摘要：This paper examines the criticism of contingent valuation put forth by Blamey,Common and Quiggin (Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics,1995, vol. 39, pp. 264±288). They argue that households have consistent preferencesover private goods but not jointly consistent preferences over public and privategoods and, hence, contingent valuation cannot uncover meaningful responses for thevaluation of public goods. In this paper we argue that the motives that aremanifested in choices for public goods can be explained in two ways. One is themodel of the citizen, proposed by Blamey et al. (1995). The second is a model ofneoclassical preferences with altruism. Given these alternative and competingexplanations of choices for public goods, what matters is whether they implydi.erences in willingness to pay for public goods. We provide statistical evidencefrom a contingent valuation study of the control of deer in the USA that there is nodi.erence in willingness to pay between those who profess `citizen' or altruisticpreferences and the rest of the presumably purely private respondents.
