Experimental evidence on deliberate misrepresentation in referendum contingent valuation

The paper presents an experiment on deliberate misrepresentation in referendum contingent valuation (RCV) surveys. The experiment consists in inducing willingness to pay (WTP) for a credible laboratory public good with an uncertain cost and asking subjects to vote in an advisory referendum on the provision of that good without knowing the actual provision rule. Only half the participants voted truthfully, but their decision whether to reveal truthfully was not related to the size of the willingness to pay. A second experiment shows that this last result may be due to the advisory nature of the provision rule. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.