This paper focuses on the factors that significantly influence an individual's decision in establishing a price for a standardised product under so-called pay-what-you-want (PWYW) circumstances. Current research has identified seven influential constructs that are assumed to be the main drivers of consumer behaviour when making a pricing decision in a PWYW environment: fairness, altruism, loyalty, price consciousness, income, satisfaction and reference price. This paper extends the list of influential factors with an additional construct, situational factors and examines the constructs' relative importance with regard to their influence on a PWYW decision. Moreover, the positive effect of personal interaction on a buyer's willingness to pay during a payment situation in the PWYW context was confirmed.

Since Pay-What-You-Want is a relatively new field of study, the influence factors during the pricing process are not sufficiently explored. It was hypothesized that in a hypothetical Pay-What-YouWant situation, increased social interaction and social norm compliance would lead to a higher willingness to pay for a travel mug. In a laboratory experiment, 79 German students were randomly assigned to three groups which varied in the degree of social interaction. Social norm compliance was assessed with a questionnaire. A 3 × 3 between-group factorial ANOVA showed a significant main effect for social interaction (p = 0.025, η 2 = 0.08), whilst social norm compliance was slightly not significant (p = 0.067, η 2 = 0.03). Follow-up comparisons were calculated and the results discussed. The findings implicate that especially the degree of social interaction should be regarded, both by researchers and practitioners, as an important situational factor influencing the price in a Pay-What-You-Want situation.

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Pay-what-you-want (PWYW) pricing has attracted much attention recently. Current research focused on influencing factors and their power across social contexts and countries. This article empirically examines a comprehensive list of 10 empirically tested factors that influence individual price-setting but never have been investigated holistically. Results indicate: (1) some previously assumed influencing factors have stronger moderating effects than do others, and (2) these influences must be interpreted as influential clusters rather than individually, as not all constructs are of significantly differing influence on an individual's pricing decision. Satisfaction (Cluster 1), price consciousness, and fairness (both Cluster 2) constitute the most crucial moderators, regardless of context. Four country contexts (i.e., Australia, Germany, Poland, United States) revealed further insights about the intercultural perspective of PWYW pricing: Whereas most of the influencing factors/clusters are of comparable importance across the tested countries, loyalty and reputation (Cluster 6) significantly differed in importance depending on country.