Putting One's Money Where One's Mouth is: Increasing Saliency in the Field

We present a novel approach to address differences between stated and paid choices by incentivizing stated choices in a randomized field experiment. The treatment increases consequentiality in the field by making each decision financially relevant. Our results show that the treatment effect is small in aggregate. However, we find that the treatment increases estimates of the marginal utility of income, especially among low-income households. The treatment also affects estimates of preferences for specific attributes by reducing willingness to pay for attributes with indirect benefits. Respondents with greater self-reported environmental preferences are more susceptible to the treatment in attribute space.

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