Journal of Student Research 2015

Journal Student Research environmental policy, but CVM can provide discrete values for the price of “free” computer software. The challenge utilizing CVM is the substantial sample size required to obtain statistically significant results. This research focuses primarily on the statistical software market for academic economists within Wisconsin. Using a niche population reduces the sample size, there fore reducing some of the sample size requirements. The interview research was aimed at both an experiment of methodology and a focus on how much weight to assign each variable within the a priori hypothesis. This methodolo gy reduces the high sample size burden required in traditional CVM. This research is vital to understanding this market for software firms specifically because if their competitors are offering comparable products for at zero costs it will reduce their revenues. Software commons are creat ing software and changing consumer purchasing habits online, controlling a market share of greater than 60% of web browsers, 90% of mobile operating system, and 66% of all servers use open-source (Brisco 2013, Glass 2004). Software development is a field in which companies create value through bundling and organizing information using a language of computer source code. (Brynjolfsson 2000). These products should be difficult to produce because each user is uploading a variant of their coding experience and style without any formal credential requirements needed in the traditional model. CVM is a powerful econometric tool that is underutilized due to less re strictive and costly alternatives, especially at the undergraduate level where funding is limited for research projects. In many cases, using this methodolo gy would reduce the time and survey costs. ment. A characteristic of market failure is when consumers (in this case a firm is a product user) receive an external benefit without incurring the cost of the benefit. The software developers are producing marketable products collabo ratively online for no explicit monetary return. They are contributing in small or large fashions in an extremely decentralized structure with explicit mone tary return. Commons-based peer production is a production model in which the creative energy of a vast number of people is coordinated to produce meaningful projects (Hess 2007, Bitzer 2005). Producer theory states that market prices are determined by the actions of individual agents (consumers). A competitive market has the fol lowing four characteristics: a large number of buyers and sellers, unrestricted mobility of resources, homogenous production, and information symmetry. Private firms continue to increase as relatively fixed size markets look to Literature Review Firms seem to use this software without investing into its develop

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