models for referendum data the structure of discrete choice models for contingent valuation abstract in 1979 bishop and heberlein introduced an appealing variant of the contingent valuation method which required only yes or no responses hanemann developed a utility theoretic interpretation of the yes no responses which has helped popularize the approach recently cameron has offered another interpretation also utility theoretic which she argues is more general than the hanemann random utility model this paper compares the deterministic models suggested by hanemann and cameron showing them to be dual to each other it shows that correct specification of either function must exclude endogenous variables such as quantity demanded it also demonstrates that using utility theoretic models allows one to compare travel cost models and contigent valuation models on the basis of their implied behavior not on the unobservable surplus or variation measure

climate coalitions and international trade assessment of cooperation incentives by issue linkage this paper investigates climate control coalition games it studies whether incentives exist for non cooperating nations like the usa to join a coalition based upon issue linkage issue linkage is considered through increased r d expenditures triggering improved technological innovations that advance energy efficiencies model calculations demonstrate that incentives exist for non cooperating countries like the usa to join a climate control coalition if nations cooperate on technological innovations restrictions on trade such as sanction mechanisms against non cooperating countries are not necessarily an incentive to join a coalition technological spillover effects lead to improved economic situations and increased energy efficiencies in non cooperating countries

referenda under oath herein we explore whether a solemn oath can eliminate hypothetical bias in a voting referenda a popular elicitation mechanism promoted in non market valuation exercises for its incentive compatibility properties first we reject the null hypothesis that a hypothetical bias does not exist second we observe that people who sign an oath are significantly less likely to vote for the public good in a hypothetical referenda we complement this evidence with a self reported measure of honesty which confirms that the oath increases truthfulness in answers this result opens interesting avenues for improving the elicitation of preferences in the lab and beyond

valuation of non priced amenities provided by the biological resources within the monteverde cloud forest preserve costa rica abstract to quantify the economic benefits of the monteverde cloud forest preserve and to test the contingent valuation method in a third world setting a contingent valuation survey was designed with five experimental treatments these determined an overall expected value per visitor determined and compared two ways of eliciting value single versus annual lump sum payments and compared average values of costa rican versus non costa rican visitors visitors were willing to pay to prevent the preserve s conversion to agricultural uses monteverde s value as a cloud forest preserve appears much higher than any value it might have in agricultural use despite lower incomes costa rican visitors valued the preserve more highly than non costa rican visitors visitors may have differentiated only weakly between greatly differing bid amounts expected values derived from econometric analysis of the differing experimental treatments suggest that further methodological adaptation of the contingent valuation method may be required 1 when it is applied in third world settings and 2 when precision is critical in estimating wtps

the effect of within season variability on estimates of recreational value for trout anglers in new zealand abstract recreational benefit estimates can be substantially improved by incorporation of data on attributes that are averaged over shorter periods of time so as to better represent within season variability this approach may be advantageous across a wide range of non market valuation settings we use angling survey data that includes bimonthly data on angler demand water quality and fish weight in the rotorua lakes and compare our results with those obtained using attribute data averaged over the year estimates of marginal willingness to pay for catching fish based on annual data are 5 times higher than those based on bimonthly data likewise the estimated welfare gain from a 1 m increase in water clarity is 1 5 times higher in models using annual data we find that within season variability in recreational site attributes can have a statistically significant effect on welfare estimates the effect of seasonal variation in site attributes has rarely been accounted for in travel cost random utility models of recreation we conclude that appropriate treatment of temporal variability can assist environmental managers to design more cost effective policies based on improved estimates of welfare gains

valuing morbidity from wildfire smoke exposure a comparison of revealed and stated preference techniques estimating the economic benefits of reduced health damages due to improvements in environmental quality continues to challenge economists we review welfare measures associated with reduced wildfire smoke exposure and a unique dataset from california s station fire of 2009 allows for a comparison of cost of illness coi estimates with willingness to pay wtp measures the wtp for one less symptom day is estimated to be 87 and 95 using the defensive behavior and contingent valuation methods respectively these wtp estimates are not statistically different but do differ from a 3 traditional daily coi estimate and 17 comprehensive daily coi estimate jel q51 q53

