Eliciting Willingness to Pay Without Bias: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Karen Blumenschein, Glenn Blomquist, Magnus Johannesson, Nancy Horn and Patricia Freeman

Economic Journal, 2008, vol. 118, issue 525, 114-137

Abstract: Concern exists that hypothetical willingness to pay questions overestimate real willingness to pay. In a field experiment, we compare two methods of removing hypothetical bias, a cheap talk approach and a certainty approach, with real purchases. We find evidence of hypothetical bias for unadulterated contingent valuation. Contingent valuation with certainty statements removes the hypothetical bias, but the cheap talk approach has no significant impact. Our findings suggest that willingness to pay can be accurately estimated by adding a simple follow-up question about the certainty of responses and that cheap talk is not a generally effective approach. Copyright 2008 The Author(s). Journal compilation Royal Economic Society 2008.

Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (184)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Journal Article: Eliciting Willingness to Pay Without Bias: Evidence from a Field Experiment (2008)
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:ecj:econjl:v:118:y:2008:i:525:p:114-137

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... al.asp?ref=0013-0133

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Journal is currently edited by Martin Cripps, Steve Machin, Woulter den Haan, Andrea Galeotti, Rachel Griffith and Frederic Vermeulen

More articles in Economic Journal from Royal Economic Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing () and Christopher F. Baum ().