RESPONDENT EXPERIENCE AND CONTINGENT VALUATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL GOODS

Respondent experience (i.e., a respondent's information set) has long been suspected to influence contingent valuation estimates of environm ental values. We assess the influence of experience by explicitly mode ling the relationship between respondent experience and both fitted in dividual resource values and the conditional variance of these estimat ed values. Using three different joint specifications for experience a nd WTP-normal/censored-normal, Poisson/censored-normal, and zero-infla ted Poisson/censored-normal-we find discrete jumps in resource values as experience increases from zero and that more-experienced respondent s have smaller conditional variances. Simulation of arbitrary levels o f experience allows standardization of the amount of information when developing welfare estimates. (C) 1997 Academic Press.