Some time back near the beginning of this year I decided to try a little economic experiment with my youth group in the form of snacks without prices (original post here). The experiment essentially consisted of me spending $50 of my own money on snacks for the youth group. The snacks had no listed price but I put up signs and informed the students that while the food “had no listed price they were most definitely not free.” I repeatedly reminded students to pay for what they took. When they asked me how much they should pay I had a stock phrase I used every time, “Whatever you think is right.”
That meant, I explained to them, that I expected them to put in the money box the amount which they felt a particular snack was worth. It was the honor system to the n th degree.
Throughout the course of this experiment I replaced no snacks. I let the initial round of snacks become exhausted and then saw how close I was to recouping the $50 spent initially. My plan was to buy a new round of snacks using the money the students ‘donated’. Hypothetically I consider a 80% recoup to be a success as I can stand a 20% loss in this kind of endeavor.
At the end of each month I counted the money paid. The snacks are now all gone and I’m here to inform you that the experiment has yielded the following results:
Initial seed money = $50
First month total = $8.86
Second month total = $13.13
Third month total = $17.63
Fourth month total = $23.72
Sixth month total = $25.11
Total percent of money recouped = 50.22%
The amount of money donated was seemingly random and sporadic. At some points I would see someone drop in a few coins for a rather large amount of snacks; at other times I would see them drop in a couple dollars for a soda. Some students took hand fulls of snacks without paying for any of it.
It’s also worth noting that initially the students seemed to be excited about the idea of snacks without prices. But near the end they seemed to not take it very seriously and just took food without paying.
Currently I’m giving up this idea and making official prices for all food items. Payment will still be on the honor system but there will be set prices in place.
I’ll be recording the resulting information and will report it here after several months of data are collected. This time I’m going to keep more detailed records by checking the amount of money in the money box each week instead of each month. I’ll also try to note other pertinent information such as weekly attendance and weather. Both of which (I would imagine) might possibly affect giving.
Can you think of any other information I should be recording to make this study more robust?
