Voluntary market payments: underlying motives, success drivers and success potentials

Abstract

The authors provide an overview about research conducted in the area of four different voluntary market payment mechanisms, namely tipping, pay-what-you-want, donations, and gift giving. The authors identify three different research streams: the first stream of research investigates product and consumer characteristics that drive success measures of voluntary payment mechanisms, the second stream of research is more outcome oriented and studies economic and communicative success potentials of alternative mechanisms, whereas the third stream of research is more fundamentally oriented and discusses underlying motives of free market payments. The authors summarize and discuss important findings with respect to the three different research streams and point to open research questions and controversial findings in the field.