TEMPORAL RELIABILITY OF ESTIMATES FROM CONTINGENT VALUATION

In 1992 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) con vened a panel of prominent social scientists to assess the reliability of natural resource damage estimates derived from contingent valuatio n (CV). The panel recommended that ''time dependent measurement noise should be reduced by averaging across independently drawn samples take n at different points in time.'' In this paper we examine the temporal reliability of CV estimates. Our findings, using a CV instrument desi gned to measure willingness to pay for a program to protect prince Wil liam Sound, Alaska, from future oil spills, exhibited no significant s ensitivity to the timing of the interviews.