Testing for Consistency in Tourists' Willingness to Pay for New Nature Reserves in the Gulf of Morbihan (France)

In this paper, we develop an empirical test of consistency in contingent willingness topay (WTP) responses, which is based on the following a priori expectation. In economics,when an individual considers paying for public goods, his decision to pay, and his WTP arebased on utility-maximising behaviour. Accordingly, supposing other factors are identical, ifindividual A expresses greater interest in paying for public goods in general than individualB, that is because A receives more benefits from the use and/or the non-use of these goodsthan B. Continuing with this logic, if both individuals are asked about their WTP for a precisepublic good, A should logically be more likely to pay and should be willing to pay more thanB. Thus, the test consists in measuring the degree to which people are likely to give money forpublic goods in general, and including it as a covariate in WTP models for the specific publicgood. If this covariate is significantly positive, then WTP responses are considered consistent.If this is not the case, then future research might focus on motives behind inconsistent WTPresponses. To assess the robustness of the test, we consider 3 situations 1) the covariate isexogenous 2) it is endogenous and uncorrelated with the choice to pay or not for the specificgood 3) it is endogenous and correlated with this choice. Using a contingent valuation studyestimating tourists’ willingness to pay for future nature reserves in the Gulf of Morbihan, wefind that WTP responses are consistent in all situations considered.