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Exploring Divergence Between Respondent and Researcher Definitions of the Good in Contingent Valuation Studies
Author(s) -
Chilton S. M.,
Hutchinson W. G.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
journal of agricultural economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.157
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1477-9552
pISSN - 0021-857X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1477-9552.1999.tb00791.x
Subject(s) - respondent , valuation (finance) , contingent valuation , database transaction , actuarial science , transaction data , econlit , economics , microeconomics , computer science , willingness to pay , political science , medline , accounting , programming language , law
In Contingent Valuation studies, researchers often base their definition of the environmental good on scientific/expert consensus. However, respondents may not hold this same commodity definition prior to the transaction. This raises questions as to the potential for staging a satisfactory transaction, based on Fischoff and Furby's (1988) criteria. Some unresolved issues regarding the provision of information to respondents to facilitate such a transaction are highlighted. In this paper, we apply content analysis to focus group discussions and develop a set of rules which take account of the non‐independence of group data to explore whether researcher and respondents' prior definitions are in any way similar. We use the results to guide information provision in a subsequent questionnaire.