Alternative Payment Vehicles in Contingent Valuation: The Case of Genetically Modified Foods

Abstract

In this paper, a secondary consumer food survey is used to explore the role of the payment vehicle in contingent valuation. More specifically, the paper investigates the household willingness-to-pay in the UK for a GM and non-GM labelling program under two alternative payment vehicles: 1) a standard product tax, under which consumers must trade-off some of their personal income for the labelling program; and 2) a taxation reallocation scheme, whereby consumers must trade-off some amount of their household’s taxation money that is currently spent on other government-funded goods. Contrary to previous valuation research, the willingness-to-pay under each vehicle is not found to be statistically significantly different, suggesting that in the case study investigated here, the marginal values of private income and other public goods in the UK are approximately equal.Payment Vehicles; Contingent Valuation: