Quantifying the sources of value of a public service

Funding-level decisions for public services require estimates of the overal l use and nonuse values of the service and a way to assess what contributio n program elements make to these values. Economists have used contingent va luation surveys to estimate citizens' willingness to pay for public goods. Marketers have shown that choice experiments can be used to estimate the va lue of attributes of nontangible goods. Although choice experiments appear to be a useful approach to public good valuation questions, little is known about their practical feasibility and the validity of their results. The a uthors study public broadcasting to determine whether choice experiments ca n be used to quantify the sources of value of a public service.