Journal of Economic Psychology 33 (2012) 79–89

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Journal of Economic Psychology

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/ locate/ joep

Students’ understanding of socio-economic phenomena: Conceptionsabout the free provision of goods and services

Peter Davies a,⇑, Cecilia Lundholm b

a School of Education, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdomb Department of Education & Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 3 February 2011Received in revised form 25 July 2011Accepted 14 August 2011Available online 29 September 2011

JEL classification:A21D01D14E39

PsycINFO classification:2820284030403900

Keywords:Conceptual changeSocial scienceEconomics

0167-4870/$ - see front matter � 2011 Elsevier B.Vdoi:10.1016/j.joep.2011.08.003

⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 (0)121 414 482E-mail address: p.i.davies@staffs.ac.uk (P. Davies

a b s t r a c t

Research on conceptual change has paid relatively less attention to the social than to thephysical science domain. In particular, research on conceptual change in economic under-standing has been fairly sparse and loosely connected. Given the potential significance ofcitizen’s economic understanding in delimiting government responses to globalisation(Davies, 2006) this topic is worthy of further study. This study paper investigates concep-tions about the provision of free goods and services, drawing on evidence from students indifferent age groups. In contrast to previous work we focus on the question ‘Should thisproduct or service be made available for free?’ We compare the reasoning of students atdifferent ages across a range of products and services and we explore the ways that theyattempt to resolve conflicts within their reasoning.

� 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Research into students’ conceptions in social science has tended to follow procedures adopted in the much more extensivebody (e.g. Asoko, 2002) of work on students’ conceptions in natural science. In this paper we wish to explore implications of onedifference between conceptions in social and natural science. That is, there is a kind of question that is highly pertinent in socialscience that would generally be inappropriate to ask in natural science. It makes perfect sense to ask ‘In what circumstancesshould something be made available to people for free?’ However, we would not expect to find students in science lessons beingasked ‘what should be the shape of earth?’ or ‘what should be the relationship between force and velocity?’ That is, there is awhole class of questions that are integral to the development of understanding in social science that have received relativelylittle attention in the existing body of research. This distinction is quite separate from discussion about the extent to which ideasabout natural as well as human phenomena are social constructions (Säljö, 1999). Of course, conceptions about natural

. All rights reserved.

0; fax: +44 (0)121 414 4865.).

80 P. Davies, C. Lundholm / Journal of Economic Psychology 33 (2012) 79–89

phenomena (as exemplified by variation in conceptions of the formation of the earth) are shaped by individual and collectiveidentities within the development of frames of thought. However, the question ’Should this be made available for free?’ is pred-icated on a belief that whether or not a good or service is made available for free depends on the conceptions that are held bythose with power to influence the outcome. Our argument in this paper assumes that relationships between natural phenomenaare not dependent on the conceptions that people hold.

The question ‘In what circumstances should something be made available to people for free?’ is of particular interest inthe context of governments struggling with their responsibilities in the face of environmental pressure and the aftermath ofthe global financial crisis. Transport costs illustrate the point. Economic growth is accompanied by a greater than proportion-ate use of roads which produces a range of social costs (congestion and pollution) that are not borne by the individual roaduser. Government actions in the face of this problem are taken in the light of the reactions of the median voter. If the medianvoter has no understanding of the ‘tragedy of the commons’ (Hardin, 1968), then the prospects of tragedy are substantiallyincreased. It matters how citizens judge the circumstances in which goods and services should be made available for free(Davies, 2006). If school education is expected to make a difference to the subsequent behaviour of young people as citizensthen it is important to consider young people’s conceptions of why something should be available for free so that teacherscan help students to develop those conceptions.

The remainder of the paper is organised as follows: the next section discusses previous research on conceptions of priceand develops three research questions through a discussion of previous research and conceptions of ‘what ought to be’. Wethen describe and justify the way in which data were gathered and analysed. The first part of the results sections presentsand exemplifies four conceptions used by students in responding to the question. The second part of the results focuses onstudents’ attempts to resolve tensions between the arguments use in different contexts. In the final section we considerimplications of these results for understanding conceptions of price in the context of citizenship and also some implicationsfor research on conceptual change.

2. The development of students’ understanding of socio-economic phenomena: the example of ‘price’

In this account of the development of students’ understanding of socio-economic phenomena we use the example ofprice. Students’ understanding of price has been widely researched and the resulting body of evidence provides a good basisfor a review of some key issues. A research programme in social psychology (e.g. Berti & Grivet, 1990; Leiser & Halachmi,2006; Thompson & Siegler, 2000) has investigated younger children’s (largely 6–12 years) understanding of price by present-ing brief fictional stories and asking the children questions such as ‘what do you think will happen next?’ A second researchprogramme in phenomenography (e.g. Dahlgren, 1984; Marton & Pong, 2005; Pang & Marton, 2005; Pong, 1997) has re-searched the understanding of students in secondary and higher education through in-depth interviews which have inves-tigated ways in which participants account for their experience of the price of particular objects such as food purchased in auniversity canteen. Despite these similarities, there has been a complete absence of cross-referencing between the twobodies of research which have used different methods of enquiry.

