Sensitivity to scope has become an acid test for the validity of responses to non-market valuation scenarios. The theoretical relationship between whether a subject's responses exhibit sensitivity to scope and whether consistent preferences underlie those responses is examined. It is found that sensitivity to scope is neither necessary nor sufficient for preference consistency. Moreover, while continuous, strongly monotonic and total preferences yield scope, the converse fails to hold. The results suggest caution in scope's application as a survey validation tool.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.