Willingness to Pay for Agricultural Land Preservation and Policy Process Attributes: Does the Method Matter?

This article examines relationships between willingness to pay for land preservation and policy process attributes. The approach departs from traditional welfare assessments in that it does not constrain attributes of the policy process to be utility‐neutral. Results indicate policy process attributes may influence utility in some circumstances, even after controlling for the influence of land use outcomes often correlated with specific policy techniques. Results further imply that in some cases, even comprehensive specification of land use outcomes by stated preference instruments may be insufficient to prevent systematic shifts in willingness to pay related to unspecified, yet assumed, policy process attributes.