The “more is less” phenomenon in Contingent and Inferred valuation

We examine inconsistencies in preference orderings of the “more is less” kind (Alevy et al. 2011) using the Contingent valuation (CV) and the Inferred valuation (IV) method (Lusk and Norwood 2009a, 2009b). We find that when moving in a familiar market for consumers (i.e., the food market) we only observe weak effects of inconsistencies. In addition, we find that the IV method is no better than the CV method in generating more consistent preference orderings. Surprisingly, we also find that the IV method generates higher valuations than CV, rendering one of its advantages of mitigating social desirability bias questionable.