IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/saea18/266715.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Mitigating Hypothetical Bias: An Application to WTP for Beach Conditions Information

Author

Listed:
  • Quainoo, Ruth
  • Petrolia, Daniel

Abstract

Hypothetical bias continues to be a challenge for practitioners of stated preference methods, and various remedies have been proposed to mitigate the problem. This paper presents the background, theory, and experimental design for testing two novel hypothetical bias mitigation treatments in the context of a contingent-valuation survey focused on a beach conditions monitoring service for Gulf Coast beachgoers. The two treatments proposed are: 1) a multiple-question budget and substitutes treatment, and 2) a cheap talk with confirmation treatment, to be tested both independently and in tandem. We present a theoretically-consistent model of budget-constrained utility maximization which accounts for the respondents’ subjective probability of a good beach trip with and without the beach conditions information. Data are to be collected via an online referendum-style valuation questionnaire sent to a randomly-selected sample of Gulf Coast households. Along with referendum responses and subjective probabilities, other information elicited from the respondents will include beach visit frequency, beach activities engaged in, knowledge of existing monitoring services, and specific beach conditions of interest.

Suggested Citation

  • Quainoo, Ruth & Petrolia, Daniel, 2018. "Mitigating Hypothetical Bias: An Application to WTP for Beach Conditions Information," 2018 Annual Meeting, February 2-6, 2018, Jacksonville, Florida 266715, Southern Agricultural Economics Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:saea18:266715
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.266715
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/266715/files/SAEA%20Mitigating%20Hypothetical%20Bias.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/266715/files/SAEA%20Mitigating%20Hypothetical%20Bias.pdf?subformat=pdfa
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.266715?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bohm, Peter, 1972. "Estimating demand for public goods: An experiment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 111-130.
    2. John Loomis & Armando Gonzalez-Caban & Robin Gregory, 1994. "Do Reminders of Substitutes and Budget Constraints Influence Contingent Valuation Estimates?," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 70(4), pages 499-506.
    3. Jacquemet, Nicolas & Joule, Robert-Vincent & Luchini, Stéphane & Shogren, Jason F., 2013. "Preference elicitation under oath," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 110-132.
    4. Aadland, David & Caplan, Arthur J., 2006. "Cheap talk reconsidered: New evidence from CVM," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 60(4), pages 562-578, August.
    5. Jayson L. Lusk, 2003. "Effects of Cheap Talk on Consumer Willingness-to-Pay for Golden Rice," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 85(4), pages 840-856.
    6. Timothy C. Haab & Kenneth E. McConnell, 2002. "Valuing Environmental and Natural Resources," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 2427.
    7. Laura O. Taylor & Ronald G. Cummings, 1999. "Unbiased Value Estimates for Environmental Goods: A Cheap Talk Design for the Contingent Valuation Method," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(3), pages 649-665, June.
    8. John List & Craig Gallet, 2001. "What Experimental Protocol Influence Disparities Between Actual and Hypothetical Stated Values?," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 20(3), pages 241-254, November.
    9. Carlsson, Fredrik & Frykblom, Peter & Johan Lagerkvist, Carl, 2005. "Using cheap talk as a test of validity in choice experiments," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 89(2), pages 147-152, November.
    10. Peter Bohm, 1972. "Estimating the demand for public goods: An experiment," Framed Field Experiments 00126, The Field Experiments Website.
    11. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:3:y:2004:i:6:p:1-13 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. repec:hal:pseose:halshs-00731244 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Champ, Patricia A. & Bishop, Richard C. & Brown, Thomas C. & McCollum, Daniel W., 1997. "Using Donation Mechanisms to Value Nonuse Benefits from Public Goods," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 151-162, June.
    14. Champ, Patricia A. & Moore, Rebecca & Bishop, Richard C., 2009. "A Comparison of Approaches to Mitigate Hypothetical Bias," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association, vol. 38(2), pages 1-15, October.
    15. James Murphy & Thomas Stevens & Darryl Weatherhead, 2005. "Is Cheap Talk Effective at Eliminating Hypothetical Bias in a Provision Point Mechanism?," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 30(3), pages 327-343, March.
    16. Jayson L. Lusk & Darren Hudson, 2004. "Willingness-to-Pay Estimates and Their Relevance to Agribusiness Decision Making," Review of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 26(2), pages 152-169.
    17. Brown, Thomas C. & Ajzen, Icek & Hrubes, Daniel, 2003. "Further tests of entreaties to avoid hypothetical bias in referendum contingent valuation," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 353-361, September.
    18. Blumenschein, Karen & Johannesson, Magnus & Yokoyama, Krista K. & Freeman, Patricia R., 2001. "Hypothetical versus real willingness to pay in the health care sector: results from a field experiment," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 441-457, May.
    19. Silva, Andres & Nayga, Rodolfo M., Jr. & Campbell, Benjamin L. & Park, John L., 2011. "Revisiting Cheap Talk with New Evidence from a Field Experiment," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 36(2), pages 1-12, August.
    20. Champ, Patricia A. & Moore, Rebecca & Bishop, Richard C., 2009. "A Comparison of Approaches to Mitigate Hypothetical Bias," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 38(2), pages 166-180, October.
