for consumers by connecting
them to the past and to people who lived long ago in a “suppres-
sion of time”(Baudrillard 1968). This symbolic link to a collec-
tive past generates a good’s heritage connection for buyers and
sellers. Specifically, we define heritage connection as a good’s
capacity to bridge the gap between a seller or buyer and the
people they care about by helping them remember where they
come from, associating them with family or community tradi-
tions that matter, giving them a sense of history, and connecting
them with the people who came before them. Our research sug-
gests that a good gains value not simply through its connection
to an individual owner but also through its symbolic connection
to a larger, shared history.
One implication of this shared history is that when a seller
who has a high heritage connection trades with a buyer who
has a high heritage connection to the same shared past, the
seller perceives less of a loss in connection to the good’s
shared heritage than when trading with a less connected
buyer. To account for this, we define and calculate the heritage
loss due to trade as the seller’s heritage connection minus the
seller’s perception of the buyer’s heritage connection. We inter-
pret this heritage loss as a transaction disutility that a seller may
incur in the sale of a heritage good.
Having introduced the concepts of heritage connection and
heritage loss, we proceed with our theoretical development.
Overall, the present research extends previous research by
hypothesizing and providing empirical support for a theory of
heritage connection and heritage loss that predicts how products
hold or lose value through their association with the shared past.
Theoretical Development
In what follows, we develop our theory by describing our
hypotheses for the main effect of the buyer’s connection to
the past on the seller’s WTA, moderation of WTA by the size
of the seller’s heritage connection, and mediation by heritage
loss (from sale to a buyer disconnected from the good’s heri-
tage). A premise of this research is that heritage—a connection
to a shared past and traditions that matter—is a source of
product value for owners. Heritage adds value to a good by
serving as a conduit that connects the seller to a shared past
and traditions. However, the effects of heritage on a seller’s
WTA can operate in a way that is inconsistent with strategic
pricing and standard economic theory. Specifically, we
predict that a seller with high heritage connection to a good
will demand less from a buyer who also shares the seller’s
high heritage connection (and thus the seller’s higher utility
and valuation for the item) than from a buyer without such con-
nection. This is surprising since it is often assumed in market
transactions that a buyer’s higher utility for a good should
increase the seller’s WTA.
Imagine, for example, an individual who owns a teacup from
a small town that connects to their family’s history many gen-
erations ago. To the owner, the teacup holds high value, and the
owner would require a high reimbursement to give it up. When
approached by a stranger to sell the item, the owner’s WTA will
be quite high. If that stranger is also a collector of old teacups,
for whom the utility of this teacup is high as a potential part of a
larger collection, then a rational seller may decide to raise the
WTA even further. However, if the stranger is connected to
the same small town and wants a good that maintains that con-
nection to those who came before, the owner may paradoxically
offer a lower WTA even though this buyer’s WTP might be
quite high. In other words, we suggest that—contrary to what
economists might expect—when sellers value a heritage good
more, they set lower prices for heritage buyers. Thus, we for-
mally predict:
H
1
:Sellers have a lower WTA for heritage goods when
selling to buyers who share a heritage connection relative
to buyers who do not share this heritage connection (i.e.,
the heritage discount).
2Journal of Marketing Research 0(0)
Why do we predict that a seller will reduce their WTA when
selling to a buyer with a shared heritage connection despite
this buyer’s perceived high valuation and utility for the heritage
good? First, while previous research finds that sellers of emo-
tionally laden items have high valuations for their goods
(Yang and Galak 2015), these high valuations do not always
result in higher selling prices. Sellers of emotionally laden
items have a lower WTA for buyers whose future usage of a
good they deem appropriate (Brough and Isaac 2012). This
stream of research suggests that heritage buyers might, by dem-
onstrating their acceptable usage plans, benefit from a reduced
price for heritage goods. However, we note that this prior work
assumes knowledge about the buyer’s usage. While differences
in usage can affect WTA, we argue that shared connection to a
collective past—with or without differences in appropriateness
of usage—is sufficient to generate a discount in market transac-
tions between buyers and sellers. Thus, we expect that H
1
will
hold even after controlling for the buyer’s intended usage.
Second, the literature on psychological ownership has found
that extending ownership beyond simple legal ownership of the
object onto a memento or reminder of the object (e.g., by taking
a photo of the good) may increase the seller’s willingness to
dispose of goods they care about (Chu 2018; Chu and Shu
2022; Kellett and Holden 2014; Winterich, Reczek, and Irwin
2017). Since heritage goods connect individuals to a shared
past, their psychological ownership is, at least in part, collective
(Belk 2010, 2017; Curasi, Price, and Arnould 2004; Epp and
Price 2008; Lastovicka and Fernandez 2005; McCracken
1986). Due to the collective nature of this shared past, when
heritage goods pass from one member of this group to
another, the former owner will no longer call the heritage
good “mine,”but they might still call the good “ours”
(Lastovicka and Fernandez 2005). Collective psychological
ownership can thus extend past the point of the seller’s legal
ownership of the object, reducing feelings of loss when the
good is physically surrendered.
As a result of these two forces, we expect a collective
endowment for heritage goods that results in lower pricing for
buyers who share a heritage connection and higher pricing for
buyers with no such connection (H
1
). We test this hypothesis
by explicitly measuring sellers’WTA for heritage goods for
both heritage and control buyers and measuring sellers’percep-
tions of the heritage connection (the strength of the link to a col-
lective past through a material good). Crucially, we expect H
1
to
hold after controlling for the buyers’intended usage of the
good.
In addition to predicting moderation by a seller’s heritage
connection, we also hypothesize a mechanism driving the
reduction in sellers’WTA for buyers who share a connection
to the past: concern with heritage loss. Heritage loss is
defined as the heritage connection of the seller minus the
seller’s perception of the heritage connection of the buyer.
Similar to the effect of loss aversion on the sale of individually
owned goods (Kahneman, Knetsch, and Thaler 1991; Knetsch
and Sinden 1984; Thaler 1980), we hypothesize that larger feel-
ings of heritage loss will reduce the value of the trade for the
seller and thus increase the seller’s WTA. In other words, we
theorize that heritage loss is a transaction disutility that
increases the seller’s WTA for a good that connect to a
shared past. Formally, we predict:
H
2
:The seller’s concern with heritage loss (i.e., the dif-
ference between a seller’s heritage connection and a
buyer’s perceived heritage connection) mediates H
1
.
H
3
:Further, the effect of heritage loss is moderated by the
seller’s heritage connection to the good (H
2
), which may
represent the seller’s feeling of collective endowment.
An implication of these findings is that, by explicitly connecting
to the seller’s shared past, a prospective buyer can move from
facing a heritage premium to a receiving a heritage discount.
Crucially, this heritage discount stems from a connection to a
collective past and not simply from a personal relationship
between buyers and sellers. In the studies that follow, we empir-
ically demonstrate that a seller’s WTA depends on concerns
about heritage loss when a good changes hands.
Taken together, these hypotheses generate our model of the
value of heritage goods (see Figure 1). To produce our model of
the value of heritage goods, we first measure the seller’s heri-
tage connection to a good. Second, we manipulate the buyer’s
perceived heritage connection to the same good by highlighting
the buyer’s ties to the good’s shared past. We then measure the
effect of these manipulations on the seller’s perception of
the buyer’s heritage connection to the good, and we calculate
the implied heritage loss when the heritage good transfers from
seller to buyer. Finally, we measure the price the seller sets:
the seller’sWTA.
Overview of Experiments
In five main experiments that span laboratory and field contexts,
plus several follow-up studies included in the Web Appendix,
we provide research that explores how heritage connection
drives consumer valuations. Throughout, we hypothesize that
psychological connection to the past—to heritage—has value
Figure 1. The Value of Heritage Goods for Sellers.
Notes: An increase in seller’s heritage connection increases the potential for
heritage loss in trade, whereas an increase in the buyer’s heritage connection
decreases the seller’s heritage loss. The buyer’s heritage connection is the
connection perceived by the seller.
