Sufficient funds were available to allow for asmall sample using in-person interviews of about100 individuals during the spring and summer of1998. The sample frame were individuals living intowns nearby or along the portions of the SouthPlatte river under study. From February to July1998, we mailed 462 introductory letters to house-holds in the South Platte river basin in the follow-ing locations: two suburbs of northern Denve near the river and towns along the river (FortLupton, Fort Morgan, Greeley, Longmont, andPlatteville). To increase the chances for a com-pleted interview, we reminded the participantswith a phone call shortly before the interview. Asa result, only five people or 5% failed to show forthe interview. Two individuals conducted the in-terviews in the respondent’s home.1The disposi-tion of these mailings is indicated in Table 1 alongwith three different estimates of the response rate.Depending on whether one calculates the responserate on just those that were contacted by phone orall residents, the response rate varies from a lowof 25.7 to a high of 41%. The low response rate isdue in part to losing some individuals at each ofthe many contacts made. While the low responserate does not influence the illustration of how weportrayed ecosystem services, it certainly has im-plications for generalizing the dollar value of re-sults to the population. We address theimplications of this low response rate in the latersection.Table 2 presents the number and percent ‘yes’responses at each bid amount. As can be seen it isa fairly, although not perfectly, well behaved dis-tribution. At the two lowest dollar amounts, 100%indicated they would pay. With the exception ofthree bid amounts, the percentage of ‘yes’ re-sponses decrease as the bid increases. It is notperfectly monotonic, but some of this is morethan likely due to the small sample sizes in theindividual cells