Fairness in the contingent valuation of environmental public goods: attitude toward paying for environmental improvements at two levels of scope

Respondents to contingent valuation (CV) surveys give a variety of reasons for not wanting to pay money. This variability is likely to reflect people' s attitudes toward paying for the public good change, their altitudes towar d paying for public goods in general, and a component that is independent o f these attitudes but unique to particular beliefs about paying (e.g. 'I ca n't afford to pay'). Negative attitudes toward paying can contribute to an apparent insensitivity to different levels of the same public good. In a te lephone survey, northern Wisconsin property owners were asked about their W TP for four environmental public goods (biodiversity, Indian spearfishing, water quality, and wolves) at two levels of scope (part and whole). For wat er quality and spearfishing: the part was a chain of lakes that was geograp hically nested within a larger region of lakes. Similarly, the biodiversity whole represented a region comprising the smaller level of the public good . The scope conditions for wolves were quantitatively nested levels of retu rning 300 and 800 wolves to northern Wisconsin. Respondents' beliefs about paying for each public good and level of score were measured in order to re st their generality across the different public goods and levels of scope. Negative attitudes toward paying that are general across public goods place restrictions on the use of CV for environmental public goods. However, neg ative attitudes that are tied to specific environmental public goods sugges t that the valuation method might be difficult to implement in these cases only. Moreover, negative attitudes toward paying that are either general or specific may contribute to perfect embedding when they are expressed acros s different levels of scope for the same public good. Respondents' beliefs about paying for each public good were associated with an attitude toward p aying for the respective good and an attitude toward paying for public good s in general at both levels of scope. The general attitude was more explana tory of beliefs about paying for wolf reintroduction and spearfishing than were the specific attitudes. The distribution of beliefs was sensitive to t he type of good being valued, but less so to the scope of the public good c hange. Contingent valuation practitioners should seek improvements in respo ndents' perceptions of the fairness of the valuation process in order to fa cilitate citizens' involvement in decisions about environmental public good s. Avenues for future research are proposed and discussed. (C) 2001 Elsevie r Science B.V. All rights reserved.