Altruism and Willingness to Pay for Environmental Goods: A Contingent Valuation Study

摘要

This study aims to reexamine the relationship between altruistic orientation and individuals’ willingness to pay (WTP) for environmental goods using contingent valuation. Altruistic motivation is known to be an important determinant of WTP. In the attitudinal scales used in previous research, the context of questions about altruistic motivations is specific to environmental issues. Instead, this study employs other psychological scales that measure altruistic orientation in a more general context, independently from environmental issues. The result is consistent with previous studies, but the impact of altruistic orientation is rather limited. This difference suggests that the context of questions may enhance respondents’ consciousness about the environment and bump up the value of their WTP.