the value of online banking to small and medium sized enterprises evidence from firms operating in the uae free trade zones abstractthis study estimates the willingness to pay of small and medium sized enterprises smes for a business online banking services the estimation utilizes a contingent valuation method employing data from 400 smes in the united arab emirates free zones an interval regression model is used to identify company characteristics affecting wtp the results indicate an average wtp for online banking of 518 50 per month firms engaging in international trade value these services at least 10 more than those with only domestic operations other variables that significantly affect wtp include number of employees and the transportation cost of using traditional branch banking

estimating distributions of willingness to pay for heterogeneous populations random parameters logit models have emerged as a standard approach in estimating public preferences for a range of goods and services however to simplify calculation of welfare measures the marginal utility of income is often assumed to be constant across the population we show that by shifting distributional assumptions from marginal utilities to the welfare measures themselves a random parameters version of a censored logistic regression model cameron 1988 yields distributions of welfare measures more directly and without imposing any unnecessary assumption on the marginal utility of income we develop the theoretical framework for the model and apply it to contingent choice survey data for siting a noxious facility in rhode island in this application our proposed model and random parameters logit yield similar mean willingness to pay but welfare measures are more readily interpretable in the proposed model

hedonic theory bid rents and willingness to pay some extensions of ellickson s results abstract an alternative to ellickson s multinomial logit model of household bids for dwelling units is derived by making use of observable information on the price paid by the winning bidder the alternative specification makes it possible to estimate willingness to pay for housing attributes which cannot be obtained from ellickson s model some methodological issues arising from ellickson s method of grouping households are also examined

incentive incompatibility and starting point bias in iterative valuation questions we test for incentive incompatibility and starting point bias to describe the effects of iterative valuation questions on willingness to pay we compare double triple and multiplebounded models with data from two surveys with similar designs of the valuation questions we find that incentive incompatibility is present in both sets of data and starting point bias is present in one the efficiency of the willingness to pay estimate is improved in only one set of data the potential loss from using iterative questions without controlling for both incentive incompatibility and starting point bias is biased willingness topay estimates

bias and efficiency of single vs double bound models for contingent valuation studies a monte carlo analysis the dichotomous choice contingent valuation method can be used either in the single or double bound formulation the former is easier to implement while the latter is known to be more efficient we analyse the bias of the ml estimates produced by either model and the gain in efficiency associated to the double bound model in different experimental settings we find that there are no relevant differences in point estimates given by the two models even for small sample size the greater efficiency of the double bound is confirmed although differences tend to reduce by increasing the sample size provided that a reliable pretest is conducted and the sample size is large use of the single rather than the double bound model is warranted

treatment of don t know responses in contingent valuation surveys a random valuation model abstract this paper provides a utility theoretic interpretation of don t know dk responses in contingent valuation surveys using a referendum elicitation procedure the random valuation model in this paper assumes that each respondent of a contingent valuation survey has an implicit valuation distribution rather than a single true value as traditionally assumed in his her mind if an offered referendum bid is not clearly different from the mean value of one s valuation distribution the respondent may give a dk answer to the cv referendum question based on this model a maximum likelihood procedure is proposed for estimating respondents willingness to pay for a nonmarket good with referendum contingent valuation data which include dk responses an empirical illustration of this estimation procedure is also provided

valuing public acceptance of alternative fuel buses using a latent class tobit model a case study in valencia abstract the introduction of hybrid electric technology for urban public transportation can be considered a valuable stepping stone to low carbon mobility using the contingent valuation method a sample of 427 respondents were asked about their willingness to pay for the air pollution reductions associated to a scenario of gradual introduction of hybrid electric buses in valencia spain results show that 67 of the respondents are willing to pay extra for the adoption of this electric hybrid technology being the mean willingness to pay 0 33 per single bus fare this would imply a 22 hypothetical increase in current bus fares and shows that public acceptance is critical for the successful introduction of these new low emissions vehicles further this paper differs from previous research in that it addresses the issue of heterogeneity among respondents thus using latent class analysis based on questions about environmental concerns we identify three different classes of respondents high medium and low environmentally concerned mean willingness to pay for each class ranges from 0 25 to 0 38 then we analyze willingness to pay determinants through the estimation of a tobit model for each class of respondents this reaffirms the existence of heterogeneity and accordingly suggests that treating the population as a single homogeneous group of respondents as is common in the existing literature may lead to biased parameter estimates and flawed decision making regarding climate change action