Nonetheless, these two separate research programmes have come to some similar conclusions about qualitative distinc-tions in understanding price: (i) it is appropriate to distinguish between a small number of qualitatively distinct ways ofunderstanding ‘price’; (ii) these categories of understanding can be distinguished in terms of the way they connect price with‘supply’ and with ‘demand’ and (iii) increasing sophistication of understanding is reflected in the extent to which supply anddemand are treated as interacting causes of changes in price. Meyer and Shanahan (2002) present results from a statisticalinvestigation of the categories of understanding of price developed by the phenomenographic studies. They are able to dis-tinguish between two of the categories but not between the more fine-grained distinctions suggested by the later phenom-enographic research.

All of this provides a vindication for sustained, systematic, research into qualitative differences between students’ under-standing of phenomena. However, we wish to argue that more attention now needs to be given to the ways in which changingunderstanding of socio-economic phenomena such as ‘price’ is somewhat different from changing understanding of the phe-nomena attended to by science education. This argument is pertinent to the interpretation of previous research, the designof teaching interventions and the focus of future research. In the remainder of this section we discuss ways in which conceptualchange with regard to socio-economic phenomena may be, at least partially, different from conceptual change in physicalscience.

Berti (1999) suggests that conceptual change in social science is different from conceptual change in physical science be-cause (p. 115) ‘the societal domain comprises roles, relations and rules that are not perceivable’. This proposition leads her toargue that children’s conceptions of economic phenomena will be weakly embedded in their thinking and therefore rela-tively easy to change through instruction: an argument which she illustrates through instruction designed to improve chil-dren’s understanding of banking. It might be argued that the scope for inference about roles, relationships and rules is alsoconstrained in physical science. However, there does appear to be a difference in relation to the discernment of the intentionsin the societal domain.

It has been argued (Chi, Slotta, & de Leeuw, 1994) that conceptual development in the natural sciences is characterised byontological shifts as learners abandon explanations framed in terms of intentional behaviour of entities in favour of expla-nations framed in terms of ‘processes’. Torney-Purta (1994) applies this line of reasoning to the development of social

P. Davies, C. Lundholm / Journal of Economic Psychology 33 (2012) 79–89 81

phenomena. Leiser and Halachmi (2006, p. 7), offer what might be considered as a refinement of Torney-Purta’s position:‘‘Progress in understanding is characterised by a transition from isolated partial systems, to an increasing integration ofunderstanding; by a transition from understanding of economics as motivated by ethical considerations to a realisation thateconomics has its own logic, distinct from moral considerations (Sevon & Weckstrom, 1989), and from one that relies on themotivation of individuals, to one based on an appreciation of the aggregate effects of the actions and desires of groups ofpeople’’. They recognise that, in disciplinary explanations of socio-economic phenomena, intentions do have a role to play:a general expectation that the price of houses is going to fall is likely to result in a drop in demand and this increases thelikelihood that prices will fall. However, since economic outcomes are – according to more complex conceptions – the resultsof systems there is scope for unintended as well as intended effects. The point here is that in social science explanations,intentions (and the conceptions with which these intentions are associated) matter. But this does not mean that the outcomeis a simple aggregation of the intentions embedded in one-to-one interactions. That is, a system level relationship betweendemand and price might differ in quality as well as scale from that experienced by an individual consumer in relationship toprice. The role of intentions in the outcome of socio-economic events means that, in contrast to an analysis of conceptions ofphysical phenomena, it is meaningful to investigate conceptions of what should be the case. In fact, arguments for includingsocial science in the school curriculum largely turn on the scope for improving the way in which judgements are reachedabout what should be the case.

Davies, Howie, Mangan, and Telhaj (2002, p. 219) found that students who argued that government should provide ser-vices such as water and electricity were more likely to believe that government did provide these services (although thisview was mistaken at the time the data were collected). This correlation may be the product of two reinforcing relationships:(i) familiar experience, which engenders a particular way of understanding a phenomenon, develops a sense of normality –how things ought to be; and (ii) an awareness that social phenomena (such as whether something is provided free of charge)are products of how (some) people wish them to be. The likelihood of whether a good or service is made available withoutcharge is affected by the preferences of citizens as a whole. Therefore, a change in conception of how something happensmay, for a learner, be strongly associated with their sense of what should happen and, indeed, what should be regardedas ‘normal’. It does not necessarily follow that similar categories of response will be found in answers to the questions‘Why is this the price of X?’ and ‘What should be the price of X?’ However, it does encourage us to make this comparison.This comparison should throw some light on the relationship between socio-economic conceptions of what does happenand socio-economic conceptions of what should happen.

We derive three main research questions from this brief analysis.

(1) What are the qualitative differences evident in students’ reasoning about the rationale for providing a good or servicefor free, and are they at all similar to categories that have been identified in analysis of students’ explanations forprices?

(2) To what extent is it reasonable to distinguish more or less sophisticated reasoning in response to the question ‘Shouldthese goods and services be provided for free?’

(3) Is students’ reasoning about the basis for providing goods and services for free dependent on the particular good orservice that they are considering?

3. Method

The sample (see Table 1) was selected to include a range of students at different ages. Females and Males were included ateach age level and the students attended institutions with a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds. Very few students inEngland study economics at school below the age of 16 and the proportion of 16–18 year-olds who study economics is small.None of the school-age students in our sample had studied economics. Whilst the university students were enrolled on aMasters’ degree in economics, their prior experience of learning economics was quite varied. Most of the 17 year-olds inthe sample were, amongst other subjects, studying business studies, but this provides a very limited induction into economicreasoning about prices.

