Monetary valuation of non-market goods and services: a review of conceptual approaches and empirical applications in sports

ABSTRACT

Research question: Monetary valuation of non-market goods has become increasingly important to inform sport managers and policy makers. This article set out to conduct a literature review, describe empirical applications within sports, and present a typology and conceptual discussion of valuation approaches.

Research methods: A literature review, synthesis, and critical assessment of existing monetary valuation research in sports were performed.

Results and findings: The review identified 113 articles which employed eight different valuation approaches. The contingent valuation method (CVM), hedonic pricing (HP), and the travel cost method (TCM) were the most frequently applied approaches. The most popular research contexts were professional team sports, sport tourism, and sport events. Valuation research was mainly conducted in the United States, Germany, and the UK. Altogether, 179 different scholars have contributed to this body of research, with 15 scholars having published at least three papers on this topic. The valuation approaches were assigned to three main categories: revealed preference approaches, including HP, opportunity cost approach (OCA), replacement cost approach (RCA), compensating variation approach (CVA), and TCM; stated preference approaches, including CVM, contingent behavior method (CBM), and choice modeling (CM); and hybrid approaches combining revealed and stated preference approaches.

Implications: Future valuation research should exploit the advantages of hybrid approaches and provide comparisons of monetary values obtained by different valuation approaches.

KEYWORDS:

• Revealed preferences
• stated references
• volunteer
• well-being
• willingness-to-pay

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 For example, existing research has assigned the compensating variation approach to a separate category labeled experienced preferences (Welsch & Ferreira, 2013), acknowledging the distinction between decision utility and experienced utility (Kahneman, Wakker, & Sarin, 1997).