Subjective well-being and stated preferences: Explorations from a choice experiment in Norway

Abstract

Subjective well-being valuation has recently grown in use with applications in the fields of environment, health, and cultural heritage. With this methodology values are based on how non-market goods impact on self-reported measures of well-being such as life satisfaction. Despite the differences in theoretical foundations of subjective well-being and preference-based valuation methods, recent applications have attempted to integrate both approaches without the complete understanding of the effects of subjective well-being on stated preference elicitation. The present study investigates the extent to which subjective well-being impacts the responses to a choice experiment in Norway. The results indicate that momentary subjective well-being does not induce a higher level of randomness in the stated choices but rather affects the preferences for attribute. We also find that self-reported well-being measures respond differently to the cost attribute in the choice experiment. Furthermore, we compute marginal willingness-to-pays for various subjective well-being categories and discuss the implications of these results for an integrated modelling of subjective well-being and preference-based valuation methods.