Journal of Risk and Uncertainty

, Volume 19, Issue 1, pp 203–235

Economic Preferences or Attitude Expressions?: An Analysis of Dollar Responses to Public Issues

  • Daniel Kahneman
  • Ilana Ritov
  • David Schkade
Article

DOI: 10.1023/A:1007835629236

Cite this article as:
Kahneman, D., Ritov, I. & Schkade, D. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty (1999) 19: 203. doi:10.1023/A:1007835629236

Abstract

Participants in contingent valuation surveys and jurors setting punitive damages in civil trials provide answers denominated in dollars. These answers are better understood as expressions of attitudes than as indications of economic preferences. Well-established characteristics of attitudes and of the core process of affective valuation explain several robust features of dollar responses: high correlations with other measures of attractiveness or aversiveness, insensitivity to scope, preference reversals, and the high variability of dollar responses relative to other measures of the same attitude.

preferencesattitudescontingent valuationpsychology and economicsutility assessment

Copyright information

© Kluwer Academic Publishers 1999

Authors and Affiliations

  • Daniel Kahneman
    • 1
  • Ilana Ritov
    • 2
  • David Schkade
    • 3
  1. 1.Woodrow Wilson School of Public PolicyPrinceton UniversityPrinceton
  2. 2.Hebrew UniversityJerusalem
  3. 3.University of TexasAustin