Individual Responsiveness to Information in CV Surveys : Commitment Matters

This paper enquires into the responsiveness of individuals to information in Contingent Valuation (CV). The impact of information is assessed using a sequential procedure in which individuals are successively presented with different levels of information. Two different types of information have been provided: scientific information about the good and information about the willingness to pay (WTP) values of the other respondents. Responsiveness to information is studied using an innovative CV survey where two groups of over 120 volunteers simultaneously provided their WTP (field experiment) and a standard telephone survey of over 240 respondents. Our results show (1) a higher level of responsiveness to scientific information than to information about the WTP values of other respondents and (2) a higher level of responsiveness in the field experiment than in the telephone survey. We discuss our findings using the theory of commitment borrowed from social psychology and explore the extent to which commitment could be a necessary requirement in the practical application of the CV method.