Contingent Valuation Surveys and Tests of Insensitivity to Scope

The central claim made by critics of contingent valuation (CV) is that respondents to a CV survey are inherently unresponsive to the characteristics of the good being valued.1In particular, it is alleged that respondents are not willing to pay more for more of a particular good; in economic jargon, respondents are insensitive to the scope of the good offered in the valuation exercise.2The focus of this debate is not whether CV results showing insensitivity to scope are obtainable, a point readily conceded by CV practitioners, but rather whether this result is generally avoidable with appropriate survey design, pretesting, and administration.