Theses and Dissertations

Ruth Quainoo

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Petrolia, Daniel R.

Committee Member

Interis, Matthew G.

Committee Member

Li, Xiaofei

Date of Degree

8-10-2018

Document Type

Graduate Thesis - Open Access

Major

Agricultural Economics

Degree Name

Master of Science

College

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Department

Department of Agricultural Economics

Abstract

Hypothetical bias continues to be a challenge for practitioners of the contingent valuation method (CVM). This study compared the effect of three hypothetical bias mitigation techniques in a CVM survey focused on estimating maximum willingness to pay for a beach conditions monitoring service among U.S. Gulf Coast beachgoers. Beach conditions information is known to affect beach patronage but no valuation study has yet estimated its value. The two techniques tested are: budget and substitutes cheap talk treatments and certainty follow-up. We presented 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. Interval regression was used to estimate respondents WTP for beach conditions monitoring service. Both mitigation treatments were unable to mitigate HB. The mean WTP was $3.39 and the net benefit for the program was between $188,531,063 and $391,474,452.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/19970

Comments

certainty follow-up||budget and substitutes reminder||cheap talk||beach conditions information||hypothetical bias||contingent valuation method

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