If you’re looking to furnish your home with vintage furniture or expand a collection of treasured memorabilia, new research from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business and the Cornell University SC Johnson College of Business suggests those items could end up being cheaper if buyers emphasize a mutual connection to the past.

The research also has implications for sustainability.

“While a good gains value through association with an individual owner, it also gains value through its connection with a collective past,” said Kate Christensen, assistant professor of marketing at the Kelley School. “But connecting to the people who came before changes the value of objects. Sellers value the good more, but they will accept less from a person who also values that good because they want the link to the people who came before them — the heritage connection.”

Christensen is the lead author of the article, “The Role of Heritage Connection in Consumer Valuation,” recently published by the Journal of Marketing Research. Her co-author is Suzanne Shu, the John S. Dyson Professor in Marketing and dean of faculty and research at Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business.

“It’s long been known in behavioral economics that owners will often over-value an item,” Shu said. “Yet, we were observing almost an opposite pattern: Owners were willing to take a below-market sales price if the buyer was somehow connected to the object’s past.

“Even more surprising was that they’re offering a lower sales price to people who they think are likely to value the item the most. From an economic perspective, it’s an interesting demonstration of how people are willing to trade between money and emotional connections. From a marketplace perspective, it gives us insight into the selling and donating of the heirlooms retirees may be trying to get rid of.”

They conducted their study with Cornell alumni at a reunion weekend, with sellers in Facebook Marketplace and with CloudResearch-approved participants on the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform.

Past research has found that owners who are highly attached to sentimental items demonstrate heightened sensitivity to the future usage of their goods. This research suggests that sellers find it easier to part with an item when selling to buyers who share a connection to the item’s past.

Christensen and Shu’s research is applicable to markets that involve resale, such as the $43 trillion U.S. housing market and the $450 billion collectibles market.

“To get a discount on an older house, real estate agents might encourage their clients to use homebuyer ‘love letters’ that emphasize their experience living in a house from the same time period and their goal of staying connected to the past while enjoying the house,” Christensen said.

But the research could have significance beyond the hunt for a good bargain.

“While we analyze buying and selling of consumer goods in this paper, our work has implications for sustainability,” Christensen said. “While individuals sell goods, governments sell land, oil, water and mining rights. This research suggests that emphasizing a natural resource’s connection to generations past and the people who came before may make citizens value the land more and may make them more concerned about who gets the rights to the resource.

“We hope that understanding the link between the past and the present will pave a way to understanding how to preserve and protect our future.”

Nearly everyone has a possession that connects them to the past. For Christensen, that item was her grandmother’s teacups. Her research confirmed her own feelings that there is a distinction between selling to a collector and to someone who wants to maintain the same connection to those who came before them.

“Novelist William Faulkner famously wrote, ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past,’” she said. “This is true in the marketplace, where the past has been mostly ignored. We found that a heritage connection — a seller’s link to the people who came before them — affects the decisions consumers make in a marketplace.”

Gatherings and get-togethers may commonly take place inside, but giving your guests extra space takes nothing more than a little creativity and the right outdoor appliances. Open a new door – literally – and head outside to take advantage of unused deck, patio and yard space.

As a natural extension of your home, a few key pieces of lighting, heating and cooking equipment can turn your backyard into an entertaining oasis. Let your personal style shine and elevate your hosting skills with these ideas from the experts at the Propane Education & Research Council.

Lighting

Flame lighting may not be every homeowner’s first consideration, but more hosts are relying on it to add upscale elegance to outdoor gatherings. Custom lanterns, modern chandeliers, pendants and tabletop units offer stylish additions to modern and classic designs alike.

No matter your tastes, propane flame lighting fixtures can be placed in multiple areas for aesthetic and practical purposes. While it’s hard to top the soothing effect of a starry night while calming flames reflect off your windows and add a glow to your patio, flame lighting also can ward off intruders or animals and help prevent tripping in the dark.

Grills and Cooking Equipment

Propane can help you bring your dream kitchen to life outdoors. First establish a budget and identify a builder then build out the features of your high-performing kitchen in the peaceful setting nature offers. Often, the centerpiece of the space are grills, which are available in a variety of sizes and styles. Some offer features like side burners for sauces and rotisseries.

Because they heat up fast and provide precise temperature control, propane-powered outdoor cooking appliances are a popular choice for homeowners who want to spend less time preparing food and more time enjoying it. With instant on-off convenience just like indoor gas ranges, outdoor propane grills, pizza ovens and ovens help home chefs create perfectly cooked meals with no coals, soot or ash to clean up. The appliances can also be built in to a straight, L-shape or U-shape bar to complete your outdoor cooking paradise.