Christensen and Shu 3
to consumers and that sellers of heritage goods will give a dis-
count to buyers who will maintain this connection to the people
who came before.
First, we tested our theory that increasing the buyer’sper-
ceived heritage connection to a good reduced the seller’s
asking price (H
1
) in an online marketplace scenario, while also
testing for ingroup favoritism and sentimental value (Study 1).
The effect of heritage held after controlling for psychological
ownership, market value, and demographic variables. Next, in
a study that controls for social proximity of buyer and seller,
we replicated our main effect and began to examine the underly-
ing process. We found a WTA–WTP asymmetry such that
although sellers’perceived that heritage buyers had a high
WTP for their good, they were willing to accept a lower price
(Study 2). Then, in Study 3, we provided further process evi-
dence that the effect of the buyer’s identity on the seller’s
WTA is driven by heritage loss (H
2
). To test this further, we
ran an incentive-compatible study at a large northeastern U.S.
university, in which we found evidence of the heritage discount
using a real heritage good that participants chose to sell or keep, a
discount that did not hold for a control good without a heritage
connection (Study 4, replicated in three follow-up studies). We
found that for heritage goods, sellers higher in heritage connec-
tion gave heritage buyers a discount, whereas sellers lower in
heritage connection did not give heritage buyers a discount, pro-
viding evidence of moderation by the seller’s heritage connection
(H
3
). Finally, we tested the strength of our effect on Facebook
Marketplace, where we made offers to sellers and found real-
world support for the heritage discount (Study 5).
Overall, we provide strong evidence that heritage loss predicts
the seller’s WTA for goods that transmit meaning across time.
These studies collectively contribute to a better understanding of
how a shared past can affect market transactions in the present.
Across all studies, predictions and sample size were preregistered
on AsPredicted in advance of the experiments. For all studies, we
report all preregistered measures, conditions, and data exclusions.
Participant instructions, stimuli, ancillary analyses, all measures,
and figures are included in the Web Appendix. Sample sizes and
exclusions were preregistered in advance of data collection. For
data and further study materials, please see https://osf.io/w7hz8/.
Study 1: Selling a Heritage Good
Our primary goal in Study 1 was to examine whether sellers of a
hypothetical heritage good had a higher discount on WTA when
selling to a heritage buyer than when selling to a control buyer,
and whether this discount was also higher than the discount
given to ingroup buyers and buyers with high sentimental
attachment. We also tested to see if heritage loss predicted
the difference in discount between heritage, ingroup, sentimen-
tal value, and control conditions.
Method
In Study 1, 501 CloudResearch-approved participants
(M
age
=40.8 years; 52.9% male, 46.9% female, .2% nonbinary)
completed a study on MTurk in exchange for payment. As pre-
registered, we did not include participants with inconsistent
preferences (e.g., participants who would sell at a low price,
but would not sell at a higher price). Our final sample was
475 participants, and buyer identity was manipulated between
conditions (heritage, sentimental, ingroup, control).
Scenario. Since many families must dispose of estate items, we
asked participants to imagine an estate sale scenario. We chose
this scenario because it is relevant to consumers’lives and
because estate sales are a growing market. The value of items
sold at estate sales each month has been estimated at $100
million, and there are more than seven times as many estate
sale companies today as there were 16 years ago (National
Estate Sales Association 2022). Specifically, we asked partici-
pants to imagine that they have been cleaning and repairing a
vintage car that was driven by grandparents who have since
passed away, with the goal of selling it. Although they had
chosen to save other possessions, they planned to sell the
vintage car because they could not keep it in their driveway.
Participants were told that repairing and cleaning the car had
helped them feel closer to their grandparents and the life they
led, providing them with a connection to the people who
came before them and life back then. We showed them a
photo of the vintage Lincoln Continental they planned to sell.
We told participants that in preparing to sell the car, they had
looked up the Kelley Blue Book value for their car. We then
showed them an image of the actual value of a 1992 Lincoln
Continental as shown on Kelley Blue Book at the time of the
study (please see Web Appendix A for study materials) and
told them that they had decided to list their car in an online
market.
Next, we elicited participants’WTA for their car by asking
them: “How much do you want to ask for this vintage car
when selling it?”We first captured their WTA in dollars for
their car in the online marketplace before learning of the
buyer’s identity (a one-way analysis of variance revealed no
difference between conditions in WTA; p=.271). We then
told participants that a buyer wanted to make an offer on their
car. In the control condition this buyer was a stranger. In the
sentimental value condition, the buyer sent a note that the car
has high sentimental value for them since their family owned
a car very similar to this one. In the heritage and ingroup con-
ditions, the buyer was the seller’s relative. In the heritage con-
dition, the seller was a relative who is related to the
grandparents who drove the car, whereas in the ingroup condi-
tion, the buyer was related to the seller but not related to the
grandparents who drove the car. We then asked participants if
they would accept a lower offer than their listing price from
the buyer.
Measures. We presented these discounted offers to sellers using
a Becker–DeGroot–Marschak task, a well-validated process
designed to collect participants’WTA in trading environments
(Becker, DeGroot, and Marschak 1964; Bohm, Lindén, and
Sonnegård 1997; O’Donnell and Evers 2019), in which
4Journal of Marketing Research 0(0)
sellers could choose to accept or reject an offer at each price. To
do this, we calculated a range of lower offers based on the
seller’s own WTA and displayed these discounted prices as a
share of that price (0, .1 WTA, .2 WTA, .3 WTA, .4 WTA,
.5 WTA, .6 WTA, .7 WTA, .8 WTA, .9 WTA, WTA, 1.1
WTA). Sellers who would not sell at any of the offered prices
were assigned 1.2 WTA. There were only two sellers who
would not sell at any price (one in the heritage condition and
one in the control condition). Eight sellers were willing to
give away the car for free (these sellers were in the heritage con-
dition). Results are robust when these participants are excluded
from the sample. After measuring the seller’s initial WTA and
the seller’s discounted WTA, we measured several constructs
on a seven-point Likert scale. These measures included a single-
item sentimental value measure (“This vintage car has senti-
mental value to the buyer”;1=“Not at all,”and 7 =“Very
much), two items for ingroup identity (“I feel like [the buyer]
is a part of my family”;“In general, being associated with
family is an important part of my self-image”;1=“Strongly
disagree,”and 7 =“Strongly agree), and a measure of heritage
loss (“Compared to me as the seller, the [buyer] will feel
less connected to the car and my grandparents who drove it”;
1=“Strongly disagree,”and 7 =“Strongly agree; see https://
aspredicted.org/3j36y.pdf).
Results
WTA and heritage discount. Since discounts are usually
expressed as a percentage off the original sales price, and the
absolute size of a discount often depends on the original offer
price, we calculated the discount as a percentage off the partic-
ipant’s original sales price rather than its dollar value. For trans-
parency, we provide results with all sellers included, but these
results hold after excluding both the sellers who would not
accept any offer and the sellers who were willing to give the
car away (N
Heritage
=9, N
Control
=1; results are provided in
Web Appendix A). We found that sellers in the heritage condi-
tion gave a greater discount to the buyer (M =30.87%,
SD =27.36) than sellers in the ingroup condition (19.58% dis-
count, SD =18.89; p< .001), the sentimental value condition
(13.76% discount, SD =14.84; p< .001), and the control condi-
tion (12.44% discount, SD =13.20; p< .001) with a heritage
effect size of η
2
=.12, providing support for H
1
(please see
Figure 2). These results also held using a nonparametric
Wilcoxon rank-sum test (W =28,292; p< .001). The heritage
discount was robust to exclusion of the ten participants who
did not accept an offer or who gave the car away (η
2
=.09),
and these results were robust to a nonparametric test (W =
25,306, p< .001).
In addition to measuring the heritage discount, we collected
a single-item, mean-centered measure of heritage loss
(“Compared to me as the seller, the [buyer] will feel less con-
nected to the contents of the car and my grandparents who
drove it”;1=“Strongly disagree,”and 7 =“Strongly agree).
