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Choice-matching for incentive-compatible elicitation of stated preferences: Field evidence for a public good

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  • Zawojska, Ewa
  • Krawczyk, Michał

Abstract

Stated preferences should ideally be elicited in ways that align respondents’ interests with truthful preference disclosure. Survey design conditions for such incentive compatibility typically rely on consequentiality; that is, respondents’ perceptions that their survey responses matter for a final outcome. By contrast, this study aims to empirically test a novel theoretical approach that allows for incentive-compatible elicitation of preferences toward a hypothetical good. The choice-matching approach, proposed by Cvitanić et al. (2019), is applied here to design a stated-preference elicitation procedure for a public good that is intended to be incentive compatible. While choice-matching has been originally designed for a multiple-choice question, we adapt it here to an open-ended elicitation by mapping continuous responses into a finite number of value intervals. We conduct an online experiment mirroring a standard stated preference survey used for the valuation of public goods. We implement two versions of the survey questionnaire: one employing the incentive-compatible choice-matching approach and another representing a typical, unincentivized setting. We find that open-ended willingness-to-pay values are statistically significantly higher when stated under choice-matching than when expressed under unincentivized conditions. The paper discusses why the results may be regarded as supporting the use of choice-matching for stated preference elicitation.

Suggested Citation

  • Zawojska, Ewa & Krawczyk, Michał, 2026. "Choice-matching for incentive-compatible elicitation of stated preferences: Field evidence for a public good," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:soceco:v:122:y:2026:i:c:s2214804326000686
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2026.102577
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    Keywords

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    JEL classification:

    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • 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

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