Is Willingness to Pay for a Public Good Sensitive to the Elicitation Format?

This study uses actual payments toward the provision of a public good to compare dichotomous choice and payment card formats. The public good in question is the environmental improvement from wind generation of electric power. We find that willingness-to-pay estimates vary with the elicitation format. Based on this result, we argue that elicitation effects found in contingent valuation studies may not be due the hypothetical nature of decision-making, as has been suggested in previous studies.