RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 How Sensitive are Environmental Values to Payment Card Design in Contingent Valuation?
JF Land Economics
JO Land Econ
FD University of Wisconsin Press
SP 061924-0053R
DO 10.3368/le.101.3.061924-0053R
A1 Skeie, Magnus Aagaard
A1 Lindhjem, Henrik
A1 Navrud, Ståle
A1 Otterbring, Tobias
YR 2025
UL http://le.uwpress.org/content/early/2025/02/28/le.101.3.061924-0053R.abstract
AB 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.