How the scope and method of public funding affect willingness to pay for public goods

Abstract This article examines the sensitivity of survey mea-sures of willingness to pay for public goods. Visitors to a science museum in San Francisco were asked to provide estimates of their willingness to pay for saving seabirds from oil spills and for teaching English to immigrants under various experimental conditions. Willingness to pay was substantially reduced by a seemingly innocuous reminder about how many individuals would be affected by a tax or would be asked to contribute to a given cause. This finding, which cannot be explained by standard economic interpretations of willingness to pay, is consistent with previous studies showing that subtle changes in question order and wording can affect the nature of the responses. Despite a tradition of skepticism about verbal expressions of prefer-ence, a group of economists has recently invested increasing intellec-tual and financial resources in public opinion surveys. The enterprise that brings economists into the orbit of survey research is the valuation of nonmarket goods. Resource economists define the social value of a public good—such as improved water quality, cleaner air, or the preservation of an endangered species—by the aggregate amount that all individuals in society are willing to pay for that good. Over the pas