We find that heritage loss differs by condition, with the smallest
heritage loss in the heritage condition (M
Heritage
=3.55, SD
Heritage
=1.70; M
Ingroup
=5.27, SD
Ingroup
=1.55; M
Sentimental
=4.82,
SD
Heritage
=1.51; M
Control
=5.93, SD
Control
=1.31; F(3, 471) =
51.5, all ps<.001, η
2
=.25). After adding heritage loss (B=
−.03, p<.001, η
2
=.05) to a model including condition, the
implied size of the discount that heritage buyers (vs. control
buyers) received was reduced (B =.12 vs. B =.18; ps < .001),
the discount that heritage buyers (vs. sentimental buyers)
received was reduced (B =.13 vs. B =.17; ps<.001),andthedif-
ference in prices between heritage buyers and ingroup buyers
was reduced (B =.06 vs. B =.11; p=.017, p<.001). In a
model including condition, heritage loss predicted the size of
the discount the buyer received (F(1, 470) =25.92, p<.001),
with lower heritage loss leading to a higher discount, and a medi-
ation model revealed that the discount to heritage buyers (the dif-
ference in WTA between heritage condition and nonheritage
conditions) was mediated by this single-item measure of heritage
loss (5.11%; 95% CI =[2.98%, 7.55%]; Hayes 2018). This medi-
ation holds in a model that includes only heritage and ingroup
conditions (7.13%; 95% CI =[3.84%, 11.02%]).
Additional tests. To check for multicollinearity in our data set,
we tested for Pearson’s correlation between heritage loss and
related constructs and found that all correlations (i.e., psycho-
logical ownership, r(475) =.16; ingroup, r(475) =−.29; senti-
mental value, r(475) =−.27; all ps < .001) were less than
r=.7. We also added psychological ownership to a model
that included buyer type and heritage loss and found that own-
ership did not improve the model (p=.516). As a further
robustness check, we added ingroup and sentimental value to
a full model that included buyer type and heritage loss. We
found that ingroup increased the seller’s discount (B =.02, p
=.007, η
2
=.02), sentimental value decreased the discount (B
=−.01, p=.005, η
2
=.02), and the effect of heritage loss was
robust to inclusion of both variables (B =−.03, p< .001, η
2
=
.06). As a further robustness test, we reran this model after
excluding ten sellers who opted out of the market by giving
their car away or by refusing to sell at the highest available
price and found a marginal effect of ingroup (B =.01, p=
.054, η
2
=.01), an effect of sentimental value (B =−.01, p=
Figure 2. Sellers Give a Heritage Discount.
Notes: Error bars represent ±1 SE.
Christensen and Shu 5
.016, η
2
=.01), and an effect of heritage loss (B =−.02, p<
.001, η
2
=.04).
Discussion
The results of Study 1 provide initial evidence that a heritage
connection impacts market transactions for goods that
connect consumers to a shared past and differentiates heritage
connection from related constructs of ingroup bias, sentimental
value, and psychological ownership. When sellers indicated
their WTA for a vintage car in an online marketplace for a
buyer less connected to the heritage of the good, sellers
charged more. Although there is a significant discount for
ingroup buyers, it does not fully explain the heritage discount;
we found that the heritage discount was significantly higher
than the ingroup discount, the sentimental value discount, and
the price for buyers in the control condition. This study suggests
that sellers’lower WTA for heritage buyers arises due to the
additional value yielded by heritage connection. We also
began to explore the concept of heritage loss as an explanation
for the effect, a concept we test further in subsequent studies.
While this initial evidence is encouraging, more evidence is
needed to differentiate heritage connection from related con-
structs, and from psychological ownership. In Study 2, we
provide process evidence that begins to explain why sellers
might have a lower WTA for heritage buyers.
Study 2: The WTA–WTP Asymmetry
In Study 2, we examine a potential explanation for our findings
in Study 1: rational expectations of supply and demand. Study 1
indicated that sellers provided a heritage discount to heritage
buyers. A parsimonious explanation of this finding is that
sellers have low expectations of heritage buyer demand and
price accordingly. In Study 2, we rule out this potential expla-
nation of the heritage discount and instead present evidence of
the reverse: sellers perceive heritage buyers to have higher val-
uations and higher WTP for heritage goods. We examine this
WTA–WTP asymmetry in Study 2 and find that it holds
when the buyer’s relationship to the seller is held constant
across conditions. We also attempt to control for ingroup bias
by specifying in each case that the buyer is not directly con-
nected to the seller, but rather a friend of a friend.
Pretests
Before conducting this study, we ran two pretests to identify
measures that could help test for the role of shared heritage con-
nection in sellers’WTA. In an initial pretest, we tested ten
exploratory items and reduced these items to a six-item
measure of heritage connection (please see Table 1). In a
second pretest, we ran a confirmatory factor analysis to test
these six items for internal validity and found an acceptable
Cronbach’s alpha (α=.93). Finally, we tested for and found
acceptable discriminant validity between our measure of heri-
tage connection and a preexisting measure of individual
psychological ownership. We validated the measures of heri-
tage using a factor analysis with a two-factor model with
varimax rotation; a scree plot analyzing both ownership and
heritage found two optimal coordinates with two eigenvalues
greater than the mean, and goodness-of-fit measures were
acceptable in the two-factor model (comparative fit index =
.98, root mean square error of approximation =.08, standard-
ized root mean square residual =.04; χ
2
=47.36, d.f. =26, p=
.006). For interitem correlations and pretest results, please see
Web Appendix B.
Method
In Study 2, a CloudResearch-approved pool of MTurk partici-
pants (N =400; M
age
=39.1 years; 52.8% male, 47.3%
female) participated in an online study in exchange for a
nominal payment. We randomized participants into a mixed-
design study using a heritage good: a set of chimes.
Participants had an option to sell or not to sell a set of chimes
to one buyer (heritage vs. control), and then, after indicating
their WTA, sellers saw information about both types of
buyers and assessed the value of the heritage good to each of
these buyers and their WTP.
Scenario. Participants read a hypothetical scenario about a her-
itage good that connected the owner to the sounds of the past:
“You have a set of chimes, and these 1920s chimes were the
first thing your great-great-grandmother bought when she
moved into her first home in the Shenandoah Valley. These
chimes make a great sound when the wind blows since they
are designed to make a sound similar to the sounds of the
Shenandoah River. When you hear the sound of the river in
the chimes you and your family often think of the people
who have lived there before you and listened to the same
sounds you’re hearing now.”
Next, we informed participants that due to an upcoming
move they had considered selling their chimes and had posted
about this on social media. To control for proximity of buyer
to seller across conditions, we told participants that “a friend
of a friend”contacted them about their post. In the heritage
buyer condition, we told participants, “They are interested in
the chimes because they spent time on the banks of the
Shenandoah River when they were young, and the sound of
the Shenandoah River helps them feel connected to all of the
Table 1. Heritage Connection.
1. I feel like this ____ connects me to people I care about.
2. I feel like this ____ helps me remember where I come from.
3. I feel like this ____ is about more than just me.
4. I feel like this ____ gives me a sense of history.
5. I feel like this ____ connects me to family or community
traditions.
6. I feel like this ____ connects me to people who came before me.
Notes: The same seven-point Likert scale was used for all items (1 =“Strongly
disagree,”and 7 =“Strongly agree”).
6Journal of Marketing Research 0(0)
people of the Shenandoah Valley who came before them.”In
the disconnected control buyer condition, we told participants,
“They are interested in the chimes because they are very well
made, solidly constructed, and because Shenandoah chimes
like these should last a long time. They like the high quality
of the tone, and the chimes will make a first-rate sound for
them to listen to.”To control for future preservation of the
chimes, we assured all participants that this friend of a friend
“would take care of your chimes in the same way you would.”
