The gap between willingness-to-pay (WTP) and willingness-to-accept (WTA) benefit values typifies situations in which reference points — and direction of movement from reference points — are consequential. Why WTA-WTP discrepancies arise is not well understood. We generalize models of...

This paper examines the three major explanations for the disparity between WTP and WTA observed in contingent value surveys and laboratory experiments: a belief that the results must be biased in some fashion, Hanemann's (1991) substitutes hypothesis, and the loss aversion model proposed by...