A relatively high degree of self-knowledge is generally assumed when information about people's values is elicited for public policy purposes. This assumption may be appropriate when people are familiar with a good and have extensive experience in valuing it. However, the available empirical evidence suggests that people may care about such things as maintaining a clean environment, reducing perceived risks, or protecting their health without really knowing much about the good in question or their own value for it. In particular, people may be unable to make even simple trade-offs involving such goods, let alone the ratio comparisons required by monetary measures of value. This award involves a three-part sequence of studies that will attempt to develop the key elements of a general theoretical framework to assess the nature of expressed values and the compatibility of value structures and value elicitation approaches. The research examines the way individuals define their values within different response scales and policy context. It then investigates how learning about the good itself and about the policy context changes individuals' expressed values. The research will result in alternative conceptions of the valuation processes that, by more accurately portraying the source and structure of individual values, is also able to lead to improved methods for choosing between competing public policy alternatives.
