How Sensitive are Environmental Values to Payment Card Design in Contingent Valuation?

Abstract

Contingent valuation studies of people’s willingness-to-pay for ecosystem services are frequently used to inform the social benefit-cost analysis of environmental protection measures. While contingent valuation is generally accepted in this context, response anomalies exist. Drawing on the anchoring-and-adjustment heuristic in psychology and the context effects literature, we examine the impact of subtle design variation on people’s willingness-to-pay. In a split-sample national survey of willingness-to-pay to prevent coastal environmental damages from oil spills, different payment card elicitation formats significantly affect mean willingness-to-pay. This underscores the importance of a research agenda on the effects of subtle design variation on environmental value estimates.