Valuation, Consequentiality, and Opt-Out Responses to Stated Preference Surveys

The objective of this study was to test for the effect of consequentiality on the probability of a respondent opting out of voting in a stated preference survey. We find that respondents who believe the survey is inconsequential are more likely to opt out than to vote ‘yes’ in both binomial-choice and multinomial-choice formats, and that these respondents are more likely to vote ‘no’ than to opt out in the multinomial-choice format. We also find that respondents who have uncertain consequentiality perceptions are more likely to opt out than to choose ‘yes’ or ‘no’ under both choice formats