Patio Heaters

If chilly weather brings on the blues in your region, make the most of your outdoor space with a propane-powered patio heater that allows for entertaining nearly year-round. Propane patio heaters can raise the outdoor air temperature up to 25 F while emitting a circle of radiant heat up to 25 feet in diameter. Next time you want to get outside before patio season arrives, start up a propane patio heater to enjoy cozy warmth in a clean, safe, reliable way.

Fireplaces and Fire Pits

Another option for bringing warmth to outdoor entertaining can happen with the push of a button in the form of a propane fireplace or fire pit. These smokeless solutions come without the maintenance of wood-burning fires, meaning you can enjoy the heat and ambiance of flames dancing in the night sky while skipping the fuss of soot, ash and burning logs. Plus, clean-energy propane delivers heat more efficiently with a lower carbon footprint than traditional energy sources like wood, which take a toll on the environment.

Pool Heaters

You can maximize your fun for as much of the year as possible and combat the elements with propane pool and spa heaters. Available for in-ground and above ground pools and spas, propane heaters operate at a higher efficiency than electric systems and maintain heat better in cooler weather while also operating cleanly and taking up minimal space.

To find more outdoor entertaining inspiration, visit Propane.com.

It’s the reward waiting for you at the end of a long, demanding day. It’s the goal after a hard day’s work. It’s no wonder we need eight hours of it, and crave even more. When we finally sink into our beds, and lay our weary heads and shoulders on our pillows, we yearn for nothing more than to drift into a restful slumber – one that will recharge us physically and mentally so that we wake up refreshed and full of energy. No wonder they say sleep is a luxury.

            In our quest for a good night’s sleep, the myths, tips, and tricks have most likely outnumbered the actual hours of zzz’s that we’ve clocked in. Finding the right temperature, setting up just the right amount of light (less blue light, please!), and even playing soothing sounds or spraying calming scents are efforts in itself. But the secret to the best sleep ever is as close to you as second skin.

Sustainable fabric for a good night’s sleep

            Think fabric. Linen & Homes has developed sustainable bedding woven from 100% cooling bamboo viscose. The result: lightweight sheets that are 3x softer than cotton sheets. And while you slide into your buttery sheets, here are more benefits from bamboo:

They’re naturally cooling. Bamboo fibers actually regulate the temperature of your body, and even the temperature around you. They do not retain heat, so you stay cool. Its moisture-wicking properties means it is breathable which reduces hot flashes and night sweats.

They’re sustainable. Bamboo is an eco-friendly alternative fiber source – it grows faster and can still reproduce even after a harvest, and it requires less water.

They’re hypoallergenic and anti-microbial. Both great features when you have sensitive skin! Its free from allergens, dust mites and bacteria. The anti-microbial properties also mean the bamboo plant does not need pesticides so that’s zero chemicals for you to worry about.

The Linen & Homes Dream Suite

If you haven’t already, it’s time to make the switch and sleep in sustainable fabric. At the Linen & Homes Dream Suite, their new showroom along Perea Street in Legaspi Village, Makati City, you can go ahead and see and feel the attainable luxury and quality of the sustainable fabric that goes into each of their products. Run your hands across the smooth sheets and pillowcases, feel the buttery soft blankets between your fingers, and even get to try on a weighted blanket to see if it’s for you. The beds are inviting, set up completely in their range of products – from the covers all the way down to the mattress toppers and protectors.

In another corner, you’ll also find sleepwear – pajamas, loungewear and robes made to feel soft yet durable and with the perfect amount of stretch for the luxuriously comfortable sleep that you deserve. 

And even towels are also made from 100% eco-friendly bamboo terry, loomed to 700 grams per square meter so it’s a perfect combination of softness, durability and absorbency. All this as if to say even the art of getting ready for bed – a nice bath, comfy clothes – is the perfect lead up to falling into soft sheets and fast asleep.

The venue was created as a haven for all things sleep – conducive enough to try the fabric, you can sit on a corner of the bed and find yourself inching your way up to the pillows. You can mix and match the colors and prints, decide on softness, smoothness and weight, and choose sleepwear to complete the experience. At the Linen & Homes Dream Suite, you can design your own good night’s sleep – a feat you thought only possible in dreams.

Linen & Homes sleep fabric is available on www.linenandhomes.com and at the new showroom located at 107 Perea Street, The Palisades Unit GFA, Legaspi Village, Makati City .