MAGNITUDE ESTIMATION OF THE UTILITY OF PUBLIC-GOODS

Stevens' (1957, 1975) method of magnitude estimation was investigated as a means of assessing the utility or subjective value of government-supplied goods and services. In Study 1, similar utility estimates of services provided by the West German government were obtained with different instruction sets, and, in Study 2, magnitude estimates and category ratings were highly correlated. In Study 3, student and general-public samples estimated the utility of both government- and privately supplied goods and services. Different utility-cost functions were found for the public and private items. In all studies, a weak positive relationship was found between estimated utilities and the costs of government-supplied services. Overall, the results suggest that there is an underlying construct of the utility of public goods and services, which magnitude estimation can be used to measure.