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Can willingness‐to‐pay values be manipulated? Evidence from an organic food experiment in China
Author(s) -
Yu Xiaohua,
Yan Binjian,
Gao Zhifeng
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
agricultural economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.29
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1574-0862
pISSN - 0169-5150
DOI - 10.1111/agec.12134
Subject(s) - willingness to pay , cognition , china , cognitive load , economics , psychology , microeconomics , geography , neuroscience , archaeology
Human behaviors are driven by implicit and explicit motives. Psychologists have developed two main tools, namely time pressure and cognitive load, to disentangle the two motives. This implies values of willingness to pay (WTP) may be sensitive to time pressure and cognitive load levels in practice. An experiment with 233 students was conducted in China to study the willingness to pay for organic food with consideration of different time pressures and cognitive load levels. Results show that (1) increasing cognitive load could significantly reduce consumers’ WTP for organic food; and (2) time pressure does not have a significant impact on WTP values. Such results suggest researchers should be particularly cautious about the cognitive load situations of respondents during a WTP survey.