Arrow et al. (1993) issued guidelines for contingent valuation, one of which was the recommendation that valuation questions include a ‘no-answer’ option such as ‘I prefer not to vote (PNV)’ in addition to the typical ‘yes’ and ‘no’ options. However, they did not give further guidelines on what to do with such responses, and there are various opinions in the literature. The objective of this thesis was to identify factors that affect the probability of a respondent choosing the PNV option in stated preference surveys. This thesis identified a positive relationship between offered bid for the proposed environmental project and the probability of respondents choosing PNV and a negative relationship between perceived consequentiality of the survey and the probability of respondents choosing PNV. From the findings, this thesis suggests possible solutions to reduce the frequency of such responses in order to increase accuracy of welfare estimates and cost efficiency.

Contingent Valuation (CV) methods are a primary tool in environmental economics to ascertain non-use or other values not observable through existing market mechanisms. Because common CV approaches typically rely on hypothetical answers from surveys in order to generate welfare estimates, these are often labelled stated preferences. Results from stated preference methods often diverge from those obtained when actual preference or behavior are involved. This divergence is commonly known as Hypothetical Bias (HB). This dissertation addresses HB as it applies to environmental applications. To begin, a meta-analysis using a sample of studies many times larger than previous works was performed. Its results identify which study protocols exacerbate HB, and which may mitigate it. Furthermore, the meta-analysis establishes the efficacy of some popular techniques to mitigate HB. The second essay focuses on understanding and addressing two important topics to environmental economics, distance decay and charismatic species conservation. These effects have not been investigated with respect to HB. We implement a field survey of monarch and viceroy butterfly conservation, creating survey treatment conditions involving both real payment and hypothetical scenarios in order to establish the extent of HB. The key finding is that while HB is present for both butterflies, HB in distance decay exists for monarchs. There is also additional HB for monarchs compared to viceroys, which we attribute to the former’s charisma. The final endeavor studies the usefulness of consequentiality, a relatively new tactic to reduce HB. Consequentiality is the degree to which respondents believe their answers may affect policy outcomes. Relying on the monarch field survey, we find that using a technique known as ex ante consequentiality may exacerbate HB. Another approach known as ex post consequentiality is more effective at reducing the extent of HB in the data. Lastly, some elements of the studies’ results showcase that HB is not always present and can also explain some of the mixed results found on the efficacy of HB mitigating methods reported in previous studies.

Discourse creates the world of policy. Discourse plays a key role within policy formation; political discourse is made visible within particular discursive (spoken and written) practices. Hence, mental health policy is the endpoint of a discursive process and that it is, in itself, an institutional process. The shared understanding necessary to formulate policy is crucial to persons who are responsible for policy decisions and recommendations. Since the public perception is that public policy problems are too complicated for ordinary people to deal with, the policy problem is reframed into manageable "bits." It is how these "bits" are framed, named, and made sense of that concern me most in the policymaking process. The purpose of this dissertation is to make visible the often invisible processes that occur in the creation of that final report. To do so, I use a discursive approach and a selection of discourse tokens, both talk and text, to examine the workings of the Florida Commission on Mental Health and Substance Abuse.