A Meta-analysis of Hypothetical Bias in Stated Preference Valuation
Abstract
Individuals are widely believed to overstate their economic valuation of a good by a factor of two or three. This paper reports the results of a meta-analysis of hypothetical bias in 28 stated preference valuation studies that report monetary willingness-to-pay and used the same mechanism for eliciting both hypothetical and actual values. The papers generated 83 observations with a median ratio of hypothetical to actual value of only 1.35, and the distribution has severe positive skewness. We find that a choice-based elicitation mechanism is important in reducing bias. We provide some evidence that the use of student subjects may be a source of bias, but since this variable is highly correlated with group experimental settings, firm conclusions cannot be drawn. There is some weak evidence that bias increases when public goods are being valued, and that some calibration methods may be effective at reducing bias. However, results are quite sensitive to model specification, which will remain a problem until a comprehensive theory of hypothetical bias is developed. Copyright Springer 2005Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Bibliographic Info
Article provided by European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists in its journal Environmental & Resource Economics.
Volume (Year): 30 (2005)
Issue (Month): 3 (03)
Pages: 313-325
Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.springerlink.com/link.asp?id=100263
Related research
Keywords: contingent valuation; experiments; hypothetical bias; meta-analysis; stated preference;References
No references listed on IDEASYou can help add them by filling out this form.
Citations
RePEc Biblio mentions
As found on the RePEc Biblio, the curated bibliography for Economics:- > Environmental and Natural Resource Economics > Environmental Economics > Valuation > Contingent valuation method > Hypothetical bias
Cited by:
This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:enreec:v:30:y:2005:i:3:p:313-325For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Guenther Eichhorn) or (Christopher F. Baum).
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.