Table 1Sample size and characteristics.

Schools and catchments’ area Groups Age Number of students

A Comprehensive school (students aged 11–16 years) 2 11/12 7B Comprehensive school (students aged 11–18) 5 11/12 18C Catholic comprehensive school (students aged 11–16) 2 14/15 7

2 16/17 6D Comprehensive school (students aged 13–18) 4 14/15 13

4 16/17 12E Sixth form college (students aged 16–19) 3 16/17 10F University (masters students aged 22–23) 2 22/23 5

Total 78

82 P. Davies, C. Lundholm / Journal of Economic Psychology 33 (2012) 79–89

The research aimed to identify categorical differences and relationships in students’ thinking. Therefore, our sample sizeand composition was designed to limit the risk that we would fail to observe a particular category. Our research questions donot extend to the likelihood that particular types of students would be more likely to express one way of thinking than an-other. The variation in our sample size (particularly in relation to age) allows only the generation of questions about asso-ciations between types of student and ways of thinking.

The students were asked to discuss the question ‘‘What should be free to everyone? What should people have to pay for?’’in relation to seven products or services listed below:

� Sitting on a beach.� Take-away beef burger.� Fruit.� Studying at university.� Water.� Watching film at the cinema.� Driving cars in a road.

This question takes what might be regarded as an extreme case: where the price to the consumer is zero. Since, as far aswe know, this is the first study to investigate students’ conceptions of what should be the price of a particular product orservice, it seems appropriate to start with a sharply defined case. It is also a case which is highly pertinent to public policy.

There were three main considerations in the selection of products and services. First, we wanted examples that werelikely to fall within students’ experience. We included two examples (‘studying at university’ and ‘driving cars in a road’)which the younger students in the sample would not yet have directly experienced. These were included because of theirprominence in media coverage of debate about ‘free access at point of delivery’. Second, we wanted a mixture of exampleswhich students would typically have experienced differently in terms of ‘free provision’: where access is free and costs areborne unseen by others (beach, road); where payment is made by the household whilst students’ consumption is unrelatedto the price (domestic use of water unless household has a water meter (students may also think of bottled water which theymight buy in a shop); and where payment is made directly, as with the burger and films. The fruit example was included asthat might be provided ‘free’ within the household if it is grown in the garden or might be purchased in a shop. The leadquestion ‘What should be provided free to everyone?’ was phrased to encourage students to distinguish between exampleswhere some people might be able to supply a service or good to themselves through their own resources and where every-one has access to a good or service for free. Finally, the examples were chosen to highlight a range of positive and negativeconsumption and production externalities (such as traffic congestion and litter left on a beach).

Students were organised into groups of three (or in a couple of cases four) and asked to discuss the questions for roughly15 min. It was stressed that participants should feel free to state different views in relation to their peers. Also, the studentswere encouraged to give a personal as well as economics point of view. Whilst students were discussing their ideas a re-searcher moved between the groups occasionally prompting students to elaborate their views. With informed consent,the conversation of each group was digitally recorded and transcribed. The limited role of the researcher reduced the like-lihood that students’ utterances were ‘co-constructed’ with the researcher, but the format encouraged co-construction be-tween the students in the group and this became a specific focus for the analysis. In a minority of cases members of thegroup spoke with each other about what they had been asked to do – either at the outset of their conversation or lateron when one member of the group attempts, in their view, to get the discussion ‘back on track’. These exchanges providedsome insight into students’ intentions (see Halldén, Haglund, & Strömdahl, 2007; Lundholm, 2005) in their utterances. It is

Table 2Categorisation of students’ justifications for views on whether a good or service should be provided for free.

Broad conception Variations within this conception

1 Whether something should be made available for free is a taken forgranted reflection of experience of what is ‘normal’

2 Goods and services should be made available for free on the basis ofpeople’s need

a Essential goods should be made available free to allb Some individuals (but not others) should be able to access the goodor service for free because they are poor

3 Goods and services ought to provided at a price which covers the costof providing them

a Price should reflect the value of resources used in provisionb Price should compensate owners (e.g. in access to private property)even if no additional cost is incurredc Owners of resources need to be rewarded by the price charged to givethem an incentive to provide the good or service

4 The price should encourage the internalisation of externalities a The price should discourage ‘over-consumption’ that may be bad forthe individual even when it is their ‘choice’b Price should reflect social costs of producing and consuming – anynegatives on others.

P. Davies, C. Lundholm / Journal of Economic Psychology 33 (2012) 79–89 83

perfectly possible that the students would have expressed different thoughts in other circumstances, but our focus here is onviews expressed about the provision of different goods and services under similar conditions for gathering data.

It was only in the conversations of the Masters students in which there was overt reference to the researchers’ request toprovide ‘economics’ as well as personal justifications and given the lack of prior teaching on ‘economics’ there are reasonablegrounds for interpreting the conversations of the school students as attempts to express their views. The exchanges betweenthe 11 year-olds were more extended than those between the 14 year-olds and between the 17 year-olds. This may havebeen because the older students were more reserved or less interested in expressing the full justification for their views.An alternative explanation could be that the younger students saw the issues as less clear-cut, having previously spent lesstime developing their views. An advantage of the design of this research is that a key point of interest is the way that thesame group of students talk about the issue of pricing in different settings. Any variation in their conversations betweenthe different settings is unlikely to be due to variation in how they interpret the context in which they have been askedto express their views.