WTA and WTP. After reading the prompt, sellers indicated their
WTA for the heritage or control buyer using a Becker–
DeGroot–Marschak test ($0–$90). Participants who would not
sell at $90 were assigned a WTA of $91. Results are presented
both with and without these high-value participants. After com-
pleting the Becker–DeGroot–Marschak task, all participants,
regardless of condition, assessed both heritage and control
buyers’valuation of the chimes on a seven-point Likert scale
(1 =“Not at all,”and 7 =“Very much”), and estimated how
much each type of buyer would be willing to pay for the
chimes (slider scale: $20 to $200, endpoints determined from
a different group of participants’responses in a pretest).
Value and WTP measures were completed within subjects,
and the order of evaluation was randomized by the Qualtrics
survey platform.
Results
The results of Study 2 demonstrate that seller perceptions about
the buyer’s WTP cannot explain the heritage discount. Instead,
we find that sellers accept less for their chimes from buyers they
perceive as willing to pay more.
According to our preregistered plan, we did not include par-
ticipants who had inconsistent preferences (e.g., accepting an
offer of $60, but not accepting an offer of $72). We provide
results for all participants who cleared this threshold (N =383).
WTA. We found strong evidence of H
1
: sellers had a lower
WTA for heritage buyers (M
Heritage
=$46.44, SD
Heritage
=
$27.15) than for control buyers (M
Control
=$54.51, SD
Control
=
$26.45; t(381) =2.94, p=.003, η
2
=.02), and these results
hold using a nonparametric Wilcoxon rank-sum test
(W =21,592, p=.003). As a robustness check, we tested the
strength of this finding by adding two additional exclusions.
We excluded 14 participants who gave the item away for free
(N
Control
=5, N
Heritage
=9) and 51 participants who would not
sell at any available price (N
Control
=31, N
Heritage
=20). After
removing participants who gave away or would not sell their
item, these results hold in a standard t-test (t(316) =2.23,
p=.027, η
2
=.02) and in a nonparametric Wilcoxon
rank-sum test (W =14,554, p=.019).
Value. Even though sellers had a lower average WTA for heri-
tage buyers, they indicated that heritage buyers valued the
chimes more (M
Heritage
=6.31, SD
Heritage
=.83) than control
buyers in a paired t-test (M
Control
=5.16, SD
Control
=1.34;
t(382) =16.44, p< .001, r =.64), and these results hold after
excluding participants who either gave the item away or
chose not to sell at any price (t(317) =14.76, p< .001, r =.64).
WTP. Sellers perceived that heritage buyers had a higher WTP
for the chimes (M
Heritage
=$100.79, SD
Heritage
=$51.58) than
did buyers in the control condition (M
Control
=$86.84,
SD
Control
=$49.78; t(382) =7.65, p< .001, r =.36), and we
find similar results after excluding participants who gave the
item away and who would not sell at any price (t(317) =6.45,
p< .001, r =.34). All effects held after controlling for demo-
graphic variables, and these results reveal an asymmetry
between WTA and WTP in which WTA is lower and WTP is
perceived as higher for heritage buyers (please see Figure 3).
For further details, please see Web Appendix B and https://
aspredicted.org/3bp9s.pdf.
Follow-up study of buyer value and WTP. Although the seller’s
perception of both the buyer’s valuation and the buyer’s WTP
could not explain our effect in Study 2, it seems possible that
heritage buyers intuit this heritage discount and thus expect to
pay less and have a lower WTP. If this is the case, then
sellers’decision to set a lower WTA makes them more likely
to complete their deal, and the market is efficient. To test this
hypothesis, we reran Study 2, but this time we asked a different
set of participants (N =400; M
age
=39.8 years; 59.8% male,
40.3% female) to give their valuations and WTP as a buyer
who was either connected to or disconnected from the good’s
past. For consistency, the description of connection matched
that used in the main study. Here we found that the heritage dis-
count could not be explained by a lower WTP on the part of the
heritage buyer. Although the median WTP was directionally
higher for connected heritage buyers ($80) than for discon-
nected control buyers ($70), WTP was similar across conditions
(t(397) =.39, p=.697), and both groups of buyers had high
value for the item (M
Heritage
=5.60 vs. M
Control
=5.42;
p=.158). We find no support for a lower WTP among heritage
buyers, and these findings cannot explain sellers’reduced WTA
for a heritage good from heritage buyers. Please see https://
aspredicted.org/e7dk3.pdf.
Discussion
In Study 2 and its follow-up we sought to determine if heritage
buyers (1) were perceived by sellers to have a lower WTP for a
heritage good, and (2) had a lower WTP in such a transaction. If
so, this reduced expectation for buyer WTP could explain the
heritage discount we observed in Study 1. We did not find
support for this explanation of our findings. Instead, Study 2
suggests that the reverse might be true: sellers perceived the
connected heritage buyers as having a higher WTP for their
chimes than control buyers. Yet despite judging heritage
buyers’WTP to be high, sellers indicated a low WTA for
these buyers, resulting in a WTA–WTP asymmetry. In the
follow-up study, participants in the role of buyers report a
similar WTP whether they are connected heritage buyers or
Christensen and Shu 7
nonconnected control buyers. Another possible explanation is
that heritage goods that are inherited, rather than purchased,
lead sellers to believe that they should sell at reduced prices
to heritage buyers. To test this, we ran an additional follow-up
study identical in design to Study 2 but with the chimes pur-
chased rather than inherited (see Web Appendix C); we find
that the reduced WTA replicates, indicating that sellers
behave equivalently whether they had been gifted the heritage
good or had purchased it.
Thus far, we have preliminary evidence to support a heritage
discount, and we have found a WTA–WTP asymmetry, sug-
gesting that the discount that connected heritage buyers
receive cannot be explained by sellers’rational expectations
of demand or even more recent theories of individual psycho-
logical ownership (Shu and Peck 2011). Instead, this study
suggests that a connection to a shared past might drive this
WTA–WTP asymmetry. We have also found that this effect
holds for goods purchased in a market. In the next study, we
build on these findings on the value of connection to a shared
past and examine potential mediation through the lens of heri-
tage loss.
Study 3: Mediation by Perceived Heritage
Loss
Study 2 introduced a six-item measure of heritage loss, the dif-
ference in heritage connection between seller and buyer. In
Study 3, we more thoroughly investigate the effect of perceived
heritage loss on seller WTA using this measure. To do this, we
hold the seller’s heritage connection to the good constant and
manipulate the buyer’s perceived heritage connection in a
between-subjects design. We hypothesized that sellers of a her-
itage good (a watch) would sell it for less to buyers with a
shared heritage connection than they would to buyers in a
control condition, consistent with the main effect in our prior
studies, and that this effect would hold after controlling for
buyers’usage. Our findings support this theorizing, and we
provide evidence that the seller’s perceived heritage loss (the
difference between the seller’s heritage connection and the
buyer’s perceived heritage connection) mediates the effect of
condition on the seller’s WTA.
Method
In Study 3, MTurk participants who had passed four attention
check questions in a paid prescreener designed to filter out
bots and non-English speakers (N =400; M
age
=37.7 years;
44.0% male, 55.5% female, .3% transgender, .3% did not
respond) participated in the study. One additional participant
who started the study in one condition and then reentered and
completed the study in another condition was not included in
the study. A second participant completed the study twice.
Their first entry was included in the data set. We excluded
four participants with inconsistent preferences (N =396).
Including these four participants does not change the pattern
of results (see Web Appendix D).
Scenario. We asked participants to imagine that they had been
going through storage and looking at things they had not
looked at in years. As they looked through their storage, they
found an old pocket watch left in a package marked “for the
future.”Participants were told that as they looked closer, they
could see that “the name of your great grandfather is inscribed
on the watch.”After participants read this scenario, they wrote
about what the watch meant to them, and they rated their heri-
tage connection to the watch.
Figure 3. Asymmetry in WTA or WTP for Heritage Goods.
*p< .05.
**p< .01.
***p< .001.
Notes: Error bars represent ±1 SE.
