Factors Influencing Willingness to Pay for Current Weather Forecasts

In the 2009 BAMS paper “300 Billion Served: Sources, Perceptions, Uses, and Values of Weather Forecasts,” Lazo et al. reported results from a 2006 survey examining the general public’s (1) sources; (2) perceptions; (3) uses; and (4) values for weather forecasts. In this presentation we provide initial results from a mid-2022 re-implementation of a survey essentially identical to the 2006 instrument. A series of questions added at the very end of the 2022 survey included measures of (1) political orientation, (2) cultural risk theory, (3) vulnerability, (4) risk preferences, and (5) numeracy. This represents a very rarely undertaken effort to replicate prior research using the same survey instrument and methods. The 2006 analysis included 1,520 completed surveys compared to 1,202 in the 2022 implementation.

In the survey we used an “informal” question to elicit respondents’ Willingness to Pay (WTP) for current forecast information. Analysis of this question is the focus of this presentation. We first discuss limitations of the question to elicit WTP for current weather forecast information including noting that (1) this is likely a very difficult commodity for respondents to value, (2) we didn’t include a specific counter-factual, and (3) our elicitation method is likely more indicative of general preferences rather than valid and reliable economic measures according to accepted stated-preference methods. We then present an analysis of potential differences in WTP between 2006 and 2022. We follow with analysis of just the 2022 WTP data and the relation between the newly added measures of (1) political orientation, (2) cultural risk theory, (3) vulnerability, (4) risk preferences, and (5) numeracy on WTP.

Reference: Lazo, J.K., R.E. Morss, and J.L. Demuth. 2009. “300 Billion Served: Sources, Perceptions, Uses, and Values of Weather Forecasts.” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. 90(6):785-798. DOI:10.1175/2008BAMS2604.1