What do respondents bring into contingent valuation? A comparison of monetary and labour payment vehicles

Abstract

In the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM), both the goods being valued and the payment vehicles used to value them are mostly hypothetical. However, although numerous studies have examined the impact of experience with the good on the willingness to pay, less attention has been given to experience with the payment vehicles. This paper examines how experience with payment vehicles influences responses to a CV scenario on the maintenance of irrigation canals. Specifically, the paper uses a split-sample survey to investigate the effects of experience with monetary and labour payment vehicles on the acceptance of a CV scenario and protest bids. Using convergent validity tests, we found that experience acquired from using both monetary and labour payment vehicles reduces the asymmetries in acceptance rates. These findings suggest that experience with payment vehicles reduces time/money response asymmetries in the CVM.