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Measuring Stigma: The Behavioral Implications of Disgust

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Abstract

Stigmatization of products and technologies can lead to large monetary losses even when there are no associative risks. This paper reports on experiments that provide insight into the behavioral responses of disgust from an economic perspective. We use a dead sterilized cockroach to ‘contaminate’ drinking water and generate willingness-to-pay (WTP) and willingness-to-accept (WTA) measures of participants’ reactions. These results are contrary to previous results from research not involving financial incentives, as most participants’ WTP and WTA values are near zero for drinking cockroach contaminated water. Additionally, filtration of cockroach water leads participants to become significantly more likely to request compensation compared to spring water, but it does not result in requesting significantly more money to drink it. Finally, WTP and WTA differences can be explained by participants’ decision on whether or not to request compensation and not by the amount of compensation.

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Notes

  1. Depending on the treatment, participants would either ask to be paid money for performing a task (WTA) or offer money from a fixed upfront payment to avoid performing the task (WTP)–the “bid” represents either asking price or offer price. For a discussion of the incentive compatibility issues surrounding the BDM, see Horowitz 2006.

  2. Note that only part of the data used in this paper was from Keisner et al. (2013).

  3. Different exchange rates were used in the practice rounds to help ensure that the expected hourly wages for that section were approximately equal. All of the decisions involving the waters did not involve exchange rates.

  4. One individual who offered $30 for the CW stated in the follow-up questionnaire that their offer would have been $1,000 if they had been allowed to do so. Interestingly, this individual offered $0 for the SW, and after the filtering process, offered $0 for the FW, further suggesting that the stigma exists for some people and can be removed by some type of mitigation efforts.

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Acknowledgements

This publication was made possible by the National Science Foundation (EPS-1301765 and DRMS-0551289). We are also grateful to Julie Grossman for her help preparing the materials used in this research. Senior authorship for this research is shared.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

    Maik Kecinski

  2. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Deborah Kerley Keisner & William D. Schulze

  3. University of Delaware, 531 South College Ave., Newark, DE, 19716, USA

    Kent D. Messer

Authors
  1. Maik Kecinski
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  2. Deborah Kerley Keisner
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  3. Kent D. Messer
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  4. William D. Schulze
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Correspondence to Kent D. Messer.

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Kecinski, M., Keisner, D.K., Messer, K.D. et al. Measuring Stigma: The Behavioral Implications of Disgust. Environ Resource Econ 70, 131–146 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-017-0113-z

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