Regular Article
Testing the Internal Consistency of Contingent Valuation Surveys

https://doi.org/10.1006/jeem.1996.0023Get rights and content

Abstract

For an internal consistency check, one can examine WTP responses to different surveys. Holding an environmental problem constant, concave preferences imply WTPconcavein the success of a remedy. The same preferences imply WTPconvexin the magnitude of an environmental problem, assuming a successful remedy. Having opposite signed curvature of these two WTP patterns is general, not requiring concave preferences. For an adding-up test, an environmental commodity can be divided. Then, WTP for one part plus WTP for the second part, conditional on already having the first part, equals WTP for the whole, adjusted by an income effect.

References (0)

Cited by (94)

  • Pollution exposure and willingness to pay for clean air in urban China

    2020, Journal of Environmental Management
    Citation Excerpt :

    In cases where the value of a public good is not directly revealed in market transactions, such as the passive use value of a national park, CVM provides a useful framework for damage assessment and cost-benefit analysis (Haab et al., 2013; Kling et al., 2012). In light of the limitations of CVM identified in the literature (Diamond, 1996; Diamond and Hausman, 1994; Hausman, 2012), we followed the set of survey guidelines in the NOAA Panel Report (Arrow et al., 1993) and current best practices (Johnston and Boyle, 2017) to ensure that our data provide reliable estimates for the valuation of air quality improvements. In particular, we conducted face-to-face interviews with a sample of residents in three prefecture cities in Henan Province, where the survey locations were randomly selected within the urban districts of each city to give representative coverage.

View all citing articles on Scopus
1

I thank Greg Leonard, Bernard Saffran, an anonymous referee, and participants in a seminar at Georgia State University for helpful comments. The writing of this note has received no financial support, other than the support that MIT offers for all of my research. Some of my past research on contingent valuation has been supported by the Exxon Company, USA and other industry sources. The views expressed here are mine and not necessarily those of anyone else.

View full text