Essays on willingness to pay, preferences, and experimental auctions

This dissertation firstly employed sealed-bid fifth price auctions to examine demand and the WTP premium difference between organic, non-GM, and conventional versions for two pairs of fresh and processed food products. Results showed that processed foods had greater substitutability than fresh products for all three versions. Conventional versions were the least price sensitive while non-GM versions were the most sensitive. Fresh foods did not necessarily bring higher premiums for organic and non-GM than corresponding processed products.;The advantage of using experimental auctions is that they create an environment where people have an incentive to truthfully reveal their preferences. However, this is not to say that people cannot misrepresent their preferences or be influenced by other factors. The second part of the dissertation investigated the consistency between WTP and preference in experimental auctions. It was found that inconsistency, which was that subjects bid higher (lower) for less (more) preferred products, occurred most often in pair of products which had significantly different expected market prices. The reasons suggested in this study were that bids were influenced by expected market prices, familiarity and desirability.;The third part was to discuss whether consumer WTP for a good would differ if it was auctioned with an inferior substitute compared to being auctioned with a superior substitute, and whether consumer WTP for a good would change when the number of versions in the offered set changed. It was found that the mean WTP for a good was significantly higher when paired with an inferior substitute than paired with a superior substitute. Moreover, the mean WTP of a good being auctioned with several superior substitutes was significantly different with that being auctioned with a single superior substitute. Increasing the size of auction sets would lower the mean WTP for a good. However, individual WTP rank for products was stable; the superior option was consistently bid more highly than the inferior option if they were offered simultaneously.