Do you love what you do? If so, you should consider letting the world know. This week, we’ll dive into why.

“I really enjoy making it”

A new study getting at this question was recently published by Kellogg’s Jake Teeny, along with collaborators Anna Paley and Robert Smith of Tilburg University and Daniel Zane of Lehigh University. The researchers explored the link between how much someone enjoys making a product or delivering a service—what the researchers call “production enjoyment”—and how much customers are ultimately willing to pay for that product or service.

In one study, for instance, the researchers handed out brownies at a university campus fair. Over 300 people stopped by to choose from one of two handmade brownies in exchange for participation in a brief survey. Though the brownies were identical, each had a different note next to it from the pastry chef. One indicated high production enjoyment (“I really enjoy making it”), and the other, high popularity (“It’s a very popular item”). The results showed people were more likely to choose the brownie that signaled high production enjoyment and rate it as higher quality compared with the other (identical) one.

This and several additional studies revealed that buyers associated production enjoyment with greater quality and value in the products and services, and were therefore willing to pay more for them. Why? Buyers seem to associate production enjoyment with intrinsic motivation—or the way people derive value from a process itself rather than its outcome or external rewards.

“Intrinsic value often comes from enjoyment,” Teeny says. “And there’s lots of research showing people produce better work when they’re intrinsically motivated, like studies on ‘flow’ or when people are in ‘the zone’ and just feel a piece of music or something else creative just pouring out of them.”

Worth more—but charging less

But while more enjoyable work might be perceived as more valuable to buyers, this doesn’t always translate to higher prices or salaries.

In another study, the researchers posted a real data-entry job opportunity for people who were able to perform multiple different tasks that require a similar level of skill. Participants stated which one of the tasks they enjoyed more, along with their minimum hourly rate for each. The researchers found that the participants were willing to charge 14.5 percent less than the average price for the task they enjoyed more.

In other words, whereas buyers were willing to pay more for high production enjoyment, sellers were willing to charge less.

“When sellers determine the price, they consider factors like material and advertising cost and the market they’re trying to reach,” Teeny says, “but also less tangible things like the work that’s going to go into the product and how much they enjoy it. If a plumber is going to take on a nasty task, they’re going to want higher compensation for it.”

Moreover, when someone enjoys the work, they may view the emotional satisfaction as part of their compensation and therefore charge a lower price. “Sellers may be anchoring more on the cost of emotional labor than the anticipated product quality,” Teeny says.

You can read more about these studies, and their practical implications for buyers and sellers, in Kellogg Insight.