A Consequential Contingent Valuation Referendum: Still Not Enough to Elicit True Preferences for Public Goods!

Ewa Zawojska

Central European Economic Journal, 2017, vol. 2, issue 49, 73-90

Abstract: Whether respondents disclose their preferences truthfully in surveys that are used to assess the values of public goods remains a crucial question for the practical application of stated preference methods. The literature suggests that in order to elicit true preferences, respondents should see a valuation survey as consequential: they must believe in the actual consequences that may follow from the survey result. Drawing on recent empirical findings, we develop a model depicting the importance of the consequentiality requirement for truthful preference disclosure in a survey that evaluates a public policy project based on a referendum-format value elicitation question. First, we show that a respondent’s belief that his vote may influence the outcome of the referendum plays a central role for revealing his preferences truthfully. Second, we find that the subjectively perceived probabilities of the successful provision of the public good and of the collection of the payment related to the project implementation not only need to be positive but also to be in a particular relationship with each other. This relationship varies in respondents’ preferences towards risk.

Keywords: contingent valuation; stated preferences; incentive compatibility; advisory referendum; payment consequentiality; provision consequentiality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D11 D61 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/ceej-2017-0012 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vrs:ceuecj:v:2:y:2017:i:49:p:73-90:n:6

DOI: 10.1515/ceej-2017-0012

Access Statistics for this article

Central European Economic Journal is currently edited by Anna Matysiak

More articles in Central European Economic Journal from Sciendo
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().