I presented the origins of a paper that came to be titled "Temporal reliability of willingness to pay from the national survey of fishing, hunting and wildlife-associated recreation" at the AFS meetings in Charlotte in 1999 (co-author Richard Aiken). We submitted it for publication and received a revise and resubmit from Human Dimensions of Wildlife. We did much work, resubmitted and were requested then to write a completely different paper (were the referees of different mind or of different people?). Time to try another journal ...
Next up, the Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics. From an anonymous JARE referee in February 2003:
I usually think that there is a place for most papers in the literature, but I think this paper should not see the light of day in any journal. If it is published, I will be one of the first to write a comment criticizing the fundamental flaws in the analysis and interpretation of the data and estimation results.
While this zinger is well done, many researchers might agree that the comment is over the top. Researchers with smaller egos and thinner skins might just give up. We didn't give up (my ego, I'm sure). Ecological Economics invited us to revise and resubmit but they wanted much more work that I didn't agree the paper needed.
We declined the invitation and sent the paper to Applied Economics, a reputable journal ranked 64th out of 150+. Finally! it was accepted without revision (October 25, 2005). Finally! the paper has just appeared. Here is the abstract:
The US Fish and Wildlife Service's (USFWS) National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife-Associated Recreation (FHWAR) has been a source of information on wildlife-related recreation since 1955. The contingent valuation method has been used to estimate willingness to pay for recreation trips in the 1980, 1985, 1991, 1996 and 2001 surveys. However, relatively little comparative analysis over time has been performed. Similar value elicitation formats were used in the 1991 and 1996 surveys for bass and trout fishing, deer hunting and nonconsumptive wildlife recreation. We statistically analyze these data to assess the temporal reliability of the willingness to pay. We control for the effects of trip quality and socioeconomic variables and find that willingness to pay is significantly lower in 1996 for each activity. A subtle, but important, change in the 1996 question format may drive the result of lower willingness to pay.
You can judge for yourself whether it should see the light of day.
I think the Applied Economics folks accept comments in Applied Economics Letters. If my JARE friend is true to his/her word, this paper is gauranteed at least one citation! Sweet.
Eight years, four journals, one nasty referee, one word: "Jane, stop this crazy thing!."
