The social context of contingent valuation transactions

Evaluative judgments should be sensitive to features of proposed transactio ns that respondents consider to be relevant. One set of potentially relevan t features describes the social concert in which a proposed exchange of goo ds and payment would occur. Two studies asked respondents to evaluate the r elevance of social-content features in a contingent valuation-like task, el iciting expressed willingness-to-pay (WTP) judgments for a proposed cleanup of the Monongahela River Participants found social-context features to be as relevant as features of the good and payment. Moreover, learning about s ocial context reduced their willingness to participate in such tasks, espec ially for those respondents who lead already performed the present task. Ho wever, it did nor affect the magnitude of their WTP judgments. Overall, res pondents were somewhat favorable to contingent valuation. The studies demon strate a general method for evaluating procedures eliciting citizen judgmen ts of environmental changes, building on general research into the role of social context in environmental behavior.