Many positive and negative changes are valued by people relative to a neutral reference state, which may, or often may not, be the status quo. Positive changes can then be either gains and the monetary value of the increase in welfare best assessed with the WTP measure, or reductions of losses, and like losses, the change in welfare more accurately assessed with the WTA measure. A means to discriminate between gains and reductions of losses is presented here, along with the results of tests of its efficacy, and a demonstration of its application to VSL estimates–with findings suggesting likely widespread biases of present practice of using WTP to assess the value of essentially all changes.

人们相对于中立的参考状态重视许多积极和消极的变化，这可能是，也可能不是事实。积极的变化可以是通过WTP措施最好地评估福利的增加的收益和货币价值，也可以是损失的减少，与损失一样，通过WTA措施可以更准确地评估福利的变化。本文介绍了一种区分收益的减少和损失的减少的方法，以及其有效性的测试结果，并演示了其在VSL估算中的应用-研究结果表明，当前使用WTP评估价值的做法可能存在广泛的偏差。基本上所有的变化。