The IKEA effect.
Would you value something you built with your own hands more than an identical ready-made one?
Original study
- Norton, M. I., Mochon, D., & Ariely, D. (2012). The IKEA effect: When labor leads to love. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 22(3), 453–460. Source
- Sarstedt, M., Neubert, D., & Barth, K. (2017). The IKEA effect. A conceptual replication. Journal of Marketing Behavior, 2(4), 307–312. Source
- Marsh, L. E., Kanngiesser, P., & Hood, B. (2018). When and how does labour lead to love? The ontogeny and mechanisms of the IKEA effect. Cognition, 170, 245–253. Source
- Aronson, E., & Mills, J. (1959). The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59(2), 177–181. Source
- Kahneman, D., Knetsch, J. L., & Thaler, R. H. (1990). Experimental tests of the endowment effect and the Coase theorem. Journal of Political Economy, 98(6), 1325–1348. Source
Our adaptation
An adaptation of the IKEA effect of Norton, Mochon and Ariely (2012) with a small tangram task. The silhouette of a figure (house, sailboat, cup or fish; from the game seed) is filled by dragging and rotating seven pieces; after 40 seconds a hint button appears that places one piece per press. Then the participant states the most they would pay for their own figure and for an identical figure built by the lab, each as a postcard (order random; TL 0–200 in steps of 5; in English $0–10 in steps of 0.25).
Differences from the original study
- Prices are hypothetical; the original studies collected real-money bids.
- Every participant prices both figures; order is randomized to balance this.
- There is no physical object; the figure stays on screen.
Measured variables
The columns of the open data file. List fields are expanded into numbered columns (for example rt_60, est_3); JSON columns contain only numbers and fixed stimulus names.
| Column | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
figure | integer | Figure built (0 house, 1 sailboat, 2 cup, 3 fish). |
build_ms | integer | Build time (ms). |
hints | integer | Hints used (0–7). |
moves | integer | Number of moves. |
own | number | Price for own figure (in the language's currency: TL or $). |
pre | number | Price for the ready-made figure. |
order | integer | Which was asked first (0 own, 1 ready-made). |
premium | number | Premium for own figure: percentage difference of own price relative to the ready-made price. |
own_n | number | Own price relative to the top of the scale (%; for cross-language comparison). |
pre_n | number | Ready-made price relative to the top of the scale (%). |
pieces | JSON | Pieces placed in the slots (0–6; for drawing). |
Columns present in every file (14)
row_id | string | Row code. Regenerated at random in every release; it does not identify a person and cannot be matched across releases or experiments. |
experiment | string | Short name of the experiment (URL slug). |
experiment_version | integer | Version of the answer format. For experiments whose format changed, only the current format is published. |
date | YYYY-MM-DD | YYYY-Www | YYYY-MM | Day the answer was given (Istanbul time). If fewer than 5 answers share the same day, language and device, it is coarsened to the ISO week, and to the month if that is still too few. |
date_precision | day | week | month | Precision of the date column. |
lang | tr | en | (boş) | Interface language. Language recording started in the first week of October 2026; for earlier answers it is known only in experiments whose stimuli depend on the language, and empty otherwise. |
device | desktop | mobile | tablet | (boş) | Device class reported by the browser (class only; browser details are neither stored here nor published). |
source | site | embed | Where the answer came from: the balabs site or the experiment embedded on another site. The embedding site is not published. |
mode | free | daily | challenge | race | session | (boş) | Play mode in scored experiments: free play, daily round, challenge, race room, experiment session. Empty for unscored experiments and for older answers that did not store it. |
color_vision | normal | rg | by | contrast | (boş) | In color-based experiments, the color vision mode the participant chose: normal, red-green, blue-yellow or high contrast. Stimuli are generated along different axes per mode, so compare within a mode. Empty for other experiments. |
first_play | 1 | Every row is a participant’s first play of this experiment (always 1). Replays are stored only as leaderboard scores and are not part of the open data. |
seen_before | yes | no | unsure | (boş) | Participant’s own report of whether they had seen this experiment or its known answer before (in experiments that ask). |
duration_s | number | Time from the start of the experiment to submitting the answer, in seconds (measured in the browser, 0.1 s). |
play_score | number | Leaderboard score of the first play (scored experiments; defined on the method card). Empty for unscored experiments. |
Exclusion criteria
The server checks the figure, build time (2 s – 1 h), hint count, order and that both prices match the language's scale step; it computes the premium itself. Currency differs by language; use own_n and pre_n for cross-language comparisons.
- Only each participant's first answer to this experiment; replays are not included.
- Simulated rows, bots, banned and sample accounts are not included.
- Answers before 3 October 2026 are not included (the first day the open data notice was live).
Scoring
This experiment has no leaderboard score. The crowd result is the median premium and the share pricing their own figure higher.
Version notes
- October 2026
The interface language (lang) started being stored with each answer; for earlier answers it is known only in experiments whose stimuli depend on the language, and empty otherwise.