IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/anr/reseco/v9y2017p317-336.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Asking Willingness-to-Accept Questions in Stated Preference Surveys: A Review and Research Agenda

Author

Listed:
  • Dale Whittington

    (Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering and Department of City and Regional Planning, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27559)

  • Wiktor Adamowicz

    (Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2P5, Canada)

  • Patrick Lloyd-Smith

    (Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2P5, Canada)

Abstract

Stated preference (SP) researchers have encountered an increasing number of policy problems for which a willingness-to-accept (WTA) compensation question would seem to be the most reasonable approach to structure the respondent's valuation choice task. However, most SP researchers are still reluctant to pose WTA questions to respondents due to concerns about reliability of responses and confusion about what contexts warrant a WTA question compared to a willingness-to-pay question. This review synthesizes the current literature, provides guidance on when and how to use WTA elicitation formats, and identifies research needs. We present a typology of valuation tasks that illustrates the situations in which WTA questions are appropriate and should be used to estimate welfare-theoretic measures of economic benefits—and when they should be avoided. We also discuss three different design issues that SP researchers need to consider when they use WTA questions: (a) elicitation of reference and status quo conditions, (b) incentive compatibility and private versus public goods, and (c) nonconforming responses. We conclude that good survey design makes it possible to ask respondents sensible WTA questions in many cases, yet several key research issues require attention.

Suggested Citation

  • Dale Whittington & Wiktor Adamowicz & Patrick Lloyd-Smith, 2017. "Asking Willingness-to-Accept Questions in Stated Preference Surveys: A Review and Research Agenda," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 9(1), pages 317-336, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:anr:reseco:v:9:y:2017:p:317-336
    DOI: 10.1146/annurev-resource-121416-125602
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-resource-121416-125602
    Download Restriction: Full text downloads are only available to subscribers. Visit the abstract page for more information.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1146/annurev-resource-121416-125602?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.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Grilli, Gianluca & Notaro, Sandra & Campbell, Danny, 2018. "Including Value Orientations in Choice Models to Estimate Benefits of Wildlife Management Policies," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 70-81.
    2. Céline Nauges & Dale Whittington, 2019. "Social Norms Information Treatments in the Municipal Water Supply Sector: Some New Insights on Benefits and Costs," Water Economics and Policy (WEP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 5(03), pages 1-40, July.
    3. Vanessa Bonke & Marius Michels & Oliver Musshoff, 2021. "Will Farmers Accept Lower Gross Margins for the Sustainable Cultivation Method of Mixed Cropping? First Insights from Germany," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-13, February.
    4. Maldonado, Jorge H. & Moreno-Sánchez, Rocío del Pilar & Espinoza, Sophía & Bruner, Aaron & Garzón, Natalia & Myers, John, 2018. "Peace is much more than doves: The economic benefits of bird-based tourism as a result of the peace treaty in Colombia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 78-86.
    5. Alix-Garcia, Jennifer M. & Sims, Katharine R.E. & Phaneuf, Daniel J., 2019. "Using referenda to improve targeting and decrease costs of conditional cash transfers," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 179-194.
    6. Perni, Ángel & Barreiro-Hurlé, Jesús & Martínez-Paz, José Miguel, 2020. "When policy implementation failures affect public preferences for environmental goods: Implications for economic analysis in the European water policy," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    7. Lloyd-Smith, Patrick & Adamowicz, Wiktor, 2018. "Can stated measures of willingness-to-accept be valid? Evidence from laboratory experiments," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 133-149.
    8. Ambika Markanday & Ibon Galarraga & Anil Markandya, 2019. "A Critical Review Of Cost-Benefit Analysis For Climate Change Adaptation In Cities," Climate Change Economics (CCE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 10(04), pages 1-31, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    stated preferences; willingness to accept; willingness to pay; contingent valuation; choice experiments; hypothetical baselines; domain of gains; domain of losses;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
    • H43 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Project Evaluation; Social Discount Rate
    • Q51 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Valuation of Environmental Effects

    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:anr:reseco:v:9:y:2017:p:317-336. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: http://www.annualreviews.org (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.annualreviews.org .

    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.