The Role of Sensory Perception in Consumer Demand for Tinned Meat: A Contingent Valuation Study

This study presents an analysis of consumer preferences for a new food product: Tinned Chianina meat. Respondents (N = 249) participated in a sensory test, where they were also asked to declare their willingness to pay (WTP) for the tasted product. The WTP data were collected after the sensory test by means of the contingent valuation method using a payment card elicitation format. Data were analysed with Cragg’s double-hurdle model to understand which factors influenced market participation (WTP > 0) and then the variables that influenced the declared WTP. According to our results, sensory perception played a key role in explaining both participation in the market and the magnitude of the expressed WTP. Moreover, we found that the sensory aspects have a different effect on the decision to participate in the market and on the magnitude of the expressed WTP. Smell and flavour are the most important in determining the probability of entering the market, while texture has the greatest impact on the declared WTP.

Investigating Consumer Demand and Willingness to Pay for Fresh, Local, Organic, and “On-the-Stalk” Edamame

Introduction of locally adapted, commercially viable edamame varieties can allow it to be marketed as fresh, local, organic, or on the stalk. Here, we utilized a one-and-one-half bounded (OOHB) elicitation format to estimate mean willingness to pay (WTP) for these external attributes in relation to a vector of explanatory variables. Results showed 84-, 85-, and 28-cent premiums for fresh, local, and organic edamame (10 oz). Pro-environmental attitudes drove WTP for all three of these attributes, while shopping location significantly increased mean WTP for fresh and organic attributes. A 40-cent price discount was observed for the “on-the-stalk” attribute, suggesting that convenience also plays an important role in marketing edamame. The results suggest that more research regarding edamame demand is warranted.

Welfare values of sustained urban water flows for recreational and cultural amenities under climate change

The main objective of this study is to estimate the welfare values related to sustained water flows in the Zayandeh-Rud River for recreational and cultural amenities in the urban park of Isfahan City in Iran. As is elsewhere the case in arid regions, the drying up of the river due to growing water demand and the increasingly constrained water supply as a result of climate change and more frequent droughts is expected to result in a substantial welfare loss. A double-bounded discrete choice elicitation format is applied in a stated choice survey conducted among local residents and non-residential visitors, focusing on distance-decay and the relationship between income and demand for sustained water flows in publicly provided urban space under climate change. We reject the general finding in the literature that visitors living further away are willing to pay more for unique sites. We show that the recreational services provided by the park can be characterized as a normal economic good for which those living closer by are willing to pay more than those living further away. These results provide an important benchmark for future stated preference research related to welfare valuation of water in urban open space under climate change.

Sources of Bias in Judgment and Decision Making

Sources of bias in confidence and probability judgments, for example conservatism, overconfidence, and subadditivity, are some of the most important and rigorously researched topics within judgment and decision making. However, despite the seemingly obvious importance of memory processes on these types of judgments, much of this research has focused on external factors independent of memory processes, such as the effects of various types of elicitation format. In this chapter, we review the research relevant to commonly observed effects related to confidence and probability judgment, and then provide a memory-process account of these phenomena based on two models: Minerva-DM, a multiple-trace memory model; and HyGene, an extension of Minerva-DM that incorporates hypothesis generation. We contend that accounting for the dependence of judgments on memory provides a unifying theoretical framework for these various phenomena, as well as cognitive models that accurately reflect real-world behavior.

Measuring the Prevalence of Questionable Research Practices With Incentives for Truth Telling

Cases of clear scientific misconduct have received significant media attention recently, but less flagrantly questionable research practices may be more prevalent and, ultimately, more damaging to the academic enterprise. Using an anonymous elicitation format supplemented by incentives for honest reporting, we surveyed over 2,000 psychologists about their involvement in questionable research practices. The impact of truth-telling incentives on self-admissions of questionable research practices was positive, and this impact was greater for practices that respondents judged to be less defensible. Combining three different estimation methods, we found that the percentage of respondents who have engaged in questionable practices was surprisingly high. This finding suggests that some questionable practices may constitute the prevailing research norm.