Using the demand for hunting licences to evaluate contingent valuation estimates of willingness to pay

Taking advantage of differences in inflation adjusted licence prices over t ime, the demand for hunting licences is estimated. This introduces a differ ent type of validity test which compares willingness to pay derived from ac tual licence demand to estimates of hunting benefits derived by the conting ent valuation method. Willingness to pay estimates for deer and elk hunting derived from contingent valuation are statistically less than correspondin g estimates from the actual licence sale demand analysis.