ABSTRACT
Priority setting involves values. Unlike implicit priority setting, where the values involved usually remain unarticulated, explicit priority setting generally requires that values and preferences are elicited explicitly. Techniques for eliciting values and preferences have a long history in several disciplines, including economics, operational research, psychology and political science. In selecting/recommending methods for eliciting values, there is a major question of how far it is necessary to be concerned with their theoretical bases. Some claim that it is essential that the technique is grounded in the theory of their own discipline. For instance, most economists would favour only methods involving constrained choices since to economists, ‘The concept of value is intimately connected to individual willingness to make a sacrifice’. Methodologies which involve money, such as some variants of budget pie and willingness to pay (WTP), can raise problems. Willingness to pay approaches can encounter problems with respondent resistance/undervaluation where the options for which WTP is being sought are normally provided free.
