Modeling Starting Point Bias as Unobserved Heterogeneity in Contingent Valuation Surveys: An Application to Air Pollution

Olivier Chanel and Stéphane Luchini

American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2007, vol. 89, issue 2, 533-547

Abstract: Up to now, the starting point bias has generally been considered to be a homogeneous phenomenon. In this article, we treat anchoring as an unobserved heterogeneous phenomenon. Our contribution is twofold. First, we show analytically and by way of simulations that assuming homogeneous anchoring can be hazardous and lead to misspecifications. Second, we propose an econometric model that starts with a dichotomous question and then uses an open-ended question. We finally apply our model to a contingent valuation survey on air quality. Our results suggest that how anchoring is modeled in empirical studies deserves more attention. Copyright 2007, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1467-8276.2006.01020.x (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:ajagec:v:89:y:2007:i:2:p:533-547

Access Statistics for this article

American Journal of Agricultural Economics is currently edited by Madhu Khanna, Brian E. Roe, James Vercammen and JunJie Wu

More articles in American Journal of Agricultural Economics from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().