    21. Pierre-Alexandre Mahieu, 2010. "Does gender matter when using cheap talk in contingent valuation studies?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 30(4), pages 2955-2961.
    22. David Aadland & Arthur J. Caplan, 2003. "Willingness to Pay for Curbside Recycling with Detection and Mitigation of Hypothetical Bias," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 85(2), pages 492-502.
    23. Johannesson, Magnus & Blomquist, Glenn C. & Blumenschein, Karen & Johansson, Per-olov & Liljas, Bengt & O'Conor, Richard M., 1999. "Calibrating Hypothetical Willingness to Pay Responses," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 21-32, April.
    24. Joseph Little & Robert Berrens, 2004. "Explaining Disparities between Actual and Hypothetical Stated Values: Further Investigation Using Meta-Analysis," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 3(6), pages 1-13.
    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. Haghani, Milad & Bliemer, Michiel C.J. & Rose, John M. & Oppewal, Harmen & Lancsar, Emily, 2021. "Hypothetical bias in stated choice experiments: Part II. Conceptualisation of external validity, sources and explanations of bias and effectiveness of mitigation methods," Journal of choice modelling, Elsevier, vol. 41(C).
    2. Milad Haghani & Michiel C. J. Bliemer & John M. Rose & Harmen Oppewal & Emily Lancsar, 2021. "Hypothetical bias in stated choice experiments: Part II. Macro-scale analysis of literature and effectiveness of bias mitigation methods," Papers 2102.02945, arXiv.org.
    3. Loomis, John B., 2014. "2013 WAEA Keynote Address: Strategies for Overcoming Hypothetical Bias in Stated Preference Surveys," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 39(1), pages 1-13, April.
    4. Penn, Jerrod & Hu, Wuyang, 2019. "Cheap talk efficacy under potential and actual Hypothetical Bias: A meta-analysis," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 22-35.
    5. Nicolas Jacquemet & Alexander James & Stéphane Luchini & Jason Shogren, 2011. "Social Psychology and Environmental Economics: A New Look at ex ante Corrections of Biased Preference Evaluation," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 48(3), pages 413-433, March.
    6. Atozou, Baoubadi & Tamini, Lota D. & Bergeronm, Stephane & Doyon, Maurice, 2020. "Factors Explaining the Hypothetical Bias: How to Improve Models for Meta-Analyses," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 45(2), March.
    7. Fifer, Simon & Rose, John M., 2016. "Can you ever be certain? Reducing hypothetical bias in stated choice experiments via respondent reported choice certaintyAuthor-Name: Beck, Matthew J," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 149-167.
    8. 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.
    9. Robert J. Johnston & Kevin J. Boyle & Wiktor (Vic) Adamowicz & Jeff Bennett & Roy Brouwer & Trudy Ann Cameron & W. Michael Hanemann & Nick Hanley & Mandy Ryan & Riccardo Scarpa & Roger Tourangeau & Ch, 2017. "Contemporary Guidance for Stated Preference Studies," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 4(2), pages 319-405.
    10. Donfouet, Hermann Pythagore Pierre & Mohamed, Shukri F. & Otieno, Peter & Wambiya, Elvis & Mutua, Martin Kavao & Danaei, Goodarz, 2020. "Economic valuation of setting up a social health enterprise in urban poor-resource setting in Kenya," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 266(C).
    11. Jinkwon Lee & Uk Hwang, 2016. "Hypothetical Bias in Risk Preferences as a Driver of Hypothetical Bias in Willingness to Pay: Experimental Evidence," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 65(4), pages 789-811, December.
    12. Penn, Jerrod & Hu, Wuyang, 2016. "Making the Most of Cheap Talk in an Online Survey," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 236171, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    13. Ladenburg, Jacob & Olsen, Søren Bøye, 2014. "Augmenting short Cheap Talk scripts with a repeated Opt-Out Reminder in Choice Experiment surveys," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 39-63.
    14. Dominique Ami & Frédéric Aprahamian & Olivier Chanel & Stéphane Luchini, 2011. "A Test of Cheap Talk in Different Hypothetical Contexts: The Case of Air Pollution," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 50(1), pages 111-130, September.
    15. Murphy, James J. & Stevens, Thomas H., 2004. "Contingent Valuation, Hypothetical Bias, and Experimental Economics," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 33(2), pages 182-192, October.
    16. Mohammed H. Alemu & Søren B. Olsen, 2017. "Can a Repeated Opt-Out Reminder remove hypothetical bias in discrete choice experiments? An application to consumer valuation of novel food products," IFRO Working Paper 2017/05, University of Copenhagen, Department of Food and Resource Economics.
    17. Whitehead, John C. & Cherry, Todd L., 2007. "Willingness to pay for a Green Energy program: A comparison of ex-ante and ex-post hypothetical bias mitigation approaches," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 247-261, November.
    18. Sergio Colombo & Wiktor Budziński & Mikołaj Czajkowski & Klaus Glenk, 2022. "The relative performance of ex‐ante and ex‐post measures to mitigate hypothetical and strategic bias in a stated preference study," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 73(3), pages 845-873, September.
    19. David Aadland & Arthur Caplan & Owen Phillips, 2007. "A Bayesian examination of information and uncertainty in contingent valuation," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 35(2), pages 149-178, October.
    20. Fifer, Simon & Rose, John & Greaves, Stephen, 2014. "Hypothetical bias in Stated Choice Experiments: Is it a problem? And if so, how do we deal with it?," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 164-177.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Environmental Economics and Policy;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ags:saea18:266715. 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: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/saeaaea.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.