The name is absent



July 1985


Western Journal of Agricultural Economics

During the actual fielding of the var-
ious bidding games, many anglers ex-
pressed reluctance to engage in the bid-
ding activity. To a lesser extent, other
anglers stated emphatically that they
would pay or receive nothing ($0). It was
subsequently determined through ques-
tioning whether such bids were legitimate
$0 bids, or protest bids. Protest bids were
treated as nonresponses. Anglers who re-
sponded with legitimate $0 bids were as-
signed a final bid value of $0. Anglers who


refused to answer a given question were
not considered legitimate observations for
that particular question. The number of
anglers in both of these categories differed
depending on the specific question format
and starting value used (Table 1). High
starting values used in WTP question for-
mats appear to have discouraged or alien-
ated the most respondents as evidenced by
the relatively high refusal rates for these
questions. This finding is important be-
cause it indicates that selection of starting


TABLE 1. Number of Respondents Refusing to Answer or Reporting $0 Bids for Alternative
Question Formats.

Subsample

Question Format

Refusals $0 Bids

Refusals

$0 Bids

Starting Bid = $1

Starting Bid

= $800

I

Willingness to Pay Daily Fuel Tax
N = 25

2

2

10

1

I

Willingness to Accept Payment Not to

Fish for Day

N = 25

5         2

Starting Bid = $1

6

Starting Bid =

1

= $8,000

Il

Willingness to Pay Annual User Fee
N = 25

5

0

18

2

Il

Willingness to Accept Payment Not to
Fish for a Year

N = 25

8

0

8

0

TABLE 2. Final Bid Outcomes for Different Starting Values: All Respondents Except Refusals.

Sub-
sam-
ple

Question Format

Mean Bida

(X1)

Standard
Deviation
(S1)

Calculated

Standard T-Valueb

Mean Bid Deviation Ho:

(X2)         (S2) X1 = X2

Starting Bid

= $1

Starting Bid = $800

I

Willingness to Pay Daily Fuel
Tax

$9 (23)

$19

$90(15)     $198    1.96*

I

Willingness to Accept Pay-
ment Not to Fish for Day

$189(20)

Starting Bid

$204

= $1

$667(19)     $297    5.88“

Starting Bid = $8,000

Il

Willingness to Pay Annual
User Fee

$42 (20)

$179

$1,428(7)     $2,918    2.19"

Il

Willingness to Accept Pay-
ment Not to Fish for a Year

$5,176(17)

$2,521

$6,902(17)    $2,607    1.96*

a Number of observations used to calculate means given in parentheses.

bT = [(X1 - X2)∕√(N1 - 1)(S1≡) + (N2 - 1 )(S22)]√[(N1 *N2)(N1 + N2 - 2)]∕(N1 + N2).

* Indicates significant at the 0.10 level.

** Indicates significant at the 0.05 level.

36



More intriguing information

1. Valuing Access to our Public Lands: A Unique Public Good Pricing Experiment
2. Cross-Country Evidence on the Link between the Level of Infrastructure and Capital Inflows
3. Evidence of coevolution in multi-objective evolutionary algorithms
4. EU enlargement and environmental policy
5. Sectoral specialisation in the EU a macroeconomic perspective
6. Measuring and Testing Advertising-Induced Rotation in the Demand Curve
7. Why Managers Hold Shares of Their Firms: An Empirical Analysis
8. Trade and Empire, 1700-1870
9. Better policy analysis with better data. Constructing a Social Accounting Matrix from the European System of National Accounts.
10. Announcement effects of convertible bond loans versus warrant-bond loans: An empirical analysis for the Dutch market