A Comparison of Approaches to Mitigate Hypothetical Bias

Patricia A. Champ, Rebecca Moore and Richard C. Bishop

Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, 2009, vol. 38, issue 2, 15

Abstract: We compare two approaches to mitigating hypothetical bias. The study design includes three treatments: an actual payment treatment, a contingent valuation (CV) treatment with a follow-up certainty question, and a CV treatment with a cheap talk script. Our results suggest that both the follow-up certainty treatment and the cheap talk treatment produce willingness-to-pay (WTP) estimates consistent with the actual payment treatment. However, the follow-up certainty treatment provides response distributions at all offer amounts that are statistically similar to the actual payment treatment, while the cheap talk treatment provides similar responses only at some offer amounts. Furthermore, the cheap talk treatment is effective only for inexperienced individuals. We conclude that the follow-up certainty approach is more consistent than the cheap talk approach for eliminating hypothetical bias.

Keywords: Environmental Economics and Policy; Public Economics; Research Methods/Statistical Methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (46)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/55867/files/champ%20-%20current.pdf (application/pdf)

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:ags:arerjl:55867

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.55867

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Agricultural and Resource Economics Review from Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().