8 - Citizens and workers: the argument illustrated

Summary

We'll be citizens – if you'll let us

In our earlier discussion (in Chapter 3) of contingent valuation surveys conducted for cost-benefit analyses, we noted that many people (more than 50 percent in some surveys), when asked to choose an amount of money they would be willing to accept to forego some environmental improvement or in compensation for some environmental deterioration, respond by giving very large or even infinite figures, or by refusing to choose a sum at all, or by terminating the interview. It is a plausible argument, supported by evidence from the few studies of what people think about contingent valuation exercises in which they themselves have participated, that a central reason for these refusals is that in such contexts – when public policies are being decided – people wish to be treated not as mere consumers, acting in isolation in the market, responding only to economic incentives, but as citizens. They do not, at least in these contexts, wish to be treated as if they were specimens of Homo economicus, for whom the values of all things are fungible and all losses are compensable. They wish to be, and to be treated as, members of society and hence as having a part to play in the collective control of public affairs. I have also argued (in the last chapter) that, if a person is not recognized in this way, the motivation that would normally follow directly from her belief that it is wrong not to comply with a norm of fair reciprocity would not be mobilized.