Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Petrolia, Daniel R.

Committee Member

Harri, Ardian

Committee Member

Interis, Matthew G.

Date of Degree

8-17-2013

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

Arrow et al. (1993) issued guidelines for contingent valuation, one of which was the recommendation that valuation questions include a ‘no-answer’ option such as ‘I prefer not to vote (PNV)’ in addition to the typical ‘yes’ and ‘no’ options. However, they did not give further guidelines on what to do with such responses, and there are various opinions in the literature. The objective of this thesis was to identify factors that affect the probability of a respondent choosing the PNV option in stated preference surveys. This thesis identified a positive relationship between offered bid for the proposed environmental project and the probability of respondents choosing PNV and a negative relationship between perceived consequentiality of the survey and the probability of respondents choosing PNV. From the findings, this thesis suggests possible solutions to reduce the frequency of such responses in order to increase accuracy of welfare estimates and cost efficiency.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/21067

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