Cost and Benefit Analysis

Introduction
‍The goal of this project is to quantify the student body’s willingness-to-pay for additional campus security through a sample of 10 students.The results are going to be presented to the concerned party, the California State University, Sacramento governing board to inform their decisions on the need for additional on-campus security, at prices that students are willing to accept.The initial stages were spent figuring out the respondent characteristics’ that would most affect the outcome of their average willingness to pay. Brainstorming led to a list of possible features including; age, health, gender, time of day on campus, time spent on campus, race, different forms of tuition payment and class year. After data collection, some of those characteristics were accounted for as to not skew the data. After collecting the data, it was determined that the respondent characteristic that would have an outsized effect on response was gender.1 of 8Gender was considered a respondent characteristic of interest due to our sample size, 10 respondents, and the percentage of men and women on campus, 44% to 56% respectively. To accurately represent the population 4 men respondents and 6 women respondents were questioned. Another differentiating trait was the time spent on campus per student. The logic being that an individual who spent more time on- campus might bestow more value to security then someone who spent less time on-campus. That under consideration, the surveyed students would have to be done during different times of the day and different class years. Covered by the three different classes, Sophomore, Junior and Senior level students.In any survey some inputs are given misattribution as a valid datapoint, in that respect there was a dropped sample where the respondents' answer was influenced by his friend. During his own decision making, his willingness to pay changed from $100 to $0, back to $100, then back again. After a bit of time, his friend inquired and started directing his decision towards a higher number. The respondents answer would work in other circumstances, although in this case, his judgement on how much increased security meant to him was influenced by his friend. Making the information given not his own based on the information provided but a mixture of doubt of his own initial price and what I perceived to be the price he was going to choose.
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‍Type of CV method used, questionnaire explained
‍The methods used in the Campus Security survey were a combination of many CV’s. The first used is the Double Dichotomous Choice. The CV method states that you are to ask the respondent if they are willing to pay an initial amount. If the respondent gave a yes answer, then increasing the amount by $50 each time until we reached a no answer or $350. If they answered no, then we decreased the amount proposed by $50 until we got a yes answer or to $0. Before asking these two questions, we had a pre-set random amount to open the willingness-to-pay question in $50 increments from $0 to $350. This style is very2 of 8much influenced by closed ended iterative bidding as well. Where Double Dichotomous Choice would have needed a graph and calculation, we went with a table analysis of our findings.The other method used was the open-ended CV method. When we had someone that said yes up to $350, out of curiosity, we asked the respondents what amount they’d be willing to pay for additional increased security. This method allowed us to figure out what the maximum respondents would be willing to pay without capping that amount to $350 alone.
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‍Sample frame(s), size(s) explained
‍Sample frame was 10 students to represent the population. Within the 10 respondents we split the survey into 6 women and 4 men, based on data collected about the current student population. That gave us a better representative WTP answer since it made the survey representative. After getting an idea of how we were going to conduct the surveys we went to test them.To test the initial surveys, I went out and surveyed sacramento students I knew or some that I could squeeze in between my classes. The initial surveys informed my bias towards asking the questions and asking in a way that took out my expectancy of a certain answer. On top of that, the format of the survey also changed. Due to the reluctance of students to giving their email address, I changed the survey to not include that information.Most of my respondents were surveyed during my study at the Academic Information Resource Center (AIRC). I interviewed this set of people due to the rain that day and people’s impatience in rain. I also assumed that since some students I surveyed there were studying, showing that they spent a lot of time on campus, with a mix of students leaving straight from class, which showed a reluctance to stay on campus.There was two examples of when someone contemplated their answer for a long time. The first was a respondent that felt that they needed to confide in their nearby friend. The respondent went back and forth on his willingness-to-pay and in the end was very biased to what his friend had to say.The second example was a respondent that knew someone who was a security officer on campus and seemed to grasp the idea of increased security pretty well.People seemed to be reluctant to take the survey initially and all respondents took their time thinking about it.
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Project period
‍TThe start of the project was marked by the finding of the data on the Sacramento State students and research into what security truly is. The date we started on the data collection was 10/01/2017. From then on we had other to do lists that we had to complete. On 10/11/2017 we were supposed to have completed the NIH certification program, something I completed at a later date and have the first few test surveys done, something I was able to complete on time. From then on it was up to us as a class to decide the title which was done 09/20/2017, a little bit before both the data and the test surveys were due. Then we spent the day of 10/17/2017 discussing what could be fixed, what the official title would be, that we needed to add the open0-ended part to the survey design, how we were bising our questions and what we could have done better to fix it. After getting all of that sorted out we had the official survey to conduct. After testing4 of 8a few weeks prior, I had started giving the official survey on November 13th. With the data I inputted all the results into the excel sheet to figure out the WTP of the total, representative sample, female student body and the male student body.The place to search for students was the AIRC. It had students that were there to study, those that only showed up for a class and those passing through. That got to the heart of the student body and allowed my sample to be diverse.To eliminate bias and deal with outliers took testing the survey.

