Within- and between- sample tests of preference stability and willingness to pay for forest management

Mikolaj Czajkowski, Anna Bartczak, Wiktor Budzinski and Marek Giergiczny

No 2014-24, Working Papers from Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw

Abstract: The assumption of the stability of preferences is a fundamental one in the theory of the consumer. Many papers within the stated preferences literature have tested this assumption, and have found mixed results. Individuals may become more sure of their preferences as they repeat a valuation task or purchase decision; they may also learn more about prices and quantities of substitutes or complements over time, or about other relevant characteristics of both the good being valued and alternatives in their choice sets. In this paper, we test for the stability of preferences and willingness to pay for attributes of forest management both within and between samples. The within-sample test compares a set of responses from individuals over the sequence of a survey; the between-sample test compares responses from the same people over a period of 6 months. We find that respondents’ preferences differ more within a sample (comparing their first 12 with their second 12 choices) than across samples. This may imply that preference learning and/or fatigue effects within choice experiments are more important than changes in preferences over time in this data.

Keywords: preference stability; test-retest; discrete choice experiments; contingent valuation; stated preferences; forestry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D01 H4 Q23 Q51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-cbe, nep-dcm, nep-env and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.wne.uw.edu.pl/inf/wyd/WP/WNE_WP141.pdf First version, 2014 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Within- and between- sample tests of preference stability and willingness to pay for forest management (2014)
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:war:wpaper:2014-24

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Marcin Bąba ().