half (49.3% in 1993-1994) of all license buyers do not hunt/chase 

 lions in any given year (Annual Game Harvest Report, 1993-1994). 

 This effectively reduces our return rate by half since we could 

 only expect half of the hunters we sampled to have actually 

 hunted/chased lions. One thousand eight hundred (1800) 

 questionnaires were mailed to mountain lion license holders. 



From the initial mailing of 1800, seventy eight surveys were 

 undeliverable and 717 were returned. There were 702 surveys 

 included in the analysis, the remaining 15 surveys did not 

 contain information or were returned too late to be included. 

 The overall response rate of 40% was lower than other mail 

 surveys conducted by the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks 

 (Duffield and Neher, 1991; Brooks, 1993) . 



The Contingent Valuation Method 



The contingent valuation method (CA/M) is one of two widely 

 accepted methodologies for estimating net willingness to pay (net 

 economic value) , the other is the travel cost method (TCM) . Both 

 are recommended by the U.S. Water Resource Council (1983) for 

 valuing nonmarket resources. The U.S. Forest Service also 

 recognizes these methods and incorporates net willingness to pay 

 values into their RPA analyses. 



The contingent valuation method differs from the travel cost 

 method in that TCM relies upon observed behavior to estimate the 

 value of a recreational activity. CVM on the other hand takes a 

 more direct approach by simply asking people what they are 

 willing to pay for something - in this case a season of mountain 

 lion hunting/chasing. 



A number of question formats have been developed for contingent 

 valuation use. They are 1) the open-ended question where 

 respondents are asked the maximum amount they would pay for the 

 recreational activity, 2) iterative bidding game format where a 

 person is asked to respond yes or no to a specific bid, if they 

 respond yes then the bid amount is raised till they respond no - 

 in this manner their maximum willingness to pay is revealed, and 

 3) the dichotomous choice format where the respondent is asked to 

 respond yes or no to a specific dollar bid which simulates actual 

 market transactions. While each of these question formats have 

 their strengths and weaknesses, the dichotomous choice format has 

 shown it can provide fair approximations to actual market 

 transactions (Welsh, 1986; Bishop and Heberlein, 1980). 



Contingent valuation has been used to value a wide variety of 

 resources (water and air quality, hunting, fishing, and scenic 

 beauty) and is limited only by the ability of the person 

 developing the survey to draft understandable questions and the 

 person answering them to be willing to provide accurate estimates 



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