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Journal of Economic Perspectives

ISSN 0895-3309 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7965 (Online)

Contingent Valuation: From Dubious to Hopeless

  • Jerry Hausman
Journal of Economic Perspectives
vol. 26, no. 4, Fall 2012
(pp. 43–56)
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Abstract

Approximately 20 years ago, Peter Diamond and I wrote an article for this journal analyzing contingent valuation methods. At that time Peter's view was that contingent valuation was hopeless, while I was dubious but somewhat more optimistic. But 20 years later, after millions of dollars of largely government-funded research, I have concluded that Peter's earlier position was correct and that contingent valuation is hopeless. In this paper, I selectively review the contingent valuation literature, focusing on empirical results. I find that three long-standing problems continue to exist: 1) hypothetical response bias that leads contingent valuation to overstatements of value; 2) large differences between willingness to pay and willingness to accept; and 3) the embedding problem which encompasses scope problems. The problems of embedding and scope are likely to be the most intractable. Indeed, I believe that respondents to contingent valuation surveys are often not responding out of stable or well-defined preferences, but are essentially inventing their answers on the fly, in a way which makes the resulting data useless for serious analysis. Finally, I offer a case study of a prominent contingent valuation study done by recognized experts in this approach, a study that should be only minimally affected by these concerns but in which the answers of respondents to the survey are implausible and inconsistent.

Citation

Hausman, Jerry. 2012. "Contingent Valuation: From Dubious to Hopeless." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 26 (4): 43–56. DOI: 10.1257/jep.26.4.43

JEL Classification

  • Q26 Recreational Aspects of Natural Resources
  • Q51 Valuation of Environmental Effects
  • Posted by JOHN C WHITEHEAD
  • Posted on 3/20/2013 9:50:26 AM
  • Updated on 3/20/2013 10:31:55 AM
From a new working paper: Hausman (2012) “selectively” reviews the CVM literature and fails to find progress over the 18 years since Diamond and Hausman (1994) argued that unquantified benefits and costs are preferred to benefits and costs quantified by CVM for policy analysis. In these comments, we provide counter-arguments to the claims made by Hausman. We provide these counterarguments not with the intent to convince the reader that the debate over contingent valuation is settled but rather to urge the community of economists to recognize that the intellectual debate over contingent valuation is still ongoing and that plenty of work remains to be done. We review the literature and argue that (1) hypothetical bias raises important research questions about the incentives guiding survey responses and preference revelation in both real and hypothetical settings that contingent valuation can help answer, (2) the WTP-WTA gap debate is far from settled and the debate raises important research questions about the future design and use of benefit cost analyses of which contingent valuation will undoubtedly be a part, and (3) CVM studies do, in fact, tend to pass a scope test and there is little support for the assertion that an adding up test is the definitive test of CVM validity.
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