Samples
Starting Point Bias in Bidding Games
775 725 675 625 575 525 475 425 375 325 275 225 175 125 75 25 775 725 675 625 575 525 475 425 375 325 2 75 225175 125 75 25
FINAL RECORDED DID
Figure 1. Bidding Scheme Followed for the “Willingness-to-Pay” Question Format Using Sl
and $800 Starting Bid Values.∙
their final bid. Similarly, if an angler stat-
ed “no” to a starting value of $1, then $1
was recorded as the final bid. However,
before the bid was recorded, a determi-
nation was made through subsequent
questioning whether the respondent was
actually refusing to play the game. In
WTAC question formats, the opposite held
true. Final bids of $800 were recorded
when a respondent stated “no” to a start-
ing bid of $800, and final bids of $1 were
recorded when anglers expressed a will-
ingness to accept a starting bid of $1..
Anglers comprising Subsample II were
queried about their willingness to pay an
annual user fee, and their willingness to
accept compensation not to fish for a sea-
son.4 An iterative bidding procedure was
4 The exact wording of the questions is as follows:
“Suppose that the Federal Government just passed
a law that required all boat users to pay an annual
employed and again the sequencing of
questions was kept uniform for all anglers
in the subsample. The starting values used
were $1 and $8,000. Both values were se-
lected to accommodate the concerns dis-
cussed above. A higher initial bid ($8,000
versus $800) was used because a fishing
season was being valued rather than an
individual fishing trip. The bidding pro-
cedure was limited to five iterations, and
followed the plan given in Figure 1 with
the exception that all bids (other than $1)
were an order of magnitude greater.
user fee. Would you go ahead and pay the annual
tax so that you could go offshore fishing in 1983 if
the amount which you had to pay was set at
$-______?”
“Finally, suppose that the government asked you
to stop fishing for the rest of 1983. In return, you
will receive a cash award. Would you go along and
not go offshore fishing in 1983 if the cash award
was $?”
35