Abstract
Magnitude estimation of the utility of personally and nationally consumed goods and services was undertaken by student and general public samples. For the personally consumed items, a power function with an exponent around 0.4 provided a good description of the relation between the utility of the items and their cost. Moreover, equivalent costs for uncosted personal items, such as fine weather on the following weekend, could be reliably obtained from the function. The utility of the national items, however, was virtually independent of cost.
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I gratefully acknowledge the work of Cathy Clifton, who carried out many of the interviews. I am also grateful for the helpful comments and suggestions made by Alan Singer, Ming Singer, and Barrie Stacey on an earlier draft of the paper. The research was partly supported by the New Zealand Department of Labour.
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Kemp, S. Magnitude estimation of the utility of nonmonetary items. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 26, 544–547 (1988). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03330117
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03330117