Initial analysis aimed to identify different ways in which students justified beliefs either that something should be pro-vided free or that it should be paid for. Four main categories of response (Table 2) were identified with a number of sub-cat-egories within each. Each case where a student expressed or explicitly agreed with one of these arguments was noted.Students’ responses were independently categorised by two researchers with an initial agreement percentage of 90.3%.The majority of the disagreements occurred where only one researcher believed there was sufficient evidence to accord a cat-egory. The initial disagreements were resolved through further discussion. A second stage of analysis focused on the extent towhich students recognised tensions between arguments presented and any attempts they made to resolve such tensions.

4. Results

4.1. Categories of argument regarding whether a good or service should be provided for free

In this section we first explain and exemplify the categories of response.

4.1.1. NormalityStudents’ perceptions of what was ‘normal’ appeared to exert a powerful influence on their thinking. There were cases

where each of the students in a group had the same, experience of something and this was most pronounced in the caseof the beach. Many of the students found it strange to be asked whether it should be free to use a beach. To these studentsit was self-evident. ‘‘Why should you have to pay for sitting on a beach?’’ They always got access to a beach for free.

There were some instances where students’ taken-for-granted assumptions were challenged by variation in experienceacross the group. Some members of a group had prior experiences of paying for a service whilst one member of a grouphad only experienced accessing the service for free. For instance one group of 14 year-old students were discussing whetherthere should be free access to roads:

Student B: What are toll roads?Student A: The roads owned by people and then they make you pay to go on them.Student B: Really!Student C: The M6 toll, have you ever been on it? It is quicker to get to places; you don’t have to go through Birmingham.Student B: So if you drive along the road do you have to stop and give someone money?Student C: Yes there are them booths that you go through and you have to pay different amounts of money for biggervehicles.

Through this conversation the students become aware that what they had taken for granted about payment for roads didnot always hold. However, there were no indications that such revelations were sufficient to prompt a change of view duringthe course of the conversations.

4.1.2. Necessity and equityThis category includes all those responses that justified the provision of a free good or service on the basis of need. This

category appeared fairly closely aligned to the first category of ‘normality’. That is, students’ judgements about what was anecessity that should be provided for all appeared to be fairly closely aligned with their own experience. The most frequentlycited examples in this category were access to university and water.

This ‘merit good’ argument was frequently supplemented by a more explicit equity argument: that a good or serviceshould be made available for free because otherwise people on lower incomes would be denied access (As in the followingexchange between 11 year-old students):

Student C: Okay, studying at university. I think that should be free as it is education.Student B: Yes and with that education we wouldn’t be able to live.Student A: Yes and if it is free it gives poor people a chance to do something good in their life.

84 P. Davies, C. Lundholm / Journal of Economic Psychology 33 (2012) 79–89

4.1.3. Using up resourcesPaying to cover the costs of resources was most frequently referred to in the cases of beefburgers, cinemas and fruit.

‘‘I think you should pay for fruit because, if you think about it, people have taken time to grow them’’ (Aged 11)‘‘(referring to the beefburger example) They need to make a profit from it and for all the people that they hire and all thepeople that help.’’ (Aged 11)

More elaborated accounts of the same principle referred to the role of prices as an incentive for producers. That is, thesestatements acknowledged that it was not simply a case of paying what a producer deserved, but providing an incentive tokeep the product or service available:

‘‘You should have to pay for that because the cinema has to pay for actually getting the film. They have to pay for that sowhy should it be free because you are costing the cinema. They will have to shut down because they can’t get any morefilms. I think you should have to pay for it.’’ (Aged 11)

Using up resources was most rarely referred to in the cases of the beach, water and roads. In these cases most studentsappeared to believe that these resources were virtually limitless. Most students also ignored the use of resources when theperson consuming the product or service owned the resource. When the possibility of providing the good or service yourselfwas discussed this was usually in terms of speculation about how you would do this:

Student C: (talking about whether water should be free): But not quite so much as it is, it is a bit too expensive for what itis really. It is just water and you could go and find some in a puddle but . . .

Student A: You could filter it yourself if you knew how to you could do it yourself. You would have to pay for the filtersand stuff.(17 year-olds Group D4)Such conversations showed no recognition of the costs in time to the individual. Only the Masters level students thoughtin terms of opportunity cost. For example, in discussing fruit:Student B: It’s not a luxury, but it’s a need, but it should be paid because as we said for the beef burger it can be misused,misused more than if it was free and who would (pause).Student C: Unless someone has plants for themselves.Student A: Yes, just for themselves.Student C: But even who does for themselves it will cost them, spend time buying the things and the season and stuff likethis.

4.1.4. Price signal to consumersThis characteristic was most frequently referred to in the case of beefburgers, fruit and water. Students spoke of the like-

lihood that people would waste these products (over-consume them) if they were made available for free. For example, two11 year-old students worried about the effects on health of free beefburgers:

Student A: But it is unhealthy so if it were free you would encourage more people to eat the food because it is free.Student B: More people would want them because they don’t have to spend money on them so more people would go forthem and then they would become obese.. . .