the effect of rental rates on the extension of conservation reserve program contracts given that the majority of conservation reserve program crp contracts on approximately 36 million acres of enrolled land expire concurrently re enrollment decisions by farmers and the federal government have high budgetary implications using a survey of over 8 000 crp contract holders we apply an ordered response discrete choice model to explicitly model the range in rental rates over which the representative farmer may be ambivalent to renewing the crp contract given the empirical results from the ordered response model we estimate acreage re enrollment as a function of the rental rate and compare them to results of a binomial choice model

application of sample selection model to double bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation studies modeling households behavior with the data from a contingentvaluation cv survey is often complicated by samplenon response which can cause non response bias and sampleselection bias leading to inconsistent parameter estimates and adistorted mean willingness to pay estimate this paper reportsthe results of empirical tests for both biases using householdsurvey data in which the double bounded dichotomous choice cvquestion involved the benefit of a tap water quality improvementpolicy in korea no non response bias but sample selection bias is detected in the sample to correct for sample selection bias a sample selection model is employed the authors also discusshow failure to correct for bias may distort aggregate benefitestimates

externally validating contingent valuation an open space survey and referendum in corvallis oregon abstract we ask whether respondents report the same decisions in non binding surveys as they do in real elections we study a corvallis or referendum to raise open space funds and find survey and election compatibility pivots on the characterization of undecided responses the survey and referendum percentage of yes votes match closely only if undecided responses are treated as no we compare survey based mean willingness to pay wtp estimates with election based estimates household wtp averages us 48 89 using election results while survey based wtp averages us 75 43 excluding undecided responses us 49 67 treating undecided responses as no and between us 49 96 and 80 05

the u s patent system in transition policy innovation and the innovation process abstract this paper surveys the major changes in patent policy and practice that have occured in the last two decades in the u s and reviews the existing analyses by the economists that attempt to measure the impacts these changes have had on the processes of technological change it also reviews the broader theoretical and empirical literature that bears on the expected effects of changes in patent policy despite the significance of the policy changes and the wide availability of detailed data relating to patenting robust conclusions regarding the empirical consequences for technological innovation of changes in patent policy are few possible reasons for these limited results are discussed and possible avenues for future research are suggested

specification of the logit model the case of valuation of nonmarket goods abstract we address the proper specification of the logit model for estimation of nonmarket commodity demand economic theory is used to show the conditions which must be met by the logit functional form if it is to yield valid estimates of welfare change measures and demand relationships an empirical example is used to illustrate the argument recreational boating data were collected using the contingent valuation method cvm in texas in one instance the demand curve is positively sloped due to the specific functional form chosen the estimated demand curve for the theoretically preferred functional form has the expected negative slope

interval estimates of non market resource values from referendum contingent valuation surveys contingent valuation methods cvm have attracted considerable attention in recent years as researchers have begun to resort to survey methods to elicit individual values for non market goods such as environmental resources or public goods cummings brookshire and schulze 1986 and mitchell and carson 1989 offer comprehensive assessments of these methods cvm survey questions come in a variety of forms one format which has proven to be popular is called the discrete choice or take it or leave it referendum or closedended question originally implemented in the literature by bishop and heberlein 1979 since respondents find it very difficult to identify precisely their true point value of access to some resource or public good open ended valuation questions can be unreliable or can discourage response in contrast most people are familiar with being confronted by a posted price for a good and with deciding whether or not they would buy at that price this is the strategy behind discrete choice cvm questions a different hypothetical price is offered to each respondent and by their yes no response to the question of whether they would be willing to pay this price the researcher gains information about their true underlying point value one persistent difficulty with the econometric techniques that are currently used most widely to analyze referendum contingent valuation data is the absence of confidence intervals for the ultimate value estimates early empirical applications approximate mean valuations using a truncated mean based on a logit model with the upper limit being the highest bid value in the sample unfortunately the variance of this estimated mean cannot easily be recovered from the numerical integration procedure commonly used to calculate the

