"I struggled with this money business": respondents' perspectives on contingent valuation

In the long-running debates about the validity and legitimacy of contingent valuation (CV), very little research has engaged directly with respondents during or after the survey to explore what individuals' willingness to pay (WTP) figure meant. This paper presents the results of qualitative researc h with respondents to a CV survey carried out as part of the appraisal of a specific nature conservation policy in the UK. The results show that respo ndents' questioned the validity of their WTP figures through discussion of the difficulties they experienced in framing a meaningful reply. Significan t difficulties included problems in contextualising what the scheme was and how much it might be worth in both monetary and non-monetary terms; an ina bility to work out a value for one scheme in isolation from others in other parts of the UK; and feelings that values for nature were not commensurabl e with monetary valuation. Turning to the legitimacy of CV, participants in the research challenged claims that CV is a democratic process for ensurin g that public values are incorporated in policy decisions. Recognizing that hard economic choices have to be made in order to achieve nature conservat ion goals, participants argued for a decision-making institution where loca l people could contribute to environmental policy decisions through dialogu e with scientists and policy-makers. In the final part of the paper, this p roject is compared with three studies that have also used qualitative appro aches with respondents during and/or after a CV survey. The paper concludes that more context-specific, qualitative research with respondents is neede d to explore further the conclusion that CV may not be a good methodology f or capturing complex, cultural values for nature and landscape. (C) 2000 El sevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.