8Journal of Marketing Research 0(0)
WTA. After participants answered questions about their watch,
a functional good that they could use to tell time, we told them
that either a heritage or a control buyer would like to purchase
their watch. For the [heritage / control] buyer, they read: “A
person who works [in the same line of work as your great grand-
father / in an office] and [is connected to your great grandfa-
ther’s contributions to that line of work / enjoys looking at
pocket watches and antiques and curios of all kinds], has
been looking for a watch like the one you have. They want
the watch so that they can [connect to the past and take out
the watch and remember the people who came before them /
take it out of their pocket to look at the time and so that they
can enjoy listening to time tick away] as they go through
their daily work.”Participants indicated their WTA on a
Becker–DeGroot–Marschak task by accepting or rejecting 16
offers from $48 to $1,049 (prices were evenly spaced in $91
increments to avoid anchoring on even-numbered prices or
salient price points, e.g., $1,000). Participants who would not
sell at any available price were initially assigned a WTA of
$1,050, but results are similar when excluding these high-value
sellers (N
Control
=104, N
Heritage
=88).
Heritage loss. Sellers assessed their own heritage connection to
the watch and rated their perception of the buyer’s heritage con-
nection to the watch (see Table 1). Finally, we asked partici-
pants to indicate how appropriate they considered the buyers’
usage of their watch on a seven-point Likert scale (1 =“Not
Appropriate,”and 7 =“Very Appropriate).
Results
Seller’s heritage connection. As planned, sellers’own heritage
connection to their watch did not vary between conditions
(M
Heritage
=6.01, SD
Heritage
=.99; M
Control
=5.99, SD
Control
=1.02,
F(1, 394) =.04, p=.835).
Buyer’s heritage connection. Sellers rated heritage buyers as
having a higher heritage connection to the watch (M
Heritage
=
5.47, SD
Heritage
=1.06) than control buyers (M
Control
=3.38,
SD
Control
=1.47; F(1, 394) =262.1, p< .001, η
2
=.40).
WTA. We replicate our support for H
1
: sellers had a lower WTA
for their watch when selling to heritage buyers (M
Heritage
=
$778.31, SD
Heritage
=$341.09) than when selling to control
buyers (M
Control
=$852.05, SD
Control
=$293.01; F(1, 394) =
5.33, p=.021, η
2
=.01). This difference in WTA is similar
when analyzed using a Wilcoxon rank-sum test (W =21,790,
p=.041). Overall, heritage buyers received a WTA $73 lower
than that of control buyers for the same watch. The effect size
is similar after removal of participants who would not sell at
any of the available prices (N
Control
=104, N
Heritage
=88)
when analyzed using a linear regression (F(1, 202) =3.43,
p=.066, η
2
=.02) or a nonparametric Wilcoxon rank-sum test
(W =5,982, p=.056).
Appropriateness of buyer’s usage. We found no difference
between conditions in appropriateness of buyer’s usage, with
participants rating both heritage and control buyers’usage of
the watch as highly appropriate (M
Heritage
=5.85, SD
Heritage
=
1.33; M
Control
=5.85, SD
Control
=1.51; F(1, 394) =.00,
p=.989).
Heritage loss. We calculate heritage loss as the seller’s heritage
connection minus the buyer’s perceived connection to the
good’s heritage. Larger heritage loss values indicate the
seller’s perception that the buyer will have a lower heritage con-
nection to the good than the seller has. Sellers incurred lower
levels of heritage loss when selling to a heritage buyer than
when selling to a control buyer (M
Heritage
=.55, SD
Heritage
=
1.31; M
Control
=2.61, SD
Control
=1.88; F(1, 394) =159.8,
p< .001, η
2
=.29), and this replicates after removal of partici-
pants who would not sell at any of the available prices
(N
Control
=104, N
Heritage
=88; F(1, 202) =76.95, p< .001, η
2
=.28).
Mediation by heritage loss. Having found a main effect of buyer
identity on sellers’WTA, we tested for mediation. Specifically,
we tested whether the seller’s perceived heritage loss due to
trade (the seller’s heritage connection minus the buyer’s heri-
tage connection) mediated the effect of condition on WTA
(H
2
). We found that it did. Selling the watch to a control
buyer increased heritage loss, and this lost heritage increased
the seller’s WTA for their good ($172.14; 95% CI =
[$128.28, $219.72]; Hayes 2018). As a robustness check, we
reran this mediation analysis with buyers who would not sell
at any of the available prices excluded from the sample to test
the robustness of the indirect effect and found a similar
pattern of results ($111.82; 95% CI =[$61.63, $168.28]).
Overall, this study suggests that sellers have a higher WTA
for control versus heritage buyers with an indirect pathway
through heritage loss.
We note here that although both the total effect and the indi-
rect effect of the buyer’s perceived connection to the good on
WTA are negative (WTA goes down when the buyer’s heritage
connection goes up), the direct effect of a buyer’s perceived
heritage connection is positive (see Figure 4). Thus, our study
provides evidence of competitive mediation on the seller side.
This competitive mediation builds on the findings of Study 2,
which provided evidence that sellers perceived that connected
heritage buyers would have a WTP at least as high as or
higher than that of disconnected control buyers and would
value the good more. Thus, this finding is consistent with our
previous findings that sellers perceive heritage buyers to have
high valuations and yet sellers charge them less, because of
these buyers’connection to a shared past. For further details
on this study and all analyses, please see Web Appendix D
and https://aspredicted.org/s2ia7.pdf.
Follow-up study of control sellers. As noted previously, the
finding that connected heritage buyers have high valuations
Christensen and Shu 9
and yet are charged less leads to a question of whether sellers
charge these buyers less because they are giving them a heritage
discount or because sellers perceive that a lower price for these
buyers is optimal for market efficiency (i.e., they do not expect
the sale to close otherwise). If this is the case, and market effi-
ciency drives the effect, then we should expect that control
sellers will also have a lower WTA for heritage buyers (thus
ruling out a role of heritage loss). To test this alternative expla-
nation, we reran Study 3 but changed the scenario such that par-
ticipants were no longer connected to the heritage (i.e., control
sellers): “You bought the watch because you liked it.”The
control seller decided to list the watch on eBay and would
be reviewing offers from potential buyers. As in Study 3
(N =201; M
age
=38.3 years; 47.3% male, 52.7% female), the
buyer was either a heritage buyer, who cared about the
good’s history, or a control buyer, who had no connection to
the good’s past but liked antiques. We removed two participants
with inconsistent preferences (N =199). Including these partic-
ipants does not change the pattern of results (see Web Appendix
D). Unlike the heritage seller, the control seller in this follow-up
study revealed no difference in WTA between conditions
(M
Heritage
=$368.83, SD
Heritage
=$252.61; M
Control
=$386.53,
SD
Control
=$265.12; F(1, 197) =.23, p=.630) suggesting that
overall seller perceptions about the buyer’s deservingness
cannot explain the heritage discount. These results hold after
high-value sellers (N
Control
=1, N
Heritage
=3) are excluded
(F(1, 193) =.87, p=.353). Further, we found that control
sellers’WTA for their watch in this follow-up study was less
than half of heritage sellers’WTA for their watch in Study 3,
suggesting that heritage sellers valued their good more than
control sellers and were willing to charge higher prices.
Please see https://aspredicted.org/uu535.pdf.
Discussion
Overall, Study 3 demonstrates that the heritage discount holds,
and that mediation by perceived heritage loss explains this dis-
count. First, we provided evidence that heritage buyers were
perceived by sellers to have a higher connection to the heritage
good. Second, we found that sellers accepted lower offers from
heritage buyers than from control buyers. Third, we showed that
sellers perceived that less of their good’s shared heritage con-
nection would be lost in a potential trade with heritage buyers
(i.e., lower heritage loss) than in a trade with control buyers.
Finally, we contributed process evidence that this effect of
buyer’s identity on seller’s WTA was mediated by these percep-
tions of heritage loss. Taken together, Study 3’sfindings
provide evidence that the buyer’s heritage connection can
reduce the seller’s heritage loss in a sale and lower the
seller’s WTA. Furthermore, our follow-up study demonstrates
that these effects do not occur for a control seller without a her-
itage connection, even when selling to a heritage buyer.