generalized additive models for nonmarket valuation via revealed or stated preference methods single site recreation demand and dichotomous choice contingent valuation analyses are typically conducted by implementing models containing strong parametric assumptions which are rarely underpinned by theoretical arguments this work illustrates how these assumptions can be relaxed and the estimation conducted semiparametrically by using generalized additive models gams this approach directly estimates the degree of the variables nonlinearities from the data thereby avoiding subjective choices on the smoothing parameters and offering many advantages when compared to the conventional modeling techniques that dominate the environmental economics literature additionally this paper illustrates how gams can be specified to construct theoretically consistent willingness to pay measures jel c14 q51

a bayesian approach to double bounded contingent valuation in this paper we propose a bayesian approach to model double bounded contingent valuation data the double bounded elicitation method is interpreted as a two tier iterated process in which the subject is allowed to have a second thought about his her valuation for the environmental good prior information is modelled from the answers to the first dichotomous choice question the model is quasi bayesian q b in that the prior distribution refers to mean willingness to pay while the likelihood function refers to the proportions of a multinomial distribution this model is applied to empirical data from a contingent valuation survey involving the valuation expressed by european tourists for access to natural areas in the canary islands results show that point estimate of consumer surplus computed with the q b model does not differ substantially from single bounded model estimation in addition double bounded seems to be quite robust to the choice of the prior model of willingness to pay responses comparison with open ended suggests that the q b model might be useful to control for strategic response and starting point biases

the impacts of china s household consumption expenditure patterns on energy demand and carbon emissions towards 2050 abstract this paper explores how china s household consumption patterns over the period 2005 2050 influence the total energy demand and carbon dioxide co2 emissions in two baseline scenarios and how it influences carbon prices as well as the economic cost in the corresponding carbon mitigation scenarios to this end we first put forward two possible household consumption expenditure patterns up to 2050 using the working leser model taking into account total expenditure increase and urbanization for comparison both expenditure patterns are then incorporated in a hybrid recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium model the results reveal that as income level increases in the coming decades the direct and indirect household energy requirements and co2 emissions would rise drastically when household expenditure shifts from material products and transport to service oriented goods around 21 000 mtce 1 of primary energy and 45 billion tons of co2 emissions would be saved over the 45 year period from 2005 to 2050 moreover carbon prices in the dematerialized mitigation scenario would fall by 13 in 2050 thus reducing the economic cost

understanding the consequences of consequentiality testing the validity of stated preferences in the field this study pursues the external validation of stated preference methods by comparing survey responses from verified voters with the outcome of a parallel public referendum on a conservation and preservation program to be funded by a local property tax surcharge the majority of respondents were unaware of the upcoming referendum and the experimental design allows us to control for referenda related information effects as well as respondents perceptions regarding the consequentiality i e the potential policy impact of their survey votes we find the survey under predicts yes referendum votes at the precinct level these differences go away however if we focus only on respondents who perceived their survey vote to be consequential negative hypothetical bias among inconsequential survey respondents is also evident in the estimation of willingness to pay and controlling for consequentiality increases construct validity

using contingent valuation to value a noxious weeds control program the effects of including an unsure response category the national oceanic and atmospheric administration contingent valuation panel recommended that a response category be included along with the vote in favor and vote against options associated with a referendum contingent valuation question that allows individuals to express lack of a well defined opinion however the recommendation did not include guidance on how to analyze such responses in this article we describe the results of a carefully designed split sample experiment that allowed for comparison of a standard dichotomous choice referendum treatment to a treatment that included the option of responding unsure to the contingent valuation question in addition to the standard vote in favor and vote against response categories we are able to examine several options for dealing with the unsure responses and conclude that the unsure responses should be included in the value estimation as the respondents who choose this response category are distinct from respondents who choose the vote in favor and vote against response categories

the effect of protest votes on the estimates of wtp for use values of recreational sites contingent valuation studies are often characterized by a considerable number of protest responses which may cause selectivity bias on the final estimates for wtp sample selection models can detect and if necessary correct selectivity bias in economic applications where the relevant dependent variable is continuous sample selection models are generally estimated using heckman s 2 step method rather than the fiml estimator either method has its own drawback computational complexity for the fiml method susceptibility to collinearity problems for the 2 step method using data on valuation of forest resources for recreational use we analyse the performance of the two estimators in this application given the presence of some collinearity the fiml is preferred to the 2 step method a procedure is outlined to deal with selectivity problems in similar settings

