Contingent Valuation When Respondents Are Ambivalent

Respondents to contingent valuation surveys may have difficulty resolving ambivalence over trade-offs between money and changes in levels of environmental amenities. In two separate studies, respondents were given the opportunity to express intensity of preferences through polychotomous choice valuation questions. This elicitation method produced slightly higher rates of usable responses than dichotomous choice, but with wide ambivalence regions. Dichotomous choice responses appear to reflect a conservatism strategy, in that ambivalent respondents tend to reject any move away from the baseline.