In summary, our results from Studies 1–3 indicate that the
sale of a heritage good by a heritage seller to a control buyer
leads to a loss of heritage connection: the larger the loss in her-
itage, the greater the seller’s WTA. On the other side of the
transaction, heritage buyers receive a discount despite the fact
they would likely receive greater utility from the seller’s heri-
tage good and thus might be willing to pay a price premium.
In Study 4 we investigate the effect of heritage loss on
sellers’WTA in an incentive-compatible experiment using
real goods.
Study 4: Selling a Heritage or Control Good
In Study 4, our primary aim was to investigate the effect of a
buyer’s perceived heritage connection on a seller’sWTAfora
heritage good in the field. Thus, we designed this study to be
incentive compatible by using real goods and including a
Becker–DeGroot–Marschak elicitation method. We endowed
alumni visiting a university campus for a reunion weekend with
either a heritage good that invoked their connection to the univer-
sity’s shared past or a university-branded good with no heritage
connection, and we gave them the opportunity to sell that good.
Method
In Study 4, 124 participants were recruited from the campus of a
large East Coast university during an annual alumni reunion
weekend (M
age
=53.7 years; 52.4% male, 44.4% female,
3.2% did not respond). Since we did not know how many
alumni participants would be available during the reunion
weekend, we preregistered a larger sample size and noted that
we would analyze the data with a smaller sample size depend-
ing on alumni availability, and we followed that preregistered
plan. One participant was removed from the sample, as they
were not associated with the university, leaving 123 alumni par-
ticipants. These alumni participated in a study with a 2 ×2
(seller: heritage ×control, buyer: heritage ×control) probabilis-
tically incentive-compatible design; they were told: “Some par-
ticipants in this study may be randomly selected to have their
decisions completed for real money and/or real objects, so
please answer carefully and make sure your decisions reflect
your real preferences.”
Figure 4. Heritage Loss Increases WTA and Mediates the Effect of
Condition on WTA.
*p< .05.
**p< .01.
***p< .001.
Notes: Simple mediation diagram; a (path), b (path), c (total effect), and c′
(direct effect) with +1 SE in parentheses.
10 Journal of Marketing Research 0(0)
We endowed alumni sellers with a good they could touch
and hold in their hands. This good was either a “heritage
good,”a university-branded pennant, which connected to the
university’s past, had a history, and could continue to be main-
tained into the future, or a “control good,”university-branded
chocolate cookies, which were connected to the university’s
present, did not have a history, and would be eaten that day.
We told heritage sellers endowed with the heritage good,
“Please take a look at this [university] pennant—imagine it
being owned by prior generations of [university] students and
how displaying it might make you feel more connected to
those alumni that also loved [university]. You can pick it up
the pennant and look at it more closely. Think about owning
it and taking it home.”We told control sellers endowed with
the control good, “Please take a look at these [university]-
branded chocolate cookies—imagine how they taste and how
enjoyable it might feel to eat them after a long day of
walking around the [university] campus. You can pick up the
cookies and look at them more closely. Think about owning
them and taking them home.”
We then randomly assigned heritage sellers and control
sellers to either a heritage buyer or a control buyer condition
and assessed sellers’WTA for these buyers. In the heritage
buyer condition, the buyer was a student from the university.
In the control buyer condition, the buyer was a nonaffiliated
visitor to campus. To elicit participants’WTA, we used an
incentive-compatible procedure, the Becker–DeGroot–
Marschak task. Participants saw a list of prices in $1 incre-
ments, ranging from $0 to $15, for a total of 16 prices. At
each price point, participants indicated their choice to keep or
sell the item. They also indicated their own heritage connection
to the good (“Through [this good], I feel connected to [univer-
sity alums] who came before me”) and responded to a single-
item measure of heritage loss (“Compared to me as the seller,
the [university] student (campus visitor) will feel less connected
to prior generations through [this good]”). Both items were
measured on a seven-point Likert scale (1 =“Strongly dis-
agree,”and 7 =“Strongly agree”).
Results
We received data from 123 unique participants, with a higher
number of participants in the heritage seller condition (n =72)
than in the control seller condition (n =51) and similar
numbers of heritage buyers (n =61) and control buyers
(n =62). As a result of this slight imbalance in design, all
results were analyzed using a linear regression instead of a
t-test. For each of the 123 participants, we calculated the
lowest price at which the seller indicated that they would sell
the item to the buyer. If sellers would not sell at any price up
to and including $15.00, we assigned them a WTA of $16.00,
and results are robust to exclusion of these sellers.
WTA. We preregistered four tests. As a robustness check, we
also reran all four main analyses and excluded participants
who would not sell at an available price (N
ControlSeller
=8,
N
HeritageSeller
=13) or who gave the item away for free
(N
ControlSeller
=2, N
HeritageSeller
=15). First, we tested for a dif-
ference in buyer type. As predicted, participants’WTA for a
heritage buyer ($5.79) was lower than their WTA for a
control buyer ($11.84, F(1, 121) =52.76, p< .001, η
2
=.30),
and these results hold with high-value sellers and participants
who gave away the item for free excluded (F(1, 83) =25.39,
p< .001, η
2
=.23). Second, heritage sellers had a lower WTA
($7.72) for their good than control sellers ($10.41; F(1, 121)
=7.48, p=.007, η
2
=.06), and these results hold with exclu-
sions (F(1, 83) =5.3, p=.024, η
2
=.06). Third, these main
effects could be fully explained by a discount that heritage
sellers gave to heritage buyers (B =−$12.90, p< .001, η
2
=
.50), and this interaction holds with high-value and no-sale
sellers excluded (t(81) =8.65, p< .001, η
2
=.48). An analysis
of variance model comparison reveals better goodness of fit
for a model including the heritage discount (the interaction
between seller type and buyer type) than for a main effect
model (F(1, 119) =117.92, p< .001). Finally, we tested to see
if heritage loss, the heritage discount that heritage sellers give
to heritage buyers, predicted this interaction. First, we con-
firmed that sellers had a heritage connection to their good.
Sellers expressed a heritage connection to the good by indicat-
ing that they somewhat agreed, agreed, or strongly agreed with
the statement “Through this [university] pennant (these [univer-
sity] cookies), I feel connected to [university alums] who came
before me.”Heritage loss was measured with the single item
“Compared to me as the seller, the [buyer] will feel less con-
nected to prior generations through the [item]”(recoded as 1
=“Strongly Disagree,”and 7 =“Strongly Agree). If sellers
did not indicate a heritage connection to the good, their heritage
loss was coded as 0. We found that the interaction between her-
itage buyers and heritage sellers predicted heritage loss
(B =−2.82, p< .001, η
2
=.13), and each point of heritage loss
increased WTA (B =$.76, p< .001, η
2
=.10). Breaking this
finding down by seller type, while heritage sellers’WTA
from a heritage buyer ($2.62) was lower than their WTA
from a control buyer ($13.76; F(1, 70) =353.6, p< .001,
η
2
=.83), control sellers’WTA from a heritage buyer ($11.41)
was directionally higher than their WTA from a control buyer
($9.66; F(1, 49) =2.37, p=.130, η
2
=.05; please see Figure 5).
Thus, we did not observe an overall discount given to buyers
who shared a connection to the university unless the good sold
was a heritage good. Instead, we found that sellers reduced
their WTA only for a good that connected them to the genera-
tions who came before and only when selling to heritage
buyers, who share this connection to a valued past. Please see
Web Appendix E and https://aspredicted.org/7wg8i.pdf.
Follow-up studies. Study 4 provided support in the field for our
theorizing that heritage sellers provide a discount to heritage
buyers and that this discount can be explained through heritage
loss. We further replicated these results and tested for alterna-
tive explanations in three additional studies and two posttests,
all of which are reported in more detail in Web Appendix F.
