Contingent valuation: Environmental polling or preference engine?

Controlling for the Effects of Information in a Public Goods Discrete Choice Model

“…These include how well-informed preferences should be before policy-makers and regulators rely on them for making decisions using cost-benefit analysis, and how much information should be provided to respondents (MacMillan et al 2006). Moreover, information is often contested, a very relevant example being disagreements within the stakeholder community over the effects of grouse moor management on biodiversity and its contribution to local economic activity, which partly motivated the design of this choice experiment (Thirgood and Redpath 2008).…”

“…It is not uncommon for agents in CV studies to be presented with different information sets in order to either satisfy various stakeholders or be part of an economic field experiment (Carson et al 1994;MacMillan et al 2006). In that situation, it is reasonable for the econometrician to allow different information sets to have heterogeneous effects on subjects' scale parameters.…”

“…5 Other studies attempt to test whether certain neoclassical and behavioral economic theories are the causes behind these changes. Specifically, the effect of costless signals and cheap talk, bounded rationality, and Bayesian updating conditional on previous levels of familiarity with a good have been examined and been found to be important (MacMillan et al 2006;Aadland et al 2007;Hoehn et al 2010;LaRiviere et al 2014) or unimportant (Alberini et al 2005;Czajkowski et al forthcoming) for estimating mean WTP for non-market goods. The literature shows, then, that influencing the information set of agents in a CV study can affect estimated mean WTP.…”

The valuation of forest carbon services by Mexican citizens: the case of Guadalajara city and La Primavera biosphere reserve

“…This was reported earlier by MacMillan et al (2006) who showed that provision of specific information, or the opportunity to deliberate, can affect results of environmental valuation studies. However, the provision of such information is critical when respondents are unfamiliar with the environmental good.…”

“…As mentioned above, provision of specific information, or the opportunity to deliberate, can affect results of environmental valuation studies (e.g. MacMillan et al 2006). Moreover results from public good experiments show that when individuals are allowed to interact in person with other participants, this increases the potential for cooperation and collective action in situations where self-interested behavior might have been expected (Ostrom 2000).…”