confidence intervals for evaluating benefits estimates from dichotomous choice contingent valuation studies i evaluate the potential usefulness of nonmarket valuation concepts and techniques from environmental economics for improving wildlife conservation the concepts include distinguishing between on site recreation use value and off site passive use or

reliability and predictive validity of contingent values does the nature of the good matter abstract because the contingent valuation mechanism cvm elicits verbal reports of maximum willingness to pay and not actual willingness to pay analysts have expressed doubts about the reliability and validity of contingent values for commodities such as environmental amenities this skepticism is usually attributed to the amorphous nature of the commodity and to peoples lack of familiarity or experience however our comparison of two commodities which lie at polar extremes of the private good public good continuum suggests that the nature of the good may have little influence on the reliability and predictive validity of the cvm instead aspects of the cvm itself e g explicit payment obligation may be more important for high intention behavior consistency

a new paradigm for valuing non market goods using referendum data maximum likelihood estimation by censored logistic regression abstract this paper challenges the w m hanemann amer j agr econom 66 332 341 1984 and c sellar j p chavas and j r stoll j environ econom management 13 382 390 1986 utilizations of logit models to estimate the value of non market resources from referendum survey data these data are more informative than conventional choice data the random utility interpretation of logit models is therefore too restrictive bypassing the utility function entirely it will be shown that parameters and standard errors for utility theoretic inverse hicksian demand functions can be extracted directly and much more simply estimated demand functions need not be limited to those corresponding to the linear in parameters utility difference specifications which can be handled by packaged logit programs

are stated preferences confirmed by purchasing behaviours the case of fair trade certified bananas in switzerland as the market share of fair trade food products in countries of the north grows understanding consumer preferences with regard to this recent label is becoming increasingly important this article reports on a test of the consistency of consumers stated preferences for which a survey was conducted at the place and time of actual purchase decisions the aim of the survey was to further improve the understanding of consumers stated motivations for buying fair trade and organic fair trade bananas in switzerland hypothetical questions with double dichotomous choices were used to compare two types of bananas conventional and labelled and to assess the average stated willingness to pay wtp for fair trade labelled bananas the results show that fair trade is largely accepted in switzerland and that the premium for purchasing such products is influenced by age the number of young children and the perception of the fair trade label i then used a comparative test of field observations and stated preferences for bananas to measure inconsistency in choices this comparison reveals that less than one fifth of the answers are in principle inconsistent these results point to the importance of confidence in the fair trade labels if consumers purchases are to increase

validation of empirical measures of welfare change a comparison of nonmarket techniques since the passing of the flood control act of 1936 the attention of many resource economists has been directed towards measuring the benefits and costs of alternative uses of natural resources increasingly it has been recognized that the value of some of these uses is not explicitly determined through market transactions this has led to the focus of much attention upon the development of nonmarket methods to estimate the value of these uses in the 1940s the groundwork for the travel cost method was established by hotelling prewitt 1949 following this in the 1960s davis initiated the basic foundation for bidding methods davis 1963 which were later to be subsumed under the heading of contingent valuation methods brookshire randall and stoll 1980 schulze d arge and brookshire 1981 thayer 1981 both of these methods will be further discussed below in addition to these two methods a third approach the unit day value method has been recognized as acceptable but not preferred for the valuation of recreational uses of water and related land resources dwyer kelley and bowes 1977 u s water resources council 1979 given the existence of alternative methods of estimating the value of resource uses several obvious questions arise one of the first of these is under what circumstances is each method most appropriate existing literature has focussed sufficiently on this question and pointed out limitations of each especially the travel cost method and unit day value methods brookshire ives and schulze 1976 dwyer kelly and bowes 1977 freeman 1979 mcconnell 1975 randall ives and eastman 1977 schulze d arge and brook

