Assessment of the Disparity between Willingness to Accept(WTA) and Willingness to Pay (WTP) by Value

摘要

This paper offers systematical reviews of the 30 years’studies on the disparity between willingness to pay (WTP) and willingness to accept (WTA). The paper presents a new explanation of the disparity between willingness to pay (WTP)and willingness to accept (WTA), based on previous research, especially on the experiments on the gap of WTP and WTA and through the analysis of value and existence value. The explanation means that willingness to accept (WTA) subtract willingness to pay (WTP) equals existence value that cannot be transacted, or larger. The paper highlights a better solution to the disparity between willingness to pay (WTP) and willingness to accept (WTA), features the equation of calculating the existence value of every unit article, and introduces the use of this equation to explain the generation, change and disappearance of the existence value.