From the data we can deduce that women are more likely to pay for increased security at a higher rate than Men. This was an initial assumption we made and the reason why both were separated into different categories. The data tells us a lot. First that dependent on gender the benefits of increased security is wavering. Men are likely to pay an average of $62.5, minimizing the benefits they’d get from increased security and adding a bigger sense of cost. Whereas women are likely to pay $229.17 (an average of the high and low WTP) for increased security meaning that the benefit they place on increased security measures is more than the cost may be.

Summary & Conclusion
In conclusion, it seems that increased security costs are a thing that students would pay for. There is however a huge disparity in what men and women are willing to pay for the same idea of increased security. The findings show us that the total willingness to pay for the student body is anywhere between 3,908,406.33 to 5,238,796.5 for additional security (found by multiplying the minimum representative and maximum representative WTP’s to the 29,349 population respectively).To have confidence in the sample values we’d need more respondents to represent the population. That would give standing to a more diverse group of the student body and give us a more accurate average to apply to the student population. Thus giving us a more accurate value as to what Sacramento State students are willing-to-pay.
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References
In conclusion, it seems that increased security costs are a thing that students would pay for. There is however a huge disparity in what men and women are willing to pay for the same idea of increased security. The findings show us that the total willingness to pay for the student body is anywhere between 3,908,406.33 to 5,238,796.5 for additional security (found by multiplying the minimum representative and maximum representative WTP’s to the 29,349 population respectively).To have confidence in the sample values we’d need more respondents to represent the population. That would give standing to a more diverse group of the student body and give us a more accurate average to apply to the student population. Thus giving us a more accurate value as to what Sacramento State students are willing-to-pay.IX. Introspective CritiqueSince there is a huge difference in what each gender is willing-to-pay, then if the ratio of men to women goes up, the amount that students value as a whole will fall. The change in the time spent on campus would also change our average willingness to pay, causing us to check for population growth.According to a 2007 report of the student population and demographic the change in gender ratios has stayed somewhat consistent. Only changing from 57% women/43% men in 2007 to 56%women/ 44%6 of 8men in 2014. That data allows us to assume that the change of the student body will stay consistent at least in terms of gender.The need for many respondents in double dichotomous choice also gives us a limited scope of interviewers. A stronger survey would have been done through the common survey medium of an internet survey. While making the survey harder to administer, it does give us more data to go off of and make a better value calculation.Another weakness might be the dichotomous choice altogether. It seemed that students who declined the first and second prices were ready to decline down to $0 as soon as they made those two first decisions. Little thought was given to each amount proposed after the first two offerings. The same might be said with increased beyond the two times as wel.For future research into the value of increased Sacramento State campus security would be that a better medium of interviewing be used. Along with a current “what you’re currently paying for security measure” breakdown. The breakdown would give students a better sense of what they’d be paying for, leading to a more accurate analysis of their actual willingness-to-pay. For instance if they knew that 10 extra security cameras and 2 guards costs $10 in fees from every student, they might be willing to pay $50 for increased security measures meaning more of both those two things. That doesn’t account for if that’s lower or higher than what they would have paid otherwise, but does get to an accurate answer of what they’d be willing-to-pay.