IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/isu/genres/33895.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Dynamic Explanation of the Willingness to Pay and Willingness to Accept Disparity

Author

Listed:
  • Kling, Catherine L.
  • List, John
  • Zhao, Jinhua

Abstract

Evidence from laboratory experiments suggests that important disparities exist between willingness to pay (WTP) and compensation demanded for the same good. This study advances, and experimentally tests, a new explanation of the WTP/WTA disparity--a dynamic theory based on the presence of commitment costs. We find that the commitment cost theory combined with a simple behavioral anomaly is able to lend insights into the causes and severity of the WTA/WTP disparity. Further, we find that market experience attenuates the behavioral anomaly, consistent with the notion that no value disparity exists for agents with sufficient market experience.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Kling, Catherine L. & List, John & Zhao, Jinhua, 2011. "A Dynamic Explanation of the Willingness to Pay and Willingness to Accept Disparity," Staff General Research Papers Archive 33895, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:isu:genres:33895
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Shogren, Jason F. & Margolis, Michael & Koo, Cannon & List, John A., 2001. "A random nth-price auction," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 46(4), pages 409-421, December.
    2. Akerlof, George A & Dickens, William T, 1982. "The Economic Consequences of Cognitive Dissonance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(3), pages 307-319, June.
    3. Myagkov, Mikhail & Plott, Charles R, 1997. "Exchange Economies and Loss Exposure: Experiments Exploring Prospect Theory and Competitive Equilibria in Market Environments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(5), pages 801-828, December.
    4. Piccione, Michele & Rubinstein, Ariel, 1997. "On the Interpretation of Decision Problems with Imperfect Recall," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 3-24, July.
    5. Jinhua Zhao & Catherine L. Kling, 2004. "Willingness to Pay, Compensating Variation, and the Cost of Commitment," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 42(3), pages 503-517, July.
    6. Zhao, Jinhua & Kling, Catherine L., 2001. "A new explanation for the WTP/WTA disparity," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 73(3), pages 293-300, December.
    7. John A. List, 2003. "Does Market Experience Eliminate Market Anomalies?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(1), pages 41-71.
    8. 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..
    9. James Konow, 2000. "Fair Shares: Accountability and Cognitive Dissonance in Allocation Decisions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 1072-1091, September.
    10. 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.
    11. John A. List, 2002. "Preference Reversals of a Different Kind: The "More Is Less" Phenomenon," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1636-1643, December.
    12. Knez, Peter & Smith, Vernon L & Williams, Arlington W, 1985. "Individual Rationality, Market Rationality, and Value Estimation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(2), pages 397-402, May.
    13. Kahneman, Daniel & Knetsch, Jack L & Thaler, Richard H, 1990. "Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect and the Coase Theorem," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1325-1348, December.
    14. Don L. Coursey & John L. Hovis & William D. Schulze, 1987. "The Disparity Between Willingness to Accept and Willingness to Pay Measures of Value," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(3), pages 679-690.
    15. Brookshire, David S & Coursey, Don L, 1987. "Measuring the Value of a Public Good: An Empirical Comparison of Elicitation Procedures," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(4), pages 554-566, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Lunn, Pete & Lunn, Mary, 2014. "A Computational Theory of Willingness to Exchange," Papers WP477, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    2. Bazzani, Claudia & Caputo, Vincenzina & Nayga, Rodolfo M. & Canavari, Maurizio, 2015. "Testing commitment cost in food choices: a non-hypothetical choice experiment approach," 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California 205235, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    3. Claudia Bazzani & Vincenzina Caputo & Rodolfo M. Nayga JR. & Maurizio Canavari, 2017. "Testing Commitment Cost Theory In Choice Experiments," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(1), pages 383-396, January.
    4. Lunn,Pete & Lunn, Mary, 2014. "What Can I Get For It? The Relationship Between the Choice Equivalent, Willingness to Accept and Willingness to Pay," Papers WP479, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    5. Jha, Pushkar. P. & Bhalla, Ajay, 2018. "Life of a PAI: Mediation by willingness and ability for beneficiary community engagement," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 9(C), pages 27-34.
    6. Amoah, Anthony & Ferrini, Silvia & Schaafsma, Marije, 2019. "Electricity outages in Ghana: Are contingent valuation estimates valid?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    7. John A. List & Michael K. Price, 2013. "Using Field Experiments in Environmental and Resource Economics," NBER Working Papers 19289, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Lee, Ji Yong & Nayga, Rodolfo M. & Deck, Cary & Drichoutis, Andreas, 2017. "Cognitive Ability and Bidding Behavior in Experimental Auction," 2017 Annual Meeting, July 30-August 1, Chicago, Illinois 258347, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    9. Yan, Jinming & Yang, Yumeng & Xia, Fangzhou, 2021. "Subjective land ownership and the endowment effect in land markets: A case study of the farmland “three rights separation” reform in China," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    10. Gioacchino Pappalardo & Roberta Selvaggi & Salvatore Bracco & Gaetano Chinnici & Biagio Pecorino, 2018. "Factors affecting purchasing process of digestate: evidence from an economic experiment on Sicilian farmers’ willingness to pay," Agricultural and Food Economics, Springer;Italian Society of Agricultural Economics (SIDEA), vol. 6(1), pages 1-12, December.
    11. Artem Korzhenevych & Charles Kofi Owusu, 2021. "Renewable Minigrid Electrification in Off-Grid Rural Ghana: Exploring Households Willingness to Pay," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(21), pages 1-17, October.

