Attribute non-attendance in choice experiments: A study of residents’ willingness-to-pay for the disposal of Enteromorpha prolifera in Qingdao, China

Abstract

Although attribute non-attendance (AN-A) in choice experiments (CEs) conducted in developed countries has received increasing attention, fewer researchers have studied this issue in developing countries. This paper presents a study on residents' willingness-to-pay (WTP) to dispose of Enteromorpha prolifera and restore damaged costal resources in Qingdao, China. Specifically, a five-level design of questions identifying attendance frequency was adopted to investigate the extent to which respondents have attended to each attribute during their series of choices in CEs. The results suggested the share of respondents not attending to each attribute was relatively lower than that in findings from studies in developed countries, but the finding of a large proportion of “partial attendance” was consistent with another similar study's results. Different models were developed, estimated and compared based on stated AN-A information. The statistically superior model suggested self-stated “never considered” or “rarely considered” attributes do not contribute to model fitness; the marginal utility of attributes in the “partial attendance” group are relatively smaller than corresponding values from the “full attendance group”. However, no significant differences have been found between WTP estimates based on a standard model and those based on the superior model. This paper can make several contributions to the literature on AN-A, as it was conducted in a developing country, focuses on a specific coastal ecological disaster and duly considers “partial attendance” cases.