A Field Experiment Involving Cash and Hypothetical Charitable Donations

Douglas Macmillan (), Trevor Smart and Andrew Thorburn

Environmental & Resource Economics, 1999, vol. 14, issue 3, 399-412

Abstract: An important focus for concern about Contingent Valuation (CV) is that hypothetical payments for non-market goods are biased upwards in comparison to cash payments. Lack of realism, through its influence on incentives to mis-report payments, may explain the divergence. This paper reports on a study which attempts to overcome this problem by emulating a real fund-raising solicitation by the Isle of Eigg Trust for both real and hypothetical donations. In contrast to previous results, the mean cash donation was higher (£3.71) than the man CV donation (£3.41). A third survey, which used a neutral CV design, implemented by a research organization, obtained a mean donation which was much higher (£6.21) than the cash equivalent. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1999

Keywords: bias; cash and hypothetical donations; contingent valuation; realism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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DOI: 10.1023/A:1008304405734

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