• Behavioural and experimental economics (social preferences, reciprocity, emotions, identity)

• E-commerce (digital media, music industry, e-business models)

Voluntary payments are the focus of my research, especially if they take place in online environments. Do people pay more than they have to? If so, what are the underlying motivations for such behaviour?
I analyse this question with field data sets from online services. Survey data and lab experiments complement this approach in order to get a better understanding about the actual drivers of behaviour.
I am also interested in the implications these theoretical findings may have on online interaction. What are the effects on online industries such as the music industry or digital media in more general terms? And as online interaction becomes increasingly “social” or personal – by way of innovative communication technologies – what does that mean for our online payment behaviour?

Click on the titles to read abstracts and download the papers:

• Koppel, H. and T. Regner, "Corporate Social Responsibility in the work place - Experimental evidence on CSR from a gift-exchange game"

• Matthey, A. and T. Regner, "More than outcomes: A cognitive dissonance-based explanation of other-regarding behavior"

• Regner, T. and G. Riener, "Motivational Cherry Picking"

• Bracht, J. and T. Regner, "Moral Emotions and Partnership"

• Regner, T., "Why Consumers Pay Voluntarily: Evidence from Online Music"

• Regner, T. and N. S. Harth, "Testing belief-dependant models"

• Kataria, M. and T. Regner, "A note on the relationship between television viewing and individual happiness", Journal of Socio-Economics, Volume 40/1 (2011), 53–58

• Matthey, A. and T. Regner, "On the Independence of History: Experience Spill-overs between Experiments"

• Güth, W., M. Ploner and T. Regner, "Determinants of In-group Bias: Is Group Affiliation Mediated by Guilt-aversion?", Journal of Economic Psychology, 30 (2009), 814-827

• Matthey, A. and T. Regner, "Do I really want to know? A cognitive dissonance-based explanation of other-regarding behavior", Games, 2 (2011), 114-135

• Regner, T., "Social Preferences? Google Answers!“

• Regner, T. and J. Barria, "Do Consumers Pay Voluntarily? The Case of Online Music", Journal of Economic Behavior and Organisation, 71 (2009), 395–406

• Regner, T., J. Barria, J. Pitt and B. Neville, "An Artist Life-Cycle Model for Digital Media Content: Strategies for the Light Web and the Dark Web", Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 8 (2009), 334–342

• Halonen-Akatwijuka, M. and T. Regner, "Digital Technology and the Allocation of Ownership in the Music Industry"

• Regner, T., J. Barria, J. Pitt and B. Neville, "Governance of Digital Content in the Era of Mass Participation", Electronic Commerce Research, Volume 10/1 (2010), 99-110

• Regner, T., "Efficient Contracts for Digital Content"