A procedure to analyse the strategic outliers and the multiple motivations in a contingent valuation : A case study for a concrete policy purpose

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe a methodological approach to analyse the strategic outliers and the multiple motivations in a contingent valuation used for a real policy case study. Design/methodology/approach – The used approach rationalises the cross comparison of the overall different information levels obtained by the survey to outline a qualitative‐quantitative pattern of the relations between the rationale and other motivations of preference behaviours. Findings – The paper found that no assumption or investigation tool used alone was sufficient to explain the respondents elicited preferences. The results confirm that those who are willing to pay also hold significant motives other than the rationale ones influencing their decisions. Research limitations/implications – The approach allows to reasonably rule the sharing‐out of true zero values from “protest zeros” avoiding the risk of arbitrarily excluding valid data from the CV analyses. Practical implications – The approach may overpass the reasons behind the provision point mechanism; hence, the authors suggest to extend this procedure to divergent environmental contexts to verify the generality of the methodology. Originality/value – The adopted procedure shows that the use of monetary estimates of ecological services to support sustainable decision processes can be acceptable if coupled with the multiple motivations that hold them.