Altruistic and Private Values For Saving Lives With an Oyster Consumption Safety Program

We use data from an Internet‐based survey and estimate the benefits of an oyster consumption safety policy with the contingent valuation method. In addition to providing a context‐specific estimate of willingness‐to‐pay for oyster safety, we consider an important issue in the contingent valuation mortality risk reduction literature. A number of studies find that willingness‐to‐pay for mortality risk reduction is not sensitive to the scope of the risk change. We present the scope test as a difference in the number of lives saved by the program, instead of small changes in risk, and find that referendum votes are responsive to scope. A third feature of this article is that we identify those at‐risk respondents who would most benefit from the policy and decompose willingness‐to‐pay into use values and altruistic nonuse values. We find that willingness‐to‐pay per life saved ranges from $3.95 million to $7.69 million for the private good of lives saved when the respondent is at risk (i.e., use values). Willingness‐to‐pay per life saved including both use and altruistic nonuse values ranges from $6.89 million to $12.87 million.