Decisiveness, attitude expression and symbolic responses in contingent valuation surveys

Despite suggestions that respondents to contingent valuation studies often follow alternate models of individual decision making, few theoretical models have been developed. The paper presents a theoretical model of symbolic and attitude-expressive contingent valuation responses, drawing on relevant contributions in psychology and political science. It is argued that the highly symbolic and emotional nature of many environmental issues often activates the need for individuals to express their attitudes and values, which when coupled with a perceived non-decisiveness of individual questionnaire responses, can result in value-expressive considerations dominating some CVM responses at the expense of the desired outcome-appraisal economic tradeoffs. The implications for some topical issues in CVM are explored. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.