A TV-presenter of a fairly popular TV-show with an audience in my country once told an anecdote that they wanted the admission for the audience to be free. But when the tickets were free, a lot less people showed up. When they changed the ticket to be the quite arbitrary amount of 7 EUR, suddenly the theater was full every time.
Back in my home town, we used to have free events all the time. Outdoor concerts, theatre, even indoor concerts and festivals.
They were almost always full to the brim.
Anecdotes are fun, but not much more than that.
Yes, it is so true, people think free is junk and when they pay for something they automatically assign a value to it.
Anecdote:
A long time ago I was helping a friend with her hand-made candles stall at a craft fair. A particular thpe of candle wasn't selling - so we talked about it and she reduced the price of each candle. But they still weren't selling. So we talked about it some more, and she priced them at 3x the original price. They all sold.
Yeah. If it's free or cheap, people don't value the thing. It's something called "price sensitivity". Some things are expensive (luxury brands), and people want it for that reason alone (status symbol).
Context is king. A famous cello player playing on streets is valued less and is valued more when playing in a stadium. This is the typical framing phenomenon which psychology has discovered about humans. Even what colour we perceive changes based on surrounding context so not surprising.
We naturally go for scarce things first. A few examples of this:
- I'm not particularly into castles, but I've visited a fair few while travelling. I lived in Norwich for 10 years, home to one of the finest Norman castles in the country. Did I visit? Did I heck.
- When your favourite film was on TV you'd watch it every time. Then when you got it on DVD you'd never watch it again.
- Give a dog some miscellaneous leftovers and notice how they prioritise ingestion.
Not sure it's really the same entitlement phenomenon the GP was talking about, though.
They've recently done up Norwich castle and it's better than ever. It's in the running for Museum of the Year!