• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.1-22
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• 2020

While contingent valuation method (CVM) has been widely used for non-market valuations, it has been argued that it may suffer from hypothetical bias. However, if CVM respondents believe that their responses could affect the real consequence, the method could satisfy consequentiality. If a CVM satisfies a sufficiently high consequentiality, hypothetical bias could disappear as shown by some previous studies. In this study, we experimentally compare the willingness to pay (WTP) for donation of a relatively high consequentiality group with that of a relatively low consequentiality group for Korean university students. We find that both the existence probability and the size of hypothetical bias are lower for the high consequentiality group. This result implies that a CVM for a real policy including environmental policies could be free from hypothetical bias because its consequentiality would be relatively high, and warrants a future field study investigating the effect of consequentiality on hypothetical bias.