July 1985
Western Journal of Agricultural Economics
these values. The questionnaire instru-
ment was designed such that the sequenc-
ing of the two bidding games was un-
changed for all respondents. First the
WTP bidding game was played followed
by the WTAC game. Although this pro-
cedure simplified the interview process, it
could have possibly introduced a source
of bias in anglers’ responses to the WTAC
question. The extent of this bias would de-
pend on whether knowledge obtained in
the initial WTP bidding game was used
by anglers to modify their bidding strat-
egies in the subsequent WTAC game.
However, due to significant differences in
WTP and WTAC question formats, com-
bined with the lack of opportunity for an-
glers to learn how to influence the bidding
process, it was anticipated this strategic
role playing behavior would be inconse-
quential in terms of influencing final bid-
ding outcomes.
For half of Subsample I, the bidding
procedure for both the WTP and WTAC
question formats began at a starting value
of $1. The remaining 25 anglers in Sub-
sample I began the bidding procedure at
a starting value of $800. Selection of these
starting values was guided by two inter-
related concerns. First, there was the de-
sire to select values such that their range
accommodated all anglers’ true valua-
tions. Selection of sufficiently wide value
ranges would presumably eliminate the
problem of having to curtail bidding
games prematurely due to structural con-
straints on available bidding options. Un-
fortunately, no prior studies of Hawaii
offshore recreational fishing have been
conducted to date that might serve to in-
dicate the range of anglers’ valuations
which might expectedly be encountered.
For this reason, estimates of angler con-
sumer surpluses reported for other locali-
ties were used as guides. The need to se-
lect a wide enough initial value range was
conditioned by a second concern to select
starting bids that were realistic to respon-
dents. Based on comments made by other
34
bidding game experimenters, it was antic-
ipated that excessively low and high ini-
tial bid values could adversely affect the
perceived credibility of the hypothetical
valuation scenarios being used. As a con-
sequence, anglers might not accurately re-
veal their true valuations during the bid-
ding game process.
No attempt was made to formulate a
formal testable hypothesis concerning the
perceived realism of starting values used
here. This leaves open the question of
whether the bidding results were signifi-
cantly influenced by use of widely dispa-
rate initial bid amounts. As suggested be-
low, there is evidence that starting values
did at least have an effect on anglers’ will-
ingness to respond with positive final bids.
Due to interview time constraints, and
the desire to minimize the exasperation
effect, a maximum of five bidding itera-
tions were allowed for each question. A
strict bidding scheme that accommodated
the iteration constraint was developed and
adhered to (see Figure 1). The bidding
process could be described as oscillatory
because it converged on a final bid from
both directions. As such the procedure dif-
fered from earlier bidding games where
unidirectional increments (or decrements)
in bids were used. While it is possible that
large swings in bids may have confused
or annoyed respondents, this was not tested
for. A clear advantage of the scheme,
however, was that apart from differences
in the starting bid, the bidding sequence
was exactly the same for $1 and $800 bids.
Consequently, the “information transfer
effect” could be related directly to the ini-
tial bid amount, rather than to the overall
bidding process.
Within this bidding structure, final re-
ported bids were generally constrained to
lie between $775 and $25. Exceptions to
this occurred when the bidding process
ended prematurely at the first bidding it-
eration. For example, if in a WTP ques-
tion a respondent stated “yes” to a starting
value of $800, then $800 was recorded as