Emotions, Morality and Public Goods: The WTA-WTP Disparity Revisited

Anders Biel (), Olof Johansson-Stenman () and Andreas Nilsson ()
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Anders Biel: Department of Psychology, Göteborg University, Postal: Box 500, SE 405 30 Göteborg
Andreas Nilsson: Department of Psychology, Göteborg University, Postal: Box 500, SE 405 30 GÖTEBORG

No 193, Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics

Abstract: Empirical evidence suggests that people’s maximum willingness to pay for having a good is often substantially lower than their minimum willingness to accept not having it, and that this discrepancy tends to be especially large when valuing public goods. This paper hypothesizes that differences in emotions (e.g. regret) and moral perceptions can account for much of this discrepancy for public goods. A simple, real-money dichotomous-choice experiment is set up to test these hypotheses, which are largely supported.

Keywords: Willingness to pay; Willingness to accept gap; Endowment effect; Emotions; Ethics; Experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19 pages
Date: 2006-01-25
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-dcm, nep-exp and nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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