When do social cues and scientific information affect stated preferences? Insights from an experiment on air pollution

Abstract

Stated preference surveys are usually carried out in one session, without any follow-up interview after respondents have had the opportunity to experience the public goods or policies they were asked to value. Consequently, a stated preference survey needs to be designed so as to provide respondents with all the relevant information, and to help them process this information so they can perform the valuation exercise properly. In this paper, we study experimentally an elicitation procedure in which respondents are provided with a sequence of different types of information (social cues and objective information) that allows them to sequentially revise their willingness-to-pay (WTP) values. Our experiment was carried out in large groups using an electronic voting system which allows us to construct social cues in real time. To analyse the data, we developed an anchoring-type structural model that allows us to estimate the direct effect (at the current round) and the indirect effect (on subsequent rounds) of information. Our results shed new light on the interacted effect of social cues and objective information: social cues have little or no direct effect on WTP values but they have a strong indirect effect on how respondents process scientific information. Social cues have the most noticeable effect on respondents who initially report a WTP below the group average but only after receiving additional objective information about the valuation task. We suggest that the construction and the provision of social cues should be added to the list of tools and controls for stated preference methods. "Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof." Galbraith, 1971.

Measuring the Direct and Indirect Effect of Scientific Information on Valuing Storm Water Management Programs With a Hybrid Choice Model

“…In their robust literature review, Albarracin and Shavitt (2018) conclude that well-established individual attitudes about any specific topic tend to be quite persistent and that any single message or informational intervention has limited influence on changing attitudes. Specific to the effects of information in stated preference work, Ami et al (2018) find that a majority of respondents never change their willingness to pay values despite receiving various kinds of information throughout an experiment related to air pollution. Only about a quarter of respondents revised their willingness to pay values after receiving scientific information.…”

“…Specific to the effects of information in stated preference work, Ami et al. (2018) find that a majority of respondents never change their willingness to pay values despite receiving various kinds of information throughout an experiment related to air pollution. Only about a quarter of respondents revised their willingness to pay values after receiving scientific information.…”

The impact of academic information supply and familiarity on preferences for ecosystem services

“…However, many findings show that respondents involved in preference elicitation surveys are often not familiar and often do not hold appropriate information on the ecosystem goods and services being assessed (Whitehead and Blomquist, 1991;Hanley and Munro, 1992;Spash and Hanley, 1995;Blomquist and Whitehead, 1998;Lewan and Söderqvist, 2002;LaRiviere et al, 2014;Brahic and Rambonilaza, 2015;Czajkowski et al, 2016;Ami et al, 2018;De Ville D'Avray, 2018). Realistically, some ESs are clearly perceived by people while others are not (De Groot et al, 2012).…”

“…In contrast, the supply of academic information only targets to increase the cognitive knowledge of the recipient citizens. For instance, Ami et al (2018) reported that the impact of scientific information about the effects of air pollution on respondents' preferences, expressed as their willingness to pay (WTP) values, was strong. A proportion of people (30%) receiving scientific information revised their WTP upwards relative to the mean WTP value.…”

A diversified AHP-tree approach for multiple-criteria supplier selection

“…AHP is based on a decision maker’s judgment matrix, which summarizes the pairwise comparison results of the relative priorities of criteria (Saaty 2008 ). However, since only two criteria are compared each time, it is not easy to make all pairwise comparison results fully consistent (Benítez et al 2011 ; Ami et al 2018 ). To overcome this difficulty, an intuitive approach is to ask the decision maker to modify his/her pairwise comparison results (Lin and Yang 1996 ).…”