Student C: If it was free people would just take advantage and get as much fruit as they like. (age 11)

In the case of water, students’ concern was not just about health, but also about the sustainability of the resource:

‘‘I am thinking that if everybody drinks it what is going to happen when there is a shortage on it? If no-one has to pay forit then that means that more water will be drank so there might become a shortage of it.’’ (Aged 11)

Some students also referred to the possibility that there might be under-consumption if a price was charged.

‘‘If you have to pay then it should be less than what it is now because less people are going to go to university.’’ (Gp D3, age 14)

However, such students did not provide a basis for deciding what constituted ‘under-consumption’.Some students also used an argument that some services should be paid for because of the social costs imposed on others.

This argument was chiefly used in relation to roads:

‘‘Because the pollution, the environment is already bad and we are having a lot of weather changes and the pollution isjust making the environment even worse. That is why I think you should pay for it. As well if you are paying for petrol andyou already pay for driving in cars it should be dearer, I think, because a lot of people are having floods.’’ (Gp B1, age 11)‘‘With prices increasing it means that people won’t go or drive that much because petrol and diesel is really expensive soit means that they will drive less, use public transport and then there are fewer emissions into the atmosphere. People arebasically paying for the destruction of the world.’’(Age 17)

P. Davies, C. Lundholm / Journal of Economic Psychology 33 (2012) 79–89 85

4.1.5. ComparisonsThe instances of each viewpoint expressed within each group are presented in Appendix A. The final four rows present the

frequencies for each good or service. Apart from the case of ‘the beach’, expressions of the viewpoint ‘normality’ (1a) arefairly evenly spread across the different products and services. However, beyond this, one viewpoint dominates (taking atleast 40% of the remainder of occurrences and generally over 50%). In the cases of beach, beefburger, fruit and cinema,the dominant viewpoint is ‘cost of resources’. In the cases of beefburger, fruit and cinema the argument is cast in termsof providers needing some revenue to cover their costs. In the case of using a beach the viewpoint was usually expressedthat access should be free because the provider incurred no cost. From this comparison it appears that students’ reasoningabout the basis for providing something for free (Research Question 1) does depend on the type of good or service. In answerto the second question it does appear that there are strong similarities between categorical differences in the type of reason-ing in these judgements about whether a good should be provided for free and the categories of conceptions that have beensuggested by research investigating explanations of price. The first category ‘normality’ appears similar to conceptions ofprice as an inherent characteristic of a good, category two focuses on need (demand) for a good and category three focuseson cost (supply). Category four (incentives to avoid over or under consumption) presumes some understanding of the inter-action between supply and demand. Consequently, it appears reasonable to think of increase sophistication in reasoningabout the ‘should’ question in the same way as reasoning about the causation question.

4.2. Tensions and attempted resolutions

When different arguments were presented within a group these differences were handled in a number of ways: (i) Norecognition of the differences; (ii) Differences recognised, but left unresolved; (iii) Resolution suggested by the maxim ‘itshould be paid for, but it should be cheaper’; (iv) Resolution suggested on the basis of taxation to cover the cost of providingthe good or service;

In a number of cases when students put forward contradictory arguments no attempt was made to resolve the disagree-ment. This may have been because the measure of disagreement was not recognised. However, there were instances whereone or more members of a group recognised the problem but had no way of dealing with it:

Student A: I would agree with both of them really. I think it should be free but there would be too many cars on the roadotherwise so I don’t really know. (Aged 14)

This lack of resolution was sometimes the outcome of some thoughtful discussion as in the case of the 14 year-old stu-dents in Group D3:

Student A: Sitting on a beach should be free because no-one tends to own it.Student B: Yes but then again people need to pay for the cleaning up and stuff I suppose.Student A: Yes but then they should pay for parking and then the money from parking should pay people to clean thebeach up.Student C: This is a tricky one.Student B: What do you think Sam?Student C: I’m not quite sure but I think if it was going to cost money all the money should have gone to cleaning up thebeach that is why you have to pay money because of all the public litter.

The most frequently suggested method of resolving different arguments was a suggestion that whilst something shouldbe paid for it should be cheaper than the current price.

‘‘I think fruits should cost but not too high, it should be a normal amount. The farmers that grow it need to buy the grow-ing products which make the tree grow; they have to pay for it so you can’t just get it free for ourselves unless we growit.’’ (Aged 14)

Whilst suggestions like this recognised that producers needed some return for their efforts they failed to recognise aneffect of the level of price on the amount that suppliers would put on the market. The next extract shows a group (D1) of14 year-old students adopting this resolution in relation to access to university:

Student B: I think you should but not as much as you actually have to because it is loads of money. Students can’t actuallyafford to pay that.Interviewer: So what happens then?Student B: They are in debt and can’t afford food.Interviewer: Do you think so too?Student C: It should be priced but not as expensive.Student A: You should have to pay for it but it does cost a lot.Student B: Yes, they have to pay the teachers so it should be priced but it should be cheaper because it is really expensive.

86 P. Davies, C. Lundholm / Journal of Economic Psychology 33 (2012) 79–89

This attempt to resolve the tension by suggesting that ‘it should be cheaper’ was a common response when such tensionswere recognised by the group. There is no consideration in this resolution for whether this would indeed cover the cost of theresources. Previous studies of conceptions of price have noted explanations that refer to the cost of supply. However, here wecan observe reasoning that refers to cost without addressing the question of whether a price is sufficient in relation to cost toencourage providers to offer goods and services for sale.