Those replications provide additional evidence that endowed
Christensen and Shu 11
sellers of university-branded goods have lower WTAs for her-
itage buyers when selling a heritage good (Web Appendix F
Appendix Study 2) and do not have lower WTAs for heritage
buyers when selling a control good (Web Appendix F
Appendix Study 3), and that the heritage discount cannot be
explained by buyer valuation, buyer usage, similarity between
buyers and sellers, or ingroup favoritism (see Web Appendix
F Appendix Study 4 and posttests).
Discussion
The results of Study 4, along with three follow-up studies and
two posttests, provide further evidence that heritage value
affects market transactions for goods that connect buyers and
sellers to a shared past. When a pennant connecting alumni
sellers to past generations was sold to a buyer less connected
to the traditions of the university and the heritage of the
good, sellers had a higher WTA. In contrast, when university-
branded chocolate cookies were sold to a buyer less connected
to the traditions of the university and the heritage of the good,
sellers had a directionally lower WTA. We conceptually repli-
cate both findings in three follow-up studies to Study 4, while
testing for alternative explanations (e.g., buyer valuation,
buyer usage, similarity, and ingroup favoritism). Furthermore,
in Study 4, a single-item measure of heritage loss—the differ-
ence between the seller’s heritage connection to the good and
the buyer’s heritage connection to the good—mediated the
effect of condition on pricing. In summary, using real heritage
goods and real transactions, we found that the heritage loss from
a transaction affected the seller’s WTA. In Study 5, we test our
theory in a real-world digital marketplace where sellers of
heritage goods can actively choose to accept or decline a
buyer’s offer.
Study 5: Selling a Heritage Good on Facebook
Marketplace
In Study 5, our goal was to enter a real-world digital market-
place where sellers exchange their goods for payment, and
where buyers can send messages to sellers while submitting
an offer lower than the seller’s list price. One prototypical
example of sending messages to get a discount in large con-
sumer transactions is the real estate industry, where buyers
often write “love letters”to get a discount on a house. Real
estate websites regularly provide tips on letter writing to
sellers (e.g., “Is it an old home that the buyer wants to restore
while maintaining its historic character?”). Financial Samurai
(2023) notes that “a well-written real estate love letter can
reduce a buyer’s purchase price by 1%–10%. If we’re talking
about a $1 million property, that’s $10,000–$100,000 in
savings.”
Since it is beyond our research funding to make offers on
real estate, we chose to make offers on Facebook
Marketplace, where sellers offer vintage items, receive mes-
sages from buyers, and choose to accept or reject those
offers. Facebook Marketplace is a digital marketplace with a
relatively large number of small-volume sellers; we focused
on sellers who had listed heritage goods for sale in local
markets. To test how a heritage message would affect sales
price, we randomized sellers of actual goods to receive a dis-
counted offer from either a heritage buyer or a control buyer.
We then measured the effect of buyer message type on
sellers’pricing decisions.
Method
In Study 5, 400 sellers were contacted with discount offers for
heritage goods they had publicly listed on Facebook
Marketplace. To control for location effects, we contacted
200 sellers within a 60-mile radius of a city in the Northeast
and 200 sellers within a 60-mile radius of a city in the
Midwest. As preregistered, we started with a 40-mile radius
and then expanded that radius to 60 miles in both cities and
made offers to 200 sellers of heritage goods within each
region. These two regions are areas where the authors had a
family connection and, thus, both control and heritage connec-
tion buyer messages could be used without deception. Sellers
were contacted on the lead author’s Facebook account by a
research assistant blind to the study hypothesis. Due to the eco-
nomics of running large studies, we preregistered a plan to
contact sellers who listed a “vintage”item, which we use as a
proxy for heritage good, for a price between $4 and $10.
Each participant received an offer for 60% of their posted
price rounded to the nearest dollar (e.g., a seller offering an
item for $5 would receive an offer for $3, and a seller offering
an item for $10 would receive an offer for $6), and we measured
Figure 5. Discount for Heritage Goods.
*p< .05.
**p< .01.
***p< .001.
Notes: Error bars represent ±1 SE.
12 Journal of Marketing Research 0(0)
whether sellers would accept this discount offer (see preregis-
tration: https://aspredicted.org/sq94i.pdf).
Two hundred participants received a randomly assigned
control message in which the buyer expressed appreciation
for the good, an interest in the platform, and financial constraint:
“Hi [first name], I really like your [name of item]. I am inter-
ested in purchasing on Facebook Marketplace because it is a
marketplace that I have not used often, and this seems like a
nice thing to buy in the marketplace. I am on a limited budget
right now, and was wondering if you would accept an offer
of [60%] for your [name of item]?”A different 200 participants
received a randomly assigned heritage message in which the
buyer expressed appreciation for the good and a connection
to the good’s heritage: “Hi [first name], I really like your
[name of item]. My family has been in [region] for generations
and this reminds me of the time spent with my grandparents. It
helps me connect to what life was like when they were growing
up in [region] and connects me to that time and to my grandpar-
ents. I am on a limited budget right now, and was wondering if
you would accept an offer of [60%] for your [name of item]?”
Results
We initially contacted 401 unique participants. After removing
one participant who had a higher offer price than allowed under
the study plan ($20 vs. $4–$10), we had data from 400 unique
participants; 200 of these participants received a heritage dis-
count message, and 200 received a control discount message.
One participant in the control condition was offered a slightly
higher price than planned ($3.50 on a $5.00 item instead of
$3.00), but the seller did not accept this higher offer. This
seller’s data were included, but the results do not materially
change if this seller’s data are removed. We measured sellers’
acceptance of a discounted offer as a binary (yes/no) variable
rather than using a continuous WTA as in prior studies.
Overall, 89 participants (44.5%) in the heritage condition
agreed to accept the buyer’s offer, compared with 63 partici-
pants (31.5%) in the control condition, and this difference in
choice to sell was statistically significant (χ
2
(1) =7.17,
p=.007, φ=.13). The difference in likelihood to sell to heri-
tage buyers was similar across the Northeast (42% vs. 29%)
and Midwest regions (47% vs. 34%), and a regression revealed
no main effect of region on likelihood to accept (p=.300). For
more details, please see Web Appendix G.
Discussion
In Study 5 we sought to replicate our findings in Studies 1–4ina
real-world, incentive-compatible context: Facebook Marketplace.
However, real-world settings such as this one have limitations on
how much we can learn from the data. In this marketplace, there is
no way to know for certain if the seller has a heritage connection
to the good because we cannot measure this variable directly. The
extent of our manipulation was to determine whether sellers (con-
nected or not) accepted or declined an offer based on receiving a
heritage or control message. We also note that heritage buyers
revealed more personal information than control buyers who
were newer to the marketplace. Overall, we made 400 offers to
unique real sellers across two geographic regions for their heritage
goods and found that sellers were more willing to sell their heri-
tage items to heritage buyers; in other words, Facebook
Marketplace sellers of heritage goods provided a discount to her-
itage buyers.
General Discussion
In a set of five main experiments (as well as a pilot and addi-
tional follow-up experiments), we provide evidence that heri-
tage connection affects sellers’pricing decisions. In Study 1,
we found preliminary evidence for a heritage discount such
that sellers of heritage goods had a lower WTA for heritage
buyers than for control buyers of the same good, and we
found a greater discount for heritage buyers than for ingroup
or sentimental buyers. Furthermore, the effect of shared heri-
tage connection held after controlling for psychological owner-
ship (Study 1), reduced sellers’WTA despite heritage buyers’
higher perceived WTP, and was robust even without a direct,
personal connection between buyer and seller (Study 2). We
demonstrated that the seller’s perceived heritage loss due to
trade mediated the difference in WTA from heritage versus
control buyers (Study 3). Finally, we found the heritage dis-
count in an incentive-compatible study using real goods
(Study 4) and a field study with real sellers of heritage goods
in an online marketplace (Study 5). The effect of heritage on
WTA held after controlling for both market value and demo-
graphic variables (Studies 1–4) and could not be explained by
sentimental value (Study 1), ingroup favoritism (Study 1,
Study 4) or buyer valuations (Study 2). Overall, this research
provides strong evidence that buyers’and sellers’heritage con-
nection affects product disposition, and this work demonstrates
that joint buyer–seller connections to a shared past affect market
transactions in the present.
