Valuing unfamiliar and complex environmental goods: A comparison of valuation workshops and internet panel surveys with videos

Erlend Dancke Sandorf, Margrethe Aanesen and Stale Navrud

Ecological Economics, 2016, vol. 129, issue C, 50-61

Abstract: We compare two discrete choice experiments eliciting willingness-to-pay (WTP) for increased cold-water coral protection in Norway using valuation workshops and an internet panel survey with videos. The video presentation provides the same visual presentation of information about the good and valuation task as in the valuation workshop. In doing so, we are the first to compare these survey modes. The two survey modes perform equally well with respect to sampling, but the internet survey gives significantly lower WTP estimates. We identify a large number of status quo (SQ) choosers in the internet survey that partly explain this result. Furthermore, respondents who speed through the survey questionnaire, and believe the survey to be inconsequential are more likely to be SQ choosers. While an internet survey is a fast and cost-effective way of obtaining a representative population sample, the potential biases in the valuation of complex and unknown environmental goods outlined here should be carefully addressed in future internet panel surveys.

Keywords: Cold Water Coral; Discrete choice experiment; Internet survey; Video; Consequentiality; Speeders (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092180091530389X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:ecolec:v:129:y:2016:i:c:p:50-61

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2016.06.008

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().