Estimating the values consumers place on passively consumed goods, such as the existence of unique natural resources, can only be done by posing to them hypothetical questions intended to elicit their willingness to pay for changes in these goods. These questions are administered through contingent valuation (CV) surveys. Recent years have witnessed both an expansion of the use of CV surveys, especially in environmental damage assessment, and the development of ever more sophisticated methods for conducting them. Nevertheless, a number of fundamental methodological issues remain unresolved. One barrier to faster progress in resolving them is the high cost of administering CV surveys through person-to-person, mail, or telephone interviews, which hinders the use of alternative CV instruments within a single study to determine which instruments are more reliable. This research project takes advantage of the relatively low cost of administering CV surveys through the Internet to address several methodological issues within the context of a study of people's willingness to pay to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.
The most profound methodological question addressed by the project is whether the Internet could eventually replace the telephone for administering CV surveys. It does so by making use of a data base of cooperative respondents being developed by Harris Black International to conduct parallel Internet and telephone CV surveys. Beyond the question of whether the Internet could be a replacement technology for telephone CV surveys, the project uses Internet surveys as a tool for exploring several methodological issues relevant to telephone surveys. Specifically, the project addresses the impact of budget allocation questions and information provision on measured willingness to pay by comparing CV surveys administered through the Internet. The variation across budget allocation questions allows for investigation of ways of structuring instruments to encourage respondents to answer willingness to pay questions more in line with the way they make decisions to purchase market goods. Several of the instruments utilize the interactive capabilities of the Internet to allow respondents to select and consult information that would be impractical to provide through telephone interviews. These comparisons of instruments, which will be based on data from 6,000 respondents, may also demonstrate the viability of the Internet as a relatively low cost research tool for the development of better CV and other survey instruments.
