IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/enreec/v34y2006i1p7-44.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Revealing Differences in Willingness to Pay due to the Dimensionality of Stated Choice Designs: An Initial Assessment

Author

Listed:
  • David Hensher

Abstract

Stated choice (SC) methods are now a widely accepted data paradigm in the study of the choice responses of agents. Their popularity has spawned an industry of applications in fields as diverse as transportation, environmental science, health economics and policy, marketing, political science and econometrics. With rare exception, empirical studies have used a single SC design, in which the numbers of attributes, alternatives, choice sets, attribute levels and ranges have been fixed across the entire design. As a consequence the opportunity to investigate the influence of design dimensionality on behavioural response has been denied. Accumulated wisdom has promoted a large number of positions on what design features are specifically challenging for respondents; and although a number of studies have assessed the influence of subsets of design dimensions, there exists no single study (that we are aware of) that has systematically varied all of the main dimensions of SC experiments. This paper reports some initial findings on what influences, in aggregate, specific design configurations have on the mean willingness to pay for specific attributes using a Design of Designs (DoD) SC experiment in which the ‘attributes’ of the design are the design dimensions themselves. The design dimensions that are varied are the number of choice sets presented, the number of alternatives in each choice set, the number of attributes per alternative, the number of levels of each attribute and the range of attribute levels. The empirical evidence, using a sample of respondents in Sydney choosing amongst trip attribute bundles for their car commuting trip, suggests that, within the boundaries of design dimensionality investigated, mean estimates of WTP for travel time savings in the aggregate cover a range that is appropriate for reporting a global mean and a set of meaningful values for sensitivity testing in project appraisal and demand prediction. When these aggregated mean estimates are conditioned on all design dimensions we do not find any systematic differences due to specific design dimensions; however when each design dimension is assessed without controlling for the other dimensions we find evidence to support differences in aggregate mean WTP attributable to the number of attributes per alternative and the number of alternatives in a choice set. Copyright Springer 2006

Suggested Citation

  • David Hensher, 2006. "Revealing Differences in Willingness to Pay due to the Dimensionality of Stated Choice Designs: An Initial Assessment," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 34(1), pages 7-44, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:enreec:v:34:y:2006:i:1:p:7-44
    DOI: 10.1007/s10640-005-3782-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10640-005-3782-y
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10640-005-3782-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. William Greene, 2001. "Fixed and Random Effects in Nonlinear Models," Working Papers 01-01, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
    2. Swait, Joffre & Adamowicz, Wiktor L., 1996. "The Effect of Choice Environment and Task Demands on Consumer Behavior: Discriminating Between Contribution and Confusion," Staff Paper Series 24091, University of Alberta, Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Efthymios G. Tsionas, 2006. "Inference in dynamic stochastic frontier models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(5), pages 669-676, July.
    2. Lajos Baráth & Imre Fertő & Štefan Bojnec, 2018. "Are farms in less favored areas less efficient?," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 49(1), pages 3-12, January.
    3. Edvin Zhllima & Drini Imami & Elvina Merkaj & Irma Qinami & Erdit Nesturi, 2017. "Consumer preferences for yogurt in Albania," Economia agro-alimentare, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 19(2), pages 207-222.
    4. Dellaert, B.G.C. & Brazell, J.D. & Louviere, J.J., 1998. "Variations in consumer choice consistency : The case of attribute-level driven shifts in consistency," Discussion Paper 1998-29, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    5. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/eu4vqp9ompqllr09j0031f620 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Bago d'Uva, Teresa & Jones, Andrew M. & van Doorslaer, Eddy, 2009. "Measurement of horizontal inequity in health care utilisation using European panel data," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 280-289, March.
    7. Michael K. McShane & Larry A. Cox, 2009. "Issuance Decisions and Strategic Focus: The Case of Long‐Term Care Insurance," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 76(1), pages 87-108, March.
    8. Saïd Hanchane & Isabelle Recotillet, 2004. "On gender-specific socio-demographic determinants of the transition from school to work : a longitudinal analysis based on French data," Working Papers halshs-00010141, HAL.
    9. Djokoto, Justice Gameli & Afari-Sefa, Victor, 2017. "Alternative functional forms for technology choice: Application to cocoa production technologies," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 110-120.
    10. Nicos Nicolaou & Sue Birley, 2003. "Social Networks in Organizational Emergence: The University Spinout Phenomenon," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 49(12), pages 1702-1725, December.
    11. Leonardo Becchetti & Giovanni Trovato, 2011. "Corporate social responsibility and firm efficiency: a latent class stochastic frontier analysis," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 36(3), pages 231-246, December.
    12. Gonzalez-Uribe, Juanita & Reyes, Santiago, 2021. "Identifying and boosting “gazelles”: evidence from business accelerators," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 103145, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    13. William Greene, 2004. "Distinguishing between heterogeneity and inefficiency: stochastic frontier analysis of the World Health Organization's panel data on national health care systems," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(10), pages 959-980, October.
    14. Arze del Granado, F. Javier & Martinez-Vazquez, Jorge & McNab, Robert M., 2012. "Decentralized Governance and Preferences for Public Goods," MPRA Paper 42459, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Greene, William H. & Hensher, David A., 2003. "A latent class model for discrete choice analysis: contrasts with mixed logit," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 681-698, September.
    16. Karlsson, Logi & Kemperman, Astrid & Dolnicar, Sara, 2017. "May I sleep in your bed? Getting permission to book," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 1-12.
    17. Sanjana Hossain & Md. Sami Hasnine & Khandker Nurul Habib, 2021. "A latent class joint mode and departure time choice model for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area," Transportation, Springer, vol. 48(3), pages 1217-1239, June.
    18. Ibrahim Elbadawi & Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel & Raimundo Soto, 2015. "Why do Countries have Fiscal Rules?," Journal Economía Chilena (The Chilean Economy), Central Bank of Chile, vol. 18(3), pages 28-61, December.
    19. Marcella Nicolini, 2007. "Institutions and Offshoring Decision," CESifo Working Paper Series 2074, CESifo.
    20. Eran Ben-Elia & Robert Ishaq & Yoram Shiftan, 2013. "“If only I had taken the other road...”: Regret, risk and reinforced learning in informed route-choice," Transportation, Springer, vol. 40(2), pages 269-293, February.
    21. Udo Schneider & Volker Ulrich, 2008. "The physician-patient relationship revisited: the patient’s view," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 8(4), pages 279-300, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    CAPI; choice complexity; design of designs; information processing strategy; stated choice designs; willingness to pay; C91; C81;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • C81 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs - - - Methodology for Collecting, Estimating, and Organizing Microeconomic Data; Data Access

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:enreec:v:34:y:2006:i:1:p:7-44. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.