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

a comparison of alternative certainty calibration techniques in contingent valuation abstract a field test of two types of certainty calibration techniques in contingent valuation of public lands indicated that a 10 point certainty scale reduced wtp estimates by about half adjusting for uncertainty via a not sure option did not reduce wtp estimates but the variance increased there are several differences between these two ways of accounting for respondents uncertainty which may suggest why they provide different wtp value estimates and variances

factors that drive chinese listed companies in voluntary disclosure of environmental information based on the institutional theory this article attempts to examine two consecutive questions regarding the impact of various factors on corporate decision in environmental information disclosure eid 1 whether or not to disclose and 2 the level of disclosure the relevance of these factors is empirically tested using data collected from publicly listed manufacturing companies from 2006 to 2008 in china some interesting findings appear we find that firms that are state owned those that operate in environmentally sensitive industries those having more industrial peers engaged in eid and those with better reputation are more likely to disclose environmental information when it comes to the content of eid variables that attempt to capture external institutional pressures exhibit either no or weak explanatory power only the variable of organizational image and reputation is demonstrated to have a significant impact on both the act and the content of eid this study provides a snapshot of the dialogues between constituencies in the organizational field and eid development

recreational value user heterogeneity and site characteristics in contingent valuation abstract we propose an adaptation of the dichotomous choice contingent valuation method applied to the recreational quality of a site and to heterogeneity between visitors tourists and residents this method is based on a set of repeated valuation questions and is used to study relations between the components of environmental goods we propose its application to public coastal sites in south western france we show that programmes regarding the ocean beaches and forests are generally independent of one another in order to stress the heterogeneity of users two separate models are assessed the way time is taken into account then appears to be one of the most interesting sources of divergence between tourists and residents individual wtp per day also varies this confirms that beaches used by residents provide high economic benefits although they generate little indirect revenue finally contingent valuation appears to be a useful alternative for analyzing the multiple dimensions of a public policy

plausible responsiveness to scope in contingent valuation plausible responsiveness to scope is a question of economic significance in addition to statistical significance of the scope test in contingent valuation we briefly review the history of the scope test in order to place the current issue in the context of the bp deepwater horizon oil spill as a result of the review we gain insights into how the issue of scope adequacy arose twenty years after it was first mentioned by the noaa panel on contingent valuation following the exxon valdez oil spill we then provide a review of desvousges mathews and train 2012 who promote the adding up test to identify inadequate responsiveness to scope adequacy the adding up test is a test of the construct validity of the contingent valuation method but is flawed as a measure of economic significance we propose scope elasticity of willingness to pay as a measure of economic significance a simulation suggests a likely range of elasticity estimates given linear and quadratic functional forms for the willingness to pay function in order to illustrate the ease of implementation of scope elasticity within the context of the standard scope test we calculate scope elasticity with willingness to pay estimates from several studies describe two studies that directly estimate scope elasticity and estimate scope elasticity with primary data from two studies all of these empirical estimates of scope elasticity fall within the range of scope elasticity suggested by the simulation scope elasticity provides a practical way forward relative to the adding up test on the issue of economic significance of scope effects

part whole bias in contingent valuation will scope effects be detected with inexpensive survey methods the purpose of this paper is to test for scope effects with the contingent valuation method we use data from a telephone survey focusing on water quality improvements in the albemarle and pamlico sounds in north carolina we find that the willingness to pay estimates are sensitive to the scope of the policy these results suggest that the use of inexpensive survey methods may not be the cause of the failure to detect scope effects in some recent contingent valuation studies

actual averting expenditure versus stated willingness to pay the purpose of this study is to perform a complete comparison of actual averting expenditure and stated willingness to pay measures and to determine if the averting expenditure is a lower bound of the willingness to pay measured from contingent valuation experiment as suggested by literature in addition to the single value comparison bootstrap krinsky and robb jackknife and cameron are four simulation methods used to calculate confidence intervals for response function sample sizes of 100 200 and 1000 are simulated 100 and 200 times respectively a set of data with 540 households from a contingent policy referendum survey is employed for our purpose under a specific level of bod improvement a one to one single mean value comparison of the actual averting expenditure is greater than the mean willingness to pay from utility difference model the empirical results are consistent with the theoretical expectation for expenditure difference that averting expenditure is a lower bound of willingness to

