Keeping up appearances: Motivations for socially desirable responding in contingent valuation interviews

Tobias Börger

Ecological Economics, 2013, vol. 87, issue C, 155-165

Abstract: The tendency to give socially desirable rather than true statements of willingness to pay (WTP) is an often reported form of bias in contingent valuation surveys. While previous research on this bias has exclusively focused on the detection of mode effects, the present study directly assesses a respondent's motivation to state WTP in a socially desirable manner. This study tests the effect of three theoretical motivations for socially desirable responding on WTP responses: A general need for social approval, a perceived social norm calling for a high contribution and perceived lack of anonymity of the interview situation. Questions for the empirical assessment of these factors are developed.

Keywords: Environmental valuation; Contingent valuation method; Socially desirable responding; Loss aversion; Reforestation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800912005022
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:87:y:2013:i:c:p:155-165

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2012.12.019

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 ().