Exploring the Influence of Attitudes and Experience on Valuation of State Forest Lands via Contingent Valuation

Abstract Scholars continue to stress the need to understand the relationship between public value and citizens to shift traditional public administration to a public-value-driven form of governance. Understanding factors that influence citizen’s perceptions of public value is becoming increasingly relevant to advance such practice, however, a citizen perspective is largely secondary to an administrator perspective in public administration research. This study adopts a citizen perspective of public value and uses a form of stated-preference method – contingent valuation – to assess the passive-use value of Pennsylvania state forest lands by residents via a willingness-to-pay question. The monetary value is adopted as a signal of public value perceptions to explore how both traditional (demographics) and nontraditional (attitudes and experience) characteristics influence public value perceptions. The findings emphasize the importance of understanding valuation of public goods or services at a level more personal than traditional demographics, particularly regarding resident attitudes and experience. The findings also emphasize the complexity of how experience with a public service may influence subsequent valuation, with at least one experience being more influential than continued experience. This stresses the need to better understand the link between public service valuation, experience with a public service, and coproduction.