Mechanism of Price Anchoring in Dining Consumption Decision-Making: An Analytical Study on Pricing Strategies

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-585-0_59How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Price Strategy; Price Anchoring; Menu Engineering; Compromise Effect; Consumer Welfare

Abstract

The price anchoring distortion effect on restaurant dining choice has been a central topic of behavioral economics research. Empirical evidence proved that specially positioned expensive reference products in menu design will have a substantial impact on willingness to pay for consumers. Nevertheless, literature still leaves behind several research gaps concerning the numeric influence of an anchor in dining-in Chinese restaurants, its net gains as welfare impacts to middle-to-low earners, and the neurophysiology of decisions’ processes. In the present study we explore empirically the behavioral intervention mechanism of an anchoring price in restaurants in real world settings. This study’s methodology consists of:(1) the acquisition of 3000 orders from three mid-ranged Beijing restaurants in a span of four weeks that employ a high-anchored treatment item as a part of their daily routine as well as conducting an actual natural experiment; (2) applying DID and eye-tracking to a representative sample of 100 customers. It is theoretically implied that anchors behavior is purely welfare transfers through behavioral biases, therefore it needs to introduce a MATI. Reverse rebellion results of students’ heterogeneity give evidence of micro-scale adjustments of the theory “nudge”. This work proposes an innovative framework: an intersection point between behavioral economics and operational pricing is suggested. Because “fake anchors” could decrease the welfare of consumers.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Qiyu Dong
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/06/18
TI  - Mechanism of Price Anchoring in Dining Consumption Decision-Making: An Analytical Study on Pricing Strategies
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 International Conference on Hybrid Commerce, Human Capital, and Economic Dynamics (ICHCH 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 532
EP  - 540
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-585-0_59
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-585-0_59
ID  - Dong2026
ER  -