Rethinking the scope test as a criterion for validity in contingent valuation

By T. Heberlein, M. Wilson, R. Bishop, N. C. Schaeffer. 2005

199 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract The scope test is widely recommended as a way to evaluate the validity of contingent valuation (CV) studies. We measured contingent values of parts and wholes for four different environmental goods and applied the conventional scope test. In addition, the study design allowed examination of scope relationships for individual respondents. We also used social psychological theory to expand the definition of scope to include attitudinal and behavioral scope. Looking at the individual responses showed that conventional economic scope test results, which depend on comparisons of average values, can hide important relationships that are relevant to the validity of CV studies. We showed that, as a validity test, the conventional scope test can lead to false positives and false negatives. We are led to question the efficacy and cost effectiveness of making scope tests a routine part of validity assessment in applied CV studies.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Marketing

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/49bdd5a650ca436222c2b16f0d9ea9c6a3d51550

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Citations in the corpus

Stated preferences for tropical wildlife conservation amongst distant beneficiaries: Charisma, endemism, scope and substitution effects (2012, unknown): “In short, sensitivity to scope cannot be regarded as a necessary and sufficient indicator of preference consistency (Banerjee and Murphy, 2005; Heberlein et al., 2005).”
How reliable are meta-analyses for international benefit transfers? (2008, unknown): “See for example Bateman et al (2004) and Heberlein et al (2005) The simplest approach to estimating the meta-model in (2), which has been used in several MA studies (Loomis and White, 1996; Rosenberger and Loomis, 2000b), is to treat all WTP observations as independent replications and hence assume…”
Contemporary Guidance for Stated Preference Studies (2017, background): “…to bid amounts or scope (Diamond andHausman 1994; Holmes and Kramer 1995; Blamey et al. 1999; Powe and Bateman 2004; Veisten et al. 2004; Heberlein et al. 2005), sequencing effects (Bateman et al. 2004; Day and Prades 2010; Day et al. 2012), and attribute nonattendance (Campbell,…”
The Economic Value of Water Quality (2008, unknown): “For other approaches to Footnote 14 continued anchoring effects and starting point biases see, among others, Herriges and Shogren (1996) and Frykblom and Shogren (2000).”
What’s in a name? The use of quantitative measures versus ‘Iconised’ species when valuing biodiversity (2008, background): “Bateman and Mawby 2004; Mitchell and Carson 1989), and a recent study by Heberlein et al. (2005) concludes that “When respondents know more about the part, like the part more, and have more experience with the part they are likely to assign higher economic values to the part than the whole”.”
Selection criteria for flagship species by conservation organizations (2009, background): “The basic requirement in every scope test is that respondents receive a negative marginal utility of costs (Heberlein et al. 2005), and it was found that willingness to pay decreased with cost increases.”
Making Benefit Transfers Work: Deriving and Testing Principles for Value Transfers for Similar and Dissimilar Sites Using a Case Study of the Non-Market Benefits of Water Quality Improvements Across Europe (2011, background): “…of income in terms of the budget 6 In fact, many alternative explanations might justify statistically insignificant scope effects (see, for example, Rollins and Lyke 1998; Powe and Bateman 2004; Heberlein et al. 2005; Carson and Groves 2007; Amiran and Hagen 2010). constraints it may impose on WTP.”
Classifying Ecosystem Services for Economic Valuation: The case of forest water services (2010, background): “However, recent studies defend the idea that non-use values are strictly related to the existence of a resource, and scope insensitivity cannot be a criteria for invalidating contingent valuation (Heberlein et al., 2005; Ojea and Loureiro, 2009).”
External Tests of Scope and Embedding in Stated Preference Choice Experiments: An Application to Endangered Species Valuation (2011, methodology): “The analysis in this paper follows the conventional approach (sample-level, not individuallevel, analysis), but future analysis along the lines of Heberlein et al. (2005) may provide further insights into the patterns of WTP estimates presented here and may be worth pursuing in the context of…”
Estimating discount rates for environmental quality from utility-based choice experiments (2008, background): “8 As emphasized by Heberlein et al. (2005), additional types of scope tests can be more informative. Extensive scope test results are reported in Huber et al. (2008), including behavioral scope tests and affective scope tests.”