This research contributes to the literature on the endowment
effect and psychological ownership. Prior research has found
that factors that increase psychological ownership increase
WTA (Ariely, Huber, and Wertenbroch 2005; Shu and Peck
2011; Strahilevitz and Loewenstein 1998). Here, we identify
situations in which factors that increase psychological owner-
ship can also decrease WTA. Our research provides strong evi-
dence that a heritage good’s symbolic ability to connect buyers
and sellers to the collective past reduces the seller’s WTA and
may also create a WTA–WTP asymmetry.
This article also contributes to the literature on sentimental
goods. Prior research has found that highly attached owners
of sentimental goods demonstrate heightened sensitivity to
the future usage of their goods (Brough and Isaac 2012; Yang
and Galak 2015). Here, we identify situations where factors
that increase heritage connection can decrease WTA after con-
trolling for sentimental value. We find that after controlling for
future usage, the effect of heritage connection on the seller’s
WTA holds.
Christensen and Shu 13
This article also contributes to the sharing literature (Belk
2010, 2014, 2017). We respond to this literature’s call for
greater research on how the aggregate extended self—“us”—
affects consumer practices. In our empirical work we first
provide evidence that the shared past creates value for consum-
ers. Then, we empirically demonstrate that the heritage loss
when a good is sold to a buyer who does or does not connect
to the shared past affects the seller’s WTA. Further, we demon-
strate how collective value, shared between buyers and sellers,
drives pricing in surprising ways: sellers indicated a lower
WTA for heritage buyers even when they perceived that these
buyers had higher valuations and higher WTP. This counterin-
tuitive finding suggests that sellers blend exchange-based
market pricing with shared communal benefits that can be quan-
tified as heritage loss (Clark and Mills 2012; Fiske 1991). It is
not simply the buyer’s valuation but also the heritage loss due to
trade that determines the seller’s WTA. Critically, as the
buyer’s heritage connection to a good goes up, the seller’s
WTA for that good goes down.
Future Research
In this article, we have explored how heritage connection can
impact the seller’s WTA. Future research could examine the
antecedents and moderators of heritage connection. For
example, how does the digital world and technology shape
the desire to sell or keep heritage goods? If the antique sup-
presses time (Baudrillard 1968), perhaps the desire to maintain
a connection to goods that evoke the shared past will only grow
in the fast-moving digital world. It might be the case that uncer-
tainty about the future drives a search for the security and
comfort of the past and increases the desire to preserve heritage
goods. Alternatively, a feeling of stability across time might
decrease the price premium that sellers charge for heritage
goods.
Another dimension that future research could explore more
fully is the distinction between hedonic and utilitarian goods.
Research has found that consumers may value hedonic goods
more highly in forfeiture than in acquisition (Chan 2015;
Wertenbroch and Dhar 2000), although this asymmetry does
not hold in all cases (Shu and Peck 2011). More recently,
work on disposition has found that identity-linked products
are less likely to be thrown in the trash (Trudel, Argo, and
Meng 2016). In the current work, we have not fully examined
differences between hedonic and utilitarian goods. In our
main and follow-up studies, we tested functional goods (e.g.,
a watch, a magnet) that owners might consider more utilitarian,
and we tested less functional goods that owners might consider
more hedonic (e.g., chimes, cookies, chocolate). The impact of
hedonic (vs. utilitarian) attributes on sellers’disposition was not
a dimension we had a clear hypothesis for or directly tested, but
future research could look more closely at whether the heritage
discount differs by type of good.
Future research could also examine the connection between
heritage and shared ownership. Previous work has studied
shared ownership as a legal construct (e.g., a timeshare) and
sharing as gift-giving (e.g., sharing food), and by this definition
heritage goods—sold between a buyer and a seller—do not
have shared ownership and are not part of the sharing
economy (Belk 2010). Yet, although the ownership of heritage
goods cannot be legally shared after a sale, the connection to
those who came before is maintained through a reduction in
heritage loss. It is possible that buyers have some collective
psychological ownership of the good before the sale and that
sellers maintain some level of collective psychological owner-
ship of the good after the sale. Even though the heritage good
is no longer “mine,”this continued, shared connection to the
past may provide value by reducing the seller’s feelings of
loss through the knowledge that the good remains owned by
a buyer within the same connected community.
In the current work, we have focused on tangible, heritage
goods that can be sold between buyer and seller. Future
research could go beyond the marketplace and explore the
value of intangible “living heritage.”The United Nations,
which has long protected heritage sites, has designated 631
pieces of “intangible cultural heritage”across 140 countries,
and there are some indications that protecting this living her-
itage spurs economic development and safeguards well-being
(Blake 2014). In a variety of examples, including canoe
making in Micronesia, traditional textiles in Timor, ancestral
music in Namibia, baguettes in France,
1
and the culture of
borscht in Ukraine, the global community has paid to preserve
these local communities’connection to the people who came
before them. The value of this shared connection to the past
for promoting sustainability, social connection, economic
benefits, and prosocial behaviors across time could also be
further explored. Finally, although we have explored loss of
heritage, future research could test the value of increasing
past connection: heritage gains.
Practical Implications
These findings have relevance for consumers, marketers, and
policy makers. First, this research has potential applications in
both the $58 billion self-storage market, in which 10% of
American households pay monthly fees to keep treasured pos-
sessions they have not sold, and markets that involve resale,
such as the $43 trillion U.S. housing market, the $200 billion
secondhand market, and the $450 billion collectibles market
(Absolute Reports 2023; Credit Suisse 2020; Market
Decipher 2023; ThredUp 2023). Many of these goods
connect owners to a shared past. For example, to get a discount
on an older house, prospective buyers might use home-buyer
“love letters”to emphasize their experience living in a house
from the same time period and their goal of staying connected
to the past while enjoying the house (Lee, Mason, and Malcomb
2021).
1
Upon the French baguette’s addition to UNESCO’s“intangible heritage list,”
President Emmanuel Macron called the baguette “250 grams of magic and per-
fection in our daily lives”(Macron 2022).
14 Journal of Marketing Research 0(0)
Second, understanding consumer valuation of heritage prod-
ucts more generally may allow marketers of new products to
appeal to consumers’desire to maintain a connection to their
heritage across time. Marketers may even be able to create
new products that help consumers maintain their link to the
past for future generations by sharing their possessions (e.g.,
23andMe’s Airbnb heritage travel partnership). Third, it is pos-
sible that heritage could generate value in policy contexts, such as
conservation and public health. Conservationists looking to
promote environmental sustainability and decrease voters’
support for licensing natural resources (e.g., drilling rights,
mining rights, logging rights, emission rights) might increase
the perceived value of the resource by invoking the land’s connec-
tion to past generations and to history, thus emphasizing the her-
itage loss and reducing the likelihood it would be leased or sold.
Conclusion
In summary, heritage matters: access to the collective past
changes how we value our goods and how we sell them.
Although heritage goods cannot give the seller or the buyer
the ability to travel back to a past they have never witnessed
or to travel forward into a future they will never see, they can
allow an owner to imagine a past before their birth and a
future after their death through connection to a tangible
marker of a larger community. We hope that this work increases
understanding of the value of the shared past that underlies how
sellers choose to keep and sell goods, while also contributing to
researchers’understanding of how consumers value goods
across time.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge Eugene Caruso, Hal
Hershfield, Keith Holyoak, Franklin Shaddy, and Stephen Spiller as
well as seminar participants at UCLA Anderson School of
Management, Bocconi University, Notre Dame Mendoza College of
Business, Indiana University School of Business, and Berkeley Haas
School of Business for feedback on an earlier version of this research.
The authors appreciate the work of the review team, whose insightful
comments improved this paper.
Author Note
This article is based on the first author’s dissertation.
Associate Editor
James Bettman
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to
the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the
research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Funding was
provided by the Morrison Center for Marketing & Data Analytics.
ORCID iD
Katherine L. Christensen https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5130-5213
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