Willingness to pay in different policy-planning methods: insights into respondents’ decision-making processes

Abstract

The method of planning nature conservation policy is part of the social context in contingent valuation (CV). This study compares two planning methods in otherwise uniformly designed valuation scenarios, the actual planning, which the public criticized as being excessively bureaucratic, and a hypothetical one in which planning procedure was described as participatory. The results indicated that the planning method had a significant effect on people's willingness to pay for nature conservation. However, respondents for whom the project was of low personal relevance were not able to recognize the difference between the good and the planning. Consequently, their beliefs concerning the attributes of the good itself were affected by the planning method. In contrast, the respondents for whom nature conservation was of high personal relevance were able to differentiate between the policy-planning method and the good itself.