rethinking new wines implications of local and environmentally friendly labels abstract new wine production areas around the world are encountering challenges in creating a reputation for high quality products in order to help these new wine growing areas numerous labeling programs claiming local origin and environmentally friendly practices are being implemented in this study consumer response toward wine grown in a new production area such as colorado is researched using an interval probit model the mean willingness to pay wtp for colorado environmentally friendly and colorado regular wines are calculated in summary the results in this paper highlight the need to improve quality perceptions to garner a premium in differentiated wine markets as a consequence environmentally friendly labeling in wine is an inefficient marketing tool for wines perceived as low quality

the role of question format for the support for national climate change mitigation policies in germany and the determinants of wtp this contingent valuation survey examines the willingness to pay wtp for climate change mitigation in germany willingness to pay is assessed by using a classic dichotomous choice referendum format and a two way payment ladder in a split sample design we find that mean wtp under the referendum format is more than twice the wtp in the payment ladder format but median wtp does not differ moreover we test the possible effect of different determinants on wtp determinants that considerably influence wtp are personal norm climate change scepticism agreement with the german renewable energy law and individualistic cognition income and gender are also important predictors

welfare measurements using contingent valuation a comparison of techniques three commonly used techniques of asking contingent valuation questions are compared iterative bidding payment cards and dichotomous choice the results reveal that no single contingent valuation technique is neutral in the elicitation of hicksian surplus and each technique has its strengths and weaknesses the iterative bidding estimates contain a starting point bias while the payment card and dichotomous choice estimates were influenced by the interviewers soliciting the contingent values finally the analysis of dichotomous choice responses involves unresolved issues that warrant further investigation on the other hand dichotomous choice is the easiest technique to administer in a survey setting

macroeconomic modelling under energy constraints global low carbon transition scenarios abstract integrated assessment models provide a framework to study sustainability transitions and their economic impacts models seldom consider energy constraints taking supply availability for granted and thus suggesting a mere change in the energy mix from non renewables to renewables in order to address these limitations a macro economic module within a broader system dynamics model medeas has been developed the model has been run for the whole world from 1995 to 2050 under three different scenarios business as usual bau considering no further transition policies and keeping current trends green growth gg undertaking the low carbon transition according to the paris agreement set of policies and with high gdp growth standards and post growth pg testing the sustainability transition under a gdp non growth degrowth approach the results reveal the conflict between economic growth climate policy and the sustainability of resources whereas a bau approach would not even be an option to achieve climate goals a gg view would not only face the downsizing of economic output but neither would it be able to achieve the 2 c objective the success of the pg approach in meeting emissions objectives suggests a redirection from economic growth policies to an industrial policy that incorporates efficiency and redistribution

the trade off between money and travel time a test of the theory of reference dependent preferences we formulate a model of reference dependent preferences based on the marginal rate of substitution at the reference point of a reference free utility function using binary choices on the trade off between money and travel time reference dependence is captured by value functions that are centered at the reference the model predicts a directly testable relationship among four commonly used valuation measures willingness to pay wtp willingness to accept wta equivalent gain eg and equivalent loss el moreover we show that the model allows recovering the underlying reference free value of time based on a large survey data set we estimate an econometric version of the model allowing for both observed and unobserved heterogeneity in a series of tests of high statistical power we find that the relationship among the four valuation measures conforms to our model and that the constraints on the parameters implied by the model are met the gap between wtp and wta is found to be a factor of four loss aversion plays an important role in explaining responses moreover participants are more loss averse in the time dimension than the cost dimension we further find evidence of asymmetrically diminishing sensitivity finally we show that the fraction of mistakes in the sense that participants are observed to sometimes select dominated options varies systematically in a way consistent with the model of reference dependence the results of the paper have important implications for the evaluation of infrastructure investment and pricing reforms in the transport sector

