Seceral contingent caluation studies hace found that the open-ended format yields lower estimates of willingness to pay (WTP) than does the closed-ended, or dichotomous choice, format. In this study, WTP for a public encironmental good was estimated under four conditions: actual payment in response to open-ended and closed-ended requests, and hypothetical payment in response to open-ended and c...

A three-way treatment design is used to compare contingent valuation response formats. Respondents are asked to value an endangered species (the red-cockaded woodpecker) and the restoration of its habitat following a natural disaster. For three question formats (open-ended, payment card, and double-bounded dichotomous choice), differences in survey response rates, item non-response rates, and p...

Dichotomous choice (referendum) contingent valuation questions have gained popularity over the last several years due to their purported advantages for avoiding many of the biases known to be inherent in other value elicitation formats. However, this type of valuation question is inefficient in that a much larger number of observations is required to identify the distribution of values with any...

Survey based valuation techniques like the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) rely particularly on the premise of respondents' rationality when answering willingness to pay (WTP) questions. Results of CVM surveys have repeatedly put this fundamental assumption into question. This study adopts a more realistic view of rationality accounting for respondents' limited capacities to process informati...

This study examines the factors influencing China’s farmers’ degree of willingness to adopt soil testing technology (STT). A case study around Tai Lake Watershed (specifically in Jiangsu Province) was conducted, using a double bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation method. Factors affecting farmers’ willingness to use less harmful fertilizer and their application in organic production ...

Substantive income effects are incorporated in a logit or nested-logit model by assuming that utility is a piece-wise linear spline function of residual income. Specific income data are not required, only income by category. Expected compensating variation is easily and accurately approximated by the difference between expected maximum utility in the proposed and initial state, multiplied by th...

An exact formula for the expected compensating variation is derived for logit and nested-logit models with income effects. Intuition, examples, and an application are provided. The appendix contains a formal proof. The formula is applied to estimate the E[cv]s salmon anglers in Maine would associate with changes in catch rates at Maine and Canadian Rivers.