Relating environmental attitudes and contingent values: how robust are methods for identifying preference heterogeneity?

摘要: We assess the importance and robustness of cluster analysis latent class as methods to account for unobserved heterogeneity. provide a critique comparison both in context measuring environmental attitudes contingent valuation study involving endangered species. find strong evidence these methods: group characterization assignment individuals groups are similar between methods, willingness-to-pay estimates consistent. In addition, there significant differences across attitudinal groups, we that accounting unobservable heterogeneity provides significantly better fitting model.