Cognitive Dissonance As a Means of Reducing Hypothetical Bias

Frode Alfnes, Chengyan Yue and Helen Jensen

Staff General Research Papers Archive from Iowa State University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Hypothetical bias is a persistent problem in stated preference studies. We propose and test a method for reducing hypothetical bias based on the cognitive dissonance literature in social psychology. A central element of this literature is that people prefer not to take inconsistent stands and will change their attitudes and behavior to make them consistent. We find that participants in a stated preference willingness-to-pay study, when told that a nonhypothetical study of similar goods would follow, state significantly lower willingness to pay than participants not so informed. In other words, participants adjust their stated willingness to pay to avoid cognitive dissonance from taking inconsistent stands on their willingness to pay for the good being offered. (09-WP 486)

Keywords: willingness to pay; apples; cognitive consistency; hypothetical bias; instrument calibration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 Q13 Q51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-04-13
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Published in European Review of Agricultural Economics 2010, vol. 37 no. 2, pp. 147-163

Downloads: (external link)
http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/papers/p11300-2010-04-14.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Cognitive dissonance as a means of reducing hypothetical bias (2010)
Working Paper: Cognitive dissonance as a means of reducing hypothetical bias (2010)
Working Paper: Cognitive Dissonance as a Means of Reducing Hypothetical Bias (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:isu:genres:31300

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Staff General Research Papers Archive from Iowa State University, Department of Economics Iowa State University, Dept. of Economics, 260 Heady Hall, Ames, IA 50011-1070. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Curtis Balmer ().