    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. John A. List & Michael S. Haigh, 2010. "Investment Under Uncertainty: Testing the Options Model with Professional Traders," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(4), pages 974-984, November.
    2. Catherine Kling & John List & Jinhua Zhao, 2013. "No More Despairing over Disparities: A Dynamic Explanation of the Willingness to Pay and Willingness to Accept Disparity," Artefactual Field Experiments 00466, The Field Experiments Website.
    3. Steven D. Levitt & John A. List, 2007. "Viewpoint: On the generalizability of lab behaviour to the field," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(2), pages 347-370, May.
    4. 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.
    5. Catherine L. Kling & John A. List & Jinhua Zhao, 2003. "WTP/WTA Disparity: Have We Been Observing Dynamic Values but Interpreting Them as Static?, The," Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) Publications 03-wp333, Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University.
    6. John K. Horowitz & Kenneth E. McConnell & James J. Murphy, 2013. "Behavioral foundations of environmental economics and valuation," Chapters, in: John A. List & Michael K. Price (ed.), Handbook on Experimental Economics and the Environment, chapter 4, pages 115-156, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. 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.
    8. John A. List, 2004. "Neoclassical Theory Versus Prospect Theory: Evidence from the Marketplace," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(2), pages 615-625, March.
    9. John A. List, 2006. "Using Hicksian Surplus Measures to Examine Consistency of Individual Preferences: Evidence from a Field Experiment," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 108(1), pages 115-134, March.
    10. 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.
    11. Pavlo Blavatskyy & Ganna Pogrebna, 2010. "Endowment effects? “Even” with half a million on the table!," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 68(1), pages 173-192, February.
    12. List, John A., 2004. "Substitutability, experience, and the value disparity: evidence from the marketplace," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 486-509, May.
    13. repec:ken:wpaper:0501 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Zhao, Jinhua & Kling, Catherine L., 2001. "A new explanation for the WTP/WTA disparity," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 73(3), pages 293-300, December.
    15. Pavlo Blavatskyy & Ganna Pogrebna, 2006. "Loss Aversion? Not with Half-a-Million on the Table!," IEW - Working Papers 274, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    16. Edward J. Lopez & W. Robert Nelson, 2005. "The Endowment Effect in a Public Good Experiment," Experimental 0512001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Tsur, Matan, 2008. "The selectivity effect of past experience on purchasing decisions: Implications for the WTA-WTP disparity," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 29(5), pages 739-746, November.
    18. 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.
    19. Clark, Jeremy & Friesen, Lana, 2008. "The causes of order effects in contingent valuation surveys: An experimental investigation," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 195-206, September.
    20. Bodo Sturm & Joachim Weimann, 2006. "Experiments in Environmental Economics and Some Close Relatives," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(3), pages 419-457, July.
    21. Venkatachalam, L., 2008. "Behavioral economics for environmental policy," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(4), pages 640-645, November.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • Q5 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics
    • 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:isu:genres:33895. 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: Curtis Balmer (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deiasus.html .

    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.