Respondent Fatigue in Estimates of the Cost of White-Collar Crime: Implications From Willingness-to-Pay Surveys

• Published date: 01 December 2020
• Date: 01 December 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0887403419900245
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0887403419900245

Criminal Justice Policy Review

2020, Vol. 31(9) 1366 –1389

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0887403419900245

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Article

Respondent Fatigue in

Estimates of the Cost

of White-Collar Crime:

Implications From

Willingness-to-Pay Surveys

M. Cristina Layana1 and Jacqueline G. Lee2

Abstract

Contingent valuation (CV) methods are used in many contexts to estimate non-

tangible costs, despite some indications that they may not be reliable. In criminal

justice, CV has been used to generate “costs of crime” for street, violent, and white-

collar crimes. This article explores respondent fatigue using both quantitative and

qualitative indicators from an open-ended CV survey where respondents were asked

how much they would be willing to pay to reduce certain crimes. Our findings reveal

that willingness to pay (WTP) to reduce crime increases when both problematic

response patterns and fatigue effects are accounted for in the calculation, indicating

that fatigued respondents who also engage in straight lining are driving the WTP

estimates down. We conclude by discussing the implications of our results for

policymakers and other consumers of CV studies.

Keywords

fatigue bias, white-collar crime, financial fraud, willingness-to-pay

Introduction

Although Durkheim (1895) argued that some amount of crime is necessary and

acceptable for society, most would agree that it would be best crime and victimization

1University of Maryland, College Park, USA

2Boise State University, ID, USA

Corresponding Author:

M. Cristina Layana, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Maryland, 2220

LeFrak Hall, College Park, MD 20742, USA.

Email: clayana4@umd.edu

900245CJPXXX10.1177/0887403419900245Criminal Justice Policy ReviewLayana and Lee

research-article2020

Layana and Lee 1367

were reduced and/or eradicated. However, the methods by which we can reduce

crime and the amount of resources that should be devoted to such efforts based upon

the harms they cause are unanswered questions. The starting point for many of these

discussions is how much crime costs society. Researchers have used a variety of

methods to estimate cost of crime, including “bottom up” approaches that attempt to

take into account individual components of the costs of crime and “top down”

approaches that elicit information on how much the public would be willing to pay to

reduce crime (Chalfin, 2015). This study focuses on one particular “top down” meth-

odology and the potential issues that arise when using it to estimate costs of crime:

contingent valuation (CV).

By eliciting an individual’s willingness to pay (WTP) to reduce crime, CV methods

are used in criminal justice to estimate intangible costs of street, violent, and white-

collar crimes (see, for example, Cohen, 2010; Cohen & Piquero, 2009). These “costs

of crime” figures are then often used by governments when determining how to best

invest resources (see Cohen, 2010, for a review of this literature). For instance, in

2012, the Department of Justice (DOJ) included WTP estimates of the cost of rape in

its regulatory impact assessment of prison rape policies (U.S. Department of Justice,

2012). This alternative approach allowed the DOJ assessment to include both non-

monetary cost estimates and the out-of-pocket costs of rape (e.g., medical costs).

However, criticisms of the method suggest that numbers generated by CV surveys may

not be reliable (see Carson & Hanemann, 2005; Diamond & Hausman, 1994). This

article explores the effects of respondent fatigue using data from a nationally represen-

tative open-ended (OE) cost of crime survey. The research purpose is twofold: (a) to

assess how respondent fatigue affects OE WTP survey responses to generate costs of

crime values and (b) to explore whether respondent fatigue is related to specific indi-

vidual factors of education, age, income, victimization, and perceived crime serious-

ness. Below, we discuss extant literature on WTP in relation to the different methods

used to elicit people’s preferences for crime reduction programs, along with research

describing how fatigue is implicated in survey methodology and the impact it has on

WTP estimates.

Literature Review

CV and WTP

As mentioned above, CV has been used in multiple contexts. It has also recently been

the topic of a special issue of Criminology and Public Policy (see Nagin, 2015), which

highlights the importance of further examining the potential issues with this survey

methodology. Most relevant to this project, CV has been used to value the intangible

costs of traditional crime, and to a lesser extent white-collar crimes. The majority of

these studies use a “payment card” methodology (see, for example, Cohen, 2010;

Cohen & Piquero, 2009), which entails asking respondents whether they are willing to

pay an arbitrarily assigned dollar amount to reduce a particular crime by a certain

percentage and stops when they are not willing to pay the next higher value they are