This conversation can be contrasted with a group of 17 year-old students who initially adopt the same resolution, whichis then disrupted by one student in the group who recognises an equity problem with the resolution. This group had alreadystated that they thought going to university should be free, but then talked about benefits of going to university coming tothe individual, raising the question of whether the individual should pay.

Student A: Yes but we pay for it with taxes.Student B: So then taxes would just be raised again.Student A: Yes, so you would just be paying for it anyway.Student B: But then there are people that just don’t want to go to university who shouldn’t be forced to pay for otherpeople to go.

One group of Masters students (Group F1) initially argued that accessing the beach should be free, but then they started toconsider other characteristics: that other services like beach equipment might be provided to enhance the ‘beach experience’and that rubbish might need to be cleared away. The implication of these other characteristics is that users ought to pay foraccess to the beach, but the group has voiced strong commitment to the beach being free, not least because paying for thebeach might exclude some people on lower incomes. They resolve the tension by agreeing that the costs associated with thebeach should be paid out of local taxes. They do not consider who pays the taxes compared with who benefits from the beachand they do not consider the effect of free access on the quantity of beach users.

Student A: If it is provided privately then people should have incentives to make it, or to get the money back.Student B: Yes.Student A: So it’s a way that people have to pay for it, other people it takes time to do it, it’s not a public good, but it’s aprivate good, that other people do make it, they waste time making that, so they should be paid something.Student C: Resources.Student B: Yes.Student A: They should be paid something, yes.Student B: If it was free then it would be misused.Student A: It would be misused and who would be making that?

This group of students attempted to find a resolution in more instances than any other group although they overlookedany distributional effects of their resolution in the case of water as well as the case of access to university. In the case ofwater they attempted to resolve three critical features: the resource cost of providing water, their view that water is a meritgood and ought to be equally available for all and the likelihood that if water was free it would be over-consumed or wasted.They resolved this by suggesting that the bulk of the costs ought to be met by the state and a small amount by the consumer.

5. Discussion and conclusions

5.1. Differences between conceptions of price identified in response to questions framed in terms of ‘why this price?’ and questionsframed in terms of ‘what should be the price?’

Across a range of contexts we found some views about whether a good or service should be made available for free ex-pressed only in terms of what was seen as ‘natural’. This conception was thrown into clear relief when students discussedtheir views with other students who had a different experience. There is evidence here of a normalising effect such thatwhen they experienced no variation in whether they have accessed a particular product or service for free they tend to takethis for granted. We might, on this basis, interpret the category of understanding price as a characteristic of a good or servicein Dahlgren’s (1984) research as normalisation.

This finding emphasises the challenges confronting democratic governments through pressures on resource allocation,particularly of the kind presented as a result of global warming. If the median voter relies on norms from past experiencesand makes judgements about what ought to be freely available in different ways from setting to setting it will be very dif-ficult to convince voters to accept changes in the way that resources are allocated so as to take account of social costs andbenefits that are not reflected in current prices. This suggests there is a strong case for investigating whether teaching canmake a difference to students’ thinking and whether such changes persist as they progress into adult life.

Previous research focusing on students’ explanation of prices has consistently categorised conceptions in terms of: (i) de-mand; (ii) supply; and (iii) supply and demand. To some extent our data are consistent with this broad classification. Wefound instances where individual students and groups of students argued a case for the provision of a good or service for

P. Davies, C. Lundholm / Journal of Economic Psychology 33 (2012) 79–89 87

free: (i) only in terms merit or equity (demand-side argument); (ii) only in terms of costs of production (supply-side argu-ment); and (iii) in terms of a balance between demand and supply side arguments. In our case the demand side argument isexpressed only in terms of ‘need’ rather than ability to pay. The relationship between conceptions expressed by an individualregarding ‘what should be the price’ and ‘what causes price’ remains an issue for future research. For example, are concep-tions of ‘what ought’ in terms of ‘need’ associated with conceptions of ‘what is’ in terms of ‘demand’?

Our data also suggest some ways in which categorisation of students’ thinking about price could be extended. First, stu-dents’ thinking about the demand in relation to price may draw upon their beliefs about need and justice as well as ‘ability topay’. Second, some responses indicated recognition of the role of prices as a signalling mechanism, particularly in relation to‘over-consumption’ and externalities. These responses draw attention to the significance of understanding interaction be-tween supply and demand rather than just understanding causation in terms of ‘supply effects’ and ‘demand effects’. Thisdistinction has been frequently glossed over in the reporting of previous research. Third, our data draw attention to variationin the recognition of, and attempts to resolve, tensions between arguments that are put forward either on the basis of equity,cost or signalling. The limited nature of these resolutions is inconsistent with Leiser and Halachmi’s (2006) conclusion thatby the age of 12 students consistently manage to articulate the relationships of supply and demand. In certain carefullyguided circumstances they may do so, but when asked to make judgements about economic phenomena secondary schoolstudents consistently failed to manage relationships between supply and demand. The extent to which voters recognise andattempt to resolve competing arguments is critical to the kind of pressure they are likely to place on democratic govern-ments. The type of reasoning revealed in this study is likely to lead these young people to generate pressures that foster dys-functional government responses actions in terms of equity (given the strength of the normalising effects) and externalities.For example, if young people’s notions of what constitutes a ‘fair price’ is based on their ‘normal experience’ the scope foraddressing embedded inequalities is limited.

