PWYW Entrance fees: a visitor’s perspective on a prominent art museum in Thailand

Abstract

The pay-what-you-want (PWYW) strategy is attracting increasing attention from various industries. The tourism industry, especially cultural services and museums, has adopted this payment mechanism to gain more profits and visitors and potentially positive effects for a provider. However, little is known of the factors that shape a visitor’s decision to pay for a museum visit in a PWYW situation and how such pricing mechanism influences their revisit intention and word of mouth (WOM). Hence, this empirical–exploratory study made the pioneering attempt to examine directly how visitors’ payment motivation factors affect PWYW, WOM, and intention to revisit in the hospitality context. This study applied structural equation modelling analysis on a sample of 458 Thai visitors at Wat Rong Khun Museum, Chiang Rai, Thailand, and demonstrated that visitors’ PWYW is partially influenced by payment motivation and that PWYW has a nonsignificant relation with fairness and altruism. Moreover, PWYW mediated the effect of payment motivation and WOM. Visitors who paid high prices for the visit expressed their positive perception of the place, including recommending the venue to others. Nevertheless, visitors’ actual payment did not affect their intention to return.