Protest response is a typical abnormal phenomenon in the research of contingent valuation method (CVM), which is against basic economic principles and may result in estimation bias of valuation of resource and environmental goods. The recognition of protest response and the reduction of impact on the willingness to pay will contribute to the improvement of estimation validity. Taking the willingness to pay for the governance of green tides in Jiaozhou Bay as an example, we chose protest belief as the proxy variable of protest response, screened motivation factors of protest belief in survey and studied the direction and degree of impact of these factors on willingness to pay. The results indicated that the respondents who were willing to pay for the governance of green tides showed protest belief and their protest belief was even higher in some items than that of respondents who were not willing to pay. The environmental concern variables, dilemma concern variables and warm glow variables had effects on the protest belief. We also found that the overall degree of protest belief had significant effects on the participation level as well as the extent of willingness to pay and the direction and degree of effects between these respondents were different, which verified that the participation and payment were different processes. The results will provide guidance for the optimal design of questionnaires, standardization of operational procedures and reduction of estimated bias of CVM.