5.2. To what extent it is possible to identify different qualities of reasoning about whether a good or service should be provided forfree?

We tentatively suggest the following hierarchy on the basis of our data:

(i) Whether something should be provided for free depends on what the individual has experienced as ‘normal’.(ii) Refers to any one out of ‘need/equity’, ‘cost of production’, ‘signalling effects’.

(iii) Refers to more than one of ‘need/equity’, ‘cost of production’, ‘signalling effects’ but does not recognise tensions.(iv) Refers to more than one of ‘need/equity’, ‘cost of production’, ‘signalling effects’ and attempts to resolve tensions.

There is a clear similarity here with the hierarchies that have been suggested by research on explanations of price, but thissuggestion also incorporates the differences we have noted between our results and previous research. These differencesmay be important to the design of teaching and assessment that aims to improve students’ understanding in a way that willsupport more carefully reasoned arguments.

5.3. Do students offer similar justifications in support of their judgements about whether different goods or services should be madeavailable for free?

Our data show students aged between 11 and 23 providing different justifications for whether a good or service should beprovided for free according to the setting. The extent of this revealed variation was similar for students aged 11, 14 and 17,however one group of Masters students who were studying economics were far more consistent across settings in their argu-ments. This finding suggests that conceptions of price are not invariant across settings and, for this sample of students, wefound no evidence that maturation or general schooling (since these students were not receiving explicit instruction in eco-nomics) was making any difference. Variance across settings is more consistent with the ‘knowledge in pieces’ view of thedevelopment of conceptual structure (DiSessa, Gillespie, & Esterly, 2004). However, the stability of the ‘normality’ concep-tion across goods and services is consistent with the ‘alternative frameworks’ view of conceptual development (Vosniadou,1996). One interpretation of apparent coherence in naïve thinking is that it is constructed through operational procedures inworking memory (Leiser, 2001). An alternative view is that an ontological difference (Chi et al., 1994) between conceptionsin terms of ‘normality’ and any of the conceptions highlighting supply, demand or supply and demand reveals somethingabout the structure of awareness. That is, it may be that conceptions of whether something should be made available forfree are constrained by an ontological framework of ‘normality’, until an individual begins to think in terms of goods andservices being provided by one person or organisation for others. One interpretation of the evidence is that a number of stu-dents are not yet thinking about access to a beach as being ‘provided’ even though they are thinking about all the other itemsin this way.

5.4. Implications for curriculum policy

We suggest that it is possible to describe more sophisticated responses to the question ‘Should X be provided for free?’ interms of referring to more than one of ‘need/equity’, ‘cost of production’, ‘signalling effects’ and attempts to resolve tensions.

88 P. Davies, C. Lundholm / Journal of Economic Psychology 33 (2012) 79–89

A median voter who is aware of, and recognises a need to try to resolve tensions provides a more promising context for theformation of government policy than a voter who remains unaware of these tensions. Our evidence suggests that: (a) schoolage students can (and a few do) think in these terms, (b) it is possible to describe this outcome in a way that can inform thedesign of curriculum and teaching, and (c) students do not currently achieve this way of thinking simply through maturationand increasing experience. It is an issue for curriculum policy and schools to address.

Appendix A. Students’ viewpoints when discussing whether something should be free (by group).

