Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
 

Valuing nonmarket goods and services : a test for bias in the iterated referendum-contingent valuation format

Public Deposited

Downloadable Content

Download PDF
https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/s4655j511

Descriptions

Attribute NameValues
Creator
Abstract
  • Contingent valuation has been used to elicit values for changes in the quantity and quality of nonmarket amenities. Yet hypothetically trading dollars for environmental improvements is not a familiar activity for most survey respondents. A variety of response effects associated with survey collected data can potentially lead to biased contingent valuation welfare estimates. A discussion concerning how respondent values are formulated and reported provides the basis for building a behavioral model of decision making. Individuals are presumed to act like Bayesians, incorporating information where available to update their prior outlooks. This behavioral model is linked to the iterated referendum-contingent valuation format to test for the presence of a type of information bias. The iterated referendum format poses successive valuation questions to survey participants with the second question based on the response to the first. Although this format has been shown to yield an increase in precision over the single question referendum, the validity of the iterated referendum has not been empirically verified. The central research question is whether the initial bid provides respondents with a stimulus to revise or update their valuations. A test for the constancy of respondents' distribution of willingness-to-pay indicates that updating is occurring in two large data sets. Welfare benefits measures are estimated for the single question and for two forms of the iterated referendum format. Nonparametric tests indicate that the behavioral model differs statistically from the two other valuation formats. The iterated referendum welfare estimate derived from the Bayesian behavioral model yields larger and less precise welfare benefits estimates than the standard iterated referendum for the two data sets. The Bayesian structure of the iterated referendum provides a conceptually valid valuation format. It is both a statistical improvement and a more realistic model of decision making.
Resource Type
Date Available
Date Issued
Degree Level
Degree Name
Degree Field
Degree Grantor
Commencement Year
Advisor
Committee Member
Academic Affiliation
Non-Academic Affiliation
Subject
Rights Statement
Publisher
Peer Reviewed
Language
Digitization Specifications
  • File scanned at 300 ppi (Monochrome) using Capture Perfect 3.0.82 on a Canon DR-9080C in PDF format. CVista PdfCompressor 4.0 was used for pdf compression and textual OCR.
Replaces

Relationships

Parents:

This work has no parents.

In Collection:

Items

Thumbnail Title Date Uploaded Visibility Actions
file details McLeodDonaldM1994.pdf 2017-08-01 Public Download