IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/theord/v78y2015i2p261-272.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The effects of uncertainty on the WTA–WTP gap

Author

Listed:
  • Robert Reilly
  • Douglas Davis

Abstract

We analyze the effects of uncertainty on WTA, WTP and the WTA–WTP gap. Extending the approach of Weber (Econom Lett 80:311–315, 2003 ) to the case of lotteries, we develop an exact expression for the WTA–WTP gap that allows identification of its magnitude under different utility specifications. Reinterpreting and extending results by Gabillon(Econom Lett 116:157–160, 2012 ), we also identify generally the relationship between an agent’s utility of income and the gap’s algebraic sign, as well as the effects of risk increases on WTA and WTP. Finally, we derive the limit behavior of the gap as income or risk increase. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Reilly & Douglas Davis, 2015. "The effects of uncertainty on the WTA–WTP gap," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 78(2), pages 261-272, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:theord:v:78:y:2015:i:2:p:261-272
    DOI: 10.1007/s11238-014-9414-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11238-014-9414-7
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11238-014-9414-7?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. Loomes, Graham & Sugden, Robert, 1982. "Regret Theory: An Alternative Theory of Rational Choice under Uncertainty," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 92(368), pages 805-824, December.
    2. Weber, Thomas A., 2003. "An exact relation between willingness to pay and willingness to accept," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 80(3), pages 311-315, September.
    3. Ulrich Schmidt & Stefan Traub, 2009. "An Experimental Investigation of the Disparity Between WTA and WTP for Lotteries," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 66(3), pages 229-262, March.
    4. Gabillon, Emmanuelle, 2012. "One theory for two different risk premia," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 116(2), pages 157-160.
    5. Eisenberger, Roselies & Weber, Martin, 1995. "Willingness-to-Pay and Willingness-to-Accept for Risky and Ambiguous Lotteries," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 10(3), pages 223-233, May.
    6. repec:cup:judgdm:v:1:y:2006:i::p:23-32 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    8. Harless, David W., 1989. "More laboratory evidence on the disparity between willingness to pay and compensation demanded," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 359-379, May.
    9. Murat Isik, 2004. "Does Uncertainty Affect the Divergence between WTP and WTA Measures?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 4(1), pages 1-7.
    10. Willig, Robert D, 1976. "Consumer's Surplus without Apology," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 66(4), pages 589-597, September.
    11. William S. Neilson & Michael McKee & Robert P. Berrens, 2013. "Value and outcome uncertainty as explanations for the WTA vs WTP disparity," Chapters, in: John A. List & Michael K. Price (ed.), Handbook on Experimental Economics and the Environment, chapter 6, pages 171-189, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    12. Horowitz, John K. & McConnell, K. E., 2003. "Willingness to accept, willingness to pay and the income effect," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 51(4), pages 537-545, August.
    13. Erica Mina Okada, 2010. "Uncertainty, Risk Aversion, and WTA vs. WTP," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 29(1), pages 75-84, 01-02.
    14. Rothschild, Michael & Stiglitz, Joseph E., 1970. "Increasing risk: I. A definition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 225-243, September.
    15. Andrea Isoni & Graham Loomes & Robert Sugden, 2011. "The Willingness to Pay—Willingness to Accept Gap, the "Endowment Effect," Subject Misconceptions, and Experimental Procedures for Eliciting Valuations: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(2), pages 991-1011, April.
    16. Douglas D. Davis & Robert J. Reilly, 2012. "On Uncertainty and the WTA-WTP Gap," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(3), pages 2594-2605.
    17. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:4:y:2004:i:1:p:1-7 is not listed on IDEAS
    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. Ulrich Schmidt & Stefan Traub, 2009. "An Experimental Investigation of the Disparity Between WTA and WTP for Lotteries," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 66(3), pages 229-262, March.
    2. Christina McGranaghan & Steven G. Otto, 2022. "Choice uncertainty and the endowment effect," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 65(1), pages 83-104, August.
    3. Jonathan Chapman & Mark Dean & Pietro Ortoleva & Erik Snowberg & Colin Camerer, 2021. "On the Relation between Willingness to Accept and Willingness to Pay," Working Papers 2021-90, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    4. Brown, Thomas C. & Gregory, Robin, 1999. "Why the WTA-WTP disparity matters," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 323-335, March.
    5. Isabel Marcin & Andreas Nicklisch, 2014. "Testing the Endowment Effect for Default Rules," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2014_01, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    6. William Neilson & Michael McKee & Robert P. Berrens, 2008. "Value and Outcome Uncertainty as Explanations for the WTA vs WTP Disparity: Theory and Experimental Evidence," Working Papers 08-07, Department of Economics, Appalachian State University.
    7. Andreas Glöckner & Janet Kleber & Stephan Tontrup & Stefan Bechtold, 2009. "The Endowment Effect in Groups with and without Strategic Incentives," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2009_35, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    8. Shaw, W. Douglass & Woodward, Richard T., 2008. "Why environmental and resource economists should care about non-expected utility models," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 66-89, January.
    9. Drouvelis, Michalis & Sonnemans, Joep, 2017. "The endowment effect in games," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 240-262.
    10. Marcin, Isabel & Nicklisch, Andreas, 2014. "Testing the Endowment Effect for Default Rules," WiSo-HH Working Paper Series 10, University of Hamburg, Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences, WISO Research Laboratory.
    11. William S. Neilson & Michael McKee & Robert P. Berrens, 2013. "Value and outcome uncertainty as explanations for the WTA vs WTP disparity," Chapters, in: John A. List & Michael K. Price (ed.), Handbook on Experimental Economics and the Environment, chapter 6, pages 171-189, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    12. Roth, Gerrit, 2006. "Predicting the Gap between Willingness to Accept and Willingness to Pay," Munich Dissertations in Economics 4901, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    13. Sayman, Serdar & Onculer, Ayse, 2005. "Effects of study design characteristics on the WTA-WTP disparity: A meta analytical framework," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 289-312, April.
    14. Breffle, William S. & Eiswerth, Mark E. & Muralidharan, Daya & Thornton, Jeffrey, 2015. "Understanding how income influences willingness to pay for joint programs: A more equitable value measure for the less wealthy," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 17-25.
    15. Tonin, Stefania, 2018. "Citizens’ perspectives on marine protected areas as a governance strategy to effectively preserve marine ecosystem services and biodiversity," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 34(PB), pages 189-200.
    16. Oben K Bayrak & Bengt Kriström, 2016. "Is there a valuation gap? The case of interval valuations," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 36(1), pages 218-236.
    17. Trabelsi, Mohamed Ali, 2008. "Les nouveaux modèles de décision dans le risque et l’incertain : quel apport ? [The new models of decision under risk or uncertainty: What approach?]," MPRA Paper 83347, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2008.
    18. Marcin Isabel & Nicklisch Andreas, 2017. "Testing the Endowment Effect for Default Rules," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 13(2), pages 1-27, July.
    19. Jiakun Zheng, 2020. "Optimal insurance design under narrow framing," Post-Print hal-04227370, HAL.
    20. Zheng, Jiakun, 2020. "Optimal insurance design under narrow framing," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 596-607.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Compensating variation; Equivalent variation; Expected utility theory; Willingness to accept; Willingness to pay; D01; D81;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty

    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:theord:v:78:y:2015:i:2:p:261-272. 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.