Group

Age Beach Burger Fruit Uni Roads Water Cinema av. % of viewpoint1

A2

11 1A 3Ba 3A 4A4B

4A

2A 4B 2A 4A 3A 4B 1.71 0.08

A1

11 1A 3A 4A 1A 2A 2B 3A4A

4A 4B

2A 2B 4A 2A 3A 2.14 0.13

B1

11 1A 4B 1A 3A 3A 4A 2A 2B 2B 4A4B

2A 4A

3A 2.00 0.14

B3

11 1A 1A 1A 2A3A

3A 3C

3A 4B 2A 2B 3A4A

1A 3A

2.14 0.27

B5

11 1A 3A 4A 1A 3A 1A 3A 1A 4B 2A 4A 3A 1.71 0.33 B4 11 1A 3A 1A 2A

4A

1A 1A 1A 4B 1A 2A 4A 1A 1.86 0.54

B2

11 1A 2A 1A 4A 1A 1A 2A 1A 1.33 0.63 D1 14 1A 3A 3A 3A 1A 2A 3A 3A 1.33 0.25 D3 14 1A 3A 1A 3A 3A 4B 2B 4B 1A 4A

4B

1A 1A 3A 2.00 0.36

C2

14 1A 1A 1A 3A 2A 2B 4A 4B 1.60 0.38 D2 14 1A 4A 1A 3A

4A

2A 4B 1A 2A 1A 1.43 0.40

C1

14 1A 2A 1A 3A4A

1A 3A

1A 1A 2A 3A 1A 3A 1.86 0.46

D4

14 1A 2B 1A 3A 1A 3A4A

2B

1A 1A 2A 1A 1.71 0.50

D8

17 1A 3B 1A 3A 2A 2B 4A 2A 2A 3A 1.67 0.20 C4 17 1A 2B 3A 3B

4A

3A 4A 1A 3A 1A 2B 1A 2B

4B

1A 2A 3A 2A 3A 2.71 0.26

E3

17 1A 3A 1A 3A 1A 3A 1A 2B 4B 4B 2A 2B 3A 3A 2.00 0.29 E2 17 1A 3A 3B 2A 3A 1A 3A

4A

1A 4B 1A 4A 1A 2A 3A 2A 3A 2.43 0.29

D6

17 1A 3A 1A 3A 1A 2B 4B 3A 3B 3A 1.67 0.30 D5 17 1A 3A 2A 3A 3A 1A 2B 1A 3A

4B

2A 1A 2A 1.86 0.31

E1

17 1A 3A 2A 3A 1A 4A 2B 1A 4B 1A 3A 1A 1.71 0.42 C3 17 1A 3A 1A 1A 3A 1A 1A 3A

4B

1A 2A 3A 3A 1.86 0.46

D7

17 1A 3B 1A 3A 1.33 0.50 F1 23 2B 3A 2A 3A

4A

2A 3A4A

2A 2B 4A

2A 2B3C

2A 3A 4A

3A 2.57 0.06

F2

23 1A 2B 4B 3A 2A 4B 3A 1.17 0.14

a Each label (e.g. ‘1A’ or ‘3B’) refers to one of the categories of conception shown in Table 2. The layout of the table means that the 11 year-old students ingroup A2 expressed two lines of argument (1A and 3B) when discussing whether access to a beach should be free, but only one line of argument (4A) whendiscussing whether fruit should be made available for free.

References

Asoko, H. (2002). Developing conceptual understanding in primary science. Cambridge Journal of Education, 32, 153–164.Berti, A. E. (1999). Knowledge restructuring in an economic subdomain: Banking. In W. Schnoltz, S. Vosniadou, & M. Carretero (Eds.), New Perspectives on

Conceptual Change (pp. 113–136). Amsterdam: EARLI/Elsevier.Berti, A. E., & Grivet, A. (1990). The development of economic reasoning in children from 8 to 13 years old: Price mechanism. Contributi di Psicologia, 3,

37–47.

P. Davies, C. Lundholm / Journal of Economic Psychology 33 (2012) 79–89 89

Chi, M. T. H., Slotta, J. D., & de Leeuw, N. (1994). From things to processes: A theory of conceptual change for learning concepts. Learning and Instruction, 4,27–43.

Dahlgren, L. (1984). Outcomes of learning. In F. Marton, D. Hounsell, & N. Entwistle (Eds.), The experience of learning. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press.Davies, P. (2006). Educating citizens for changing economies. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 38, 15–30.Davies, P., Howie, H., Mangan, J., & Telhaj, S. (2002). Economic aspects of citizenship education: An investigation of students’ understanding. The Curriculum

Journal, 13, 201–224.DiSessa, A. A., Gillespie, N. M., & Esterly, J. B. (2004). Coherence versus fragmentation in the development of the concept of force. Cognitive Science, 28,

843–900.Halldén, O., Haglund, L., & Strömdahl, H. (2007). Conceptions and contexts: On the interpretation of interview and observational data. Educational

Psychologist, 42, 25–40.Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons. Science, 162, 1243–1248.Leiser, D. (2001). Scattered naïve theories: Why the human mind is isomorphic to the internet web. New Ideas in Psychology, 19, 175–202.Leiser, D., & Halachmi, R. B. (2006). Children’s understanding of market forces. Journal of Economic Psychology, 27, 6–19.Lundholm, C. (2005). Learning about environmental issues: Postgraduate and undergraduate students’ interpretations of environmental contents in

education. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 6, 242–253.Marton, F., & Pong, W. Y. (2005). On the unit of description in phenomenography. Higher Education Research and Development, 24, 335–348.Meyer, J. H. F., & Shanahan, M. (2002). On variation in conceptions of ‘price’ in economics. Higher Education, 43, 203–225.Pang, M., & Marton, F. (2005). Learning theory as teaching resource: Enhancing students’ understanding of economic concepts. Instructional Science, 33,

159–191.Pong, W. (1997). Students’ ideas of price and trade. Economic Awareness, 9, 6–9.Säljö, R. (1999). Concepts, cognition and discourse: From mental structures to discursive tools. In W. Schnoltz, S. Vosniadou, & M. Carretero (Eds.), New

perspectives on conceptual change (pp. 81–90). Amsterdam: EARLI/Elsevier.Sevon, G., & Weckstrom, S. (1989). The development of reasoning about economic events: A study of Finnish children. Journal of Economic Psychology, 10,

495–514.Thompson, D. R., & Siegler, R. S. (2000). Buy low, sell high: The development of an informal theory of economics. Child Development, 71, 660–677.Torney-Purta, J. (1994). Dimensions of adolescents’ reasoning about political and historical issues: Ontological switches, developmental processes and

situated learning. In J. F. Voss & M. Carretero (Eds.), Cognitive and instructional processes in history and the social sciences (pp. 103–121). Hillside, NJ:Lawrence Erlbaum.

Vosniadou, S. (1996). Capturing and modeling the process of conceptual change. Learning and Instruction, 4, 45–69.