valuing public goods a comparison of survey and hedonic approaches although the theory of public goods has progressed rapidly since paul samuelson s seminal article the empirical measurement of the value of demand for public goods only recently has received increased attention perhaps the best known and most widely accepted empirical approach has been the use of hedonic prices wherein for example it is assumed that either wages or housing values reflect spatial variation in public good characteristics of different communities this indirect approach based on theoretical work of charles tiebout kelvin lancaster sherwin rosen and others has proven quite successful among public goods or bads which have been valued using the hedonic approach are climate i hoch air pollution robert anderson and thomas crocker d harrison and d rubinfeld social infrastructure r cummings et al and other community characteristics such as noise level j nelson and ethnic composition ann schnare an alternative approach is to directly ask households or individuals to state their willingness to pay for public goods using survey techniques despite arguments that strategic bias will invalidate survey results there exists the need for an alternative to the hedonic approach as an example consider the case of a remote and unique scenic vista valuable to recreators which is threatened by air pollution from a proposed coal fired plant a typical situation in the western united states although it is possible in principle to impute the value of clean air and visibility from the relative decline in local visitation which might follow construction of a power plant information on the value of visibility at the site is needed prior to construction for socially optimal decision making on plant location and pollution control equipment the hedonic approach is unavailable both because the scarcity of local population as opposed to recreators makes use of wage or property value data impossible and because scenic vistas may themselves be unique for these reasons a randall et al first applied survey methods for valuing visibility and other environmental effects of large coal fired power plants in the four corners region of new mexico since this initial application the survey approach has been widely used to value environmental commodities where market data for hedonic analysis is difficult to acquire see for example brookshire ives and schulze rowe et al brookshire et al other early attempts to value public goods using the survey approach include r davis peter bohm and j hammack and g brown although results of using the survey approach for estimating the value of public goods appear to be internally consistent replicable and consistent with demand theory see schulze et al little work on external validation has been reported thus the purpose of this paper is to report on an experiment designed to validate the survey approach by direct comparison to a hedonic property value study the los angeles metropolitan area was chosen for the experiment because of the well defined air pollution problem and be assistant professor university of wyoming assistant professor university of missouri rolla associate professor university of wyoming and professor university of wyoming respectively the research reported here was funded under a grant methods development for assessing air pollution control benefits from the u s environmental protection agency we would like to give special thanks to alan carlin and shelby gerking for their helpful suggestions and contributions additional helpful comments were received from a myrick freeman iii john tschirhart and james murdoch all conclusions are of course our sole responsibility

referendum design and contingent valuation the noaa panel s no vote recommendation this paper considers the effects for offering a would not vote option in contingent valuation cv questions framed using the referendum format this approach arises from a suggestion made by the national oceanic and atmospheric administration s noaa panel on contingent valuation the noaa panel was asked to evaluate the use of this method for estimating the economic value of nonmarketed environmental resources in the context of natural resource damage assessments this test used the cv questionnaire developed for the study of the exxon valdez oil spill conducted by the state of alaska with in person interviews the findings suggest that when those selecting the would not vote response are treated as having voted against the program a conservative coding offering this option does not alter 1 the distribution of for and against responses 2 the estimates of willingness to pay derived from these choices or 3 the construct validity of the results

induced innovation and energy prices this paper uses u s patent data from 1970 to 1994 to study the impact of energy prices on energy efficient innovations theories of technological change have focused both on demand side factors which spur innovative activity by increasing the value of new innovations and supply side factors such as scientific advancements that make new innovations possible data on demand side factors are easily obtained but data on supply side factors that influence innovation are not readily available this paper uses patent citations as a measure of the usefulness of the existing base of scientific knowledge citations to previous patents are used to construct productivity estimates which measure the usefulness of the existing stock of knowledge to inventors in a given energy field for any given year these estimates are then combined with data on demand side factors to estimate a model of induced innovation in energy technologies the results indicate that both energy prices and the supply of knowledge have strongly significant positive effects on innovation the paper concludes with a discussion of the implication of this work for environmental policy

a bioeconomic model for estimating the optimal level of deer and tag sales this paper presents a dynamic model that determines the optimal number of deer hunting permit sales subject to the objective of maximizing the discounted economic benefits stream from both the consumptive and nonconsumptive uses of deer this bioeconomic model integrates economic benefits estimated using the dichotomous choice contingent valuation method with biological growth constraints on deer using a hunting zone in california as a case study the model found that the optimal levels of buck hunting permits sold should change on a rotational basis over time and that the current practice of not selling doe hunting permits for that zone is non optimal

