involvement in decisions about environmental public goods. Avenues for future research are proposed and discussed. © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords
:
Attitude toward paying; Contingent valuation; Economic values; Embedding; Environmental valuation; Procedural fairness; Protest responses; Public goods; Willingness to pay
1. Introduction
Contingent valuation CV research has iden- tified a proportion of individuals who are not
willing to pay to obtain avoid an increase de- crease in some environmental public good Hal-
stead et al., 1992; Lindsey, 1994; Jorgensen and Syme, 1995; Jorgensen et al., 1999; Soderqvist,
1998. Individuals’ opposition to paying can be associated with an information deficit, dissension
over the proposed means of bringing about the change in the public good e.g. the payment vehi-
cle, pollution abatement intervention, etc., an ethical objection to the idea of placing valued
environmental objects in a market context, the belief that paying for environmental quality is the
responsibility of government rather than individ- ual citizens, andor that other social groups
should pay e.g. polluters, users, etc..
The types of ‘protest’ responses cited above are sometimes distinguished from other reasons for
refusing to pay in CV studies. For example, re- spondents might feel that they cannot afford to
pay andor that the public good change is not worth anything. These responses appear to be
consistent
with theoretical
expectations Soderqvist, 1998 although CV practitioners
define protest responses in a variety of ways in practice Lindsey, 1994. Importantly, respon-
dents seem to rarely remark that their refusal for paying was based on a lack of worth for the
public good change Lindsey, 1994; Soderqvist, 1998; Jorgensen et al., 1999.
One conclusion that might be drawn from the literature is that protest beliefs are representative
of attitudes toward the valuation process Jor- gensen and Syme, 1995. Some individuals simply
disagree with the idea that they or others should have to pay for a change in a particular public
good. The question of why people will not pay becomes problematic when their responses to the
valuation question do not indicate zero consumer surplus for the proposed change in the public
good Halstead et al., 1992; Lindsey, 1994; Soderqvist, 1998. For example, respondents who
believe that they already pay enough, that the polluters should pay, that there is too much waste
in government, or that existing revenue should be used, may still value a certain public good im-
provement but not the act of paying more money for it. This situation is problematic because will-
ingness to pay values derived from CV cannot automatically be interpreted as the value of the
change in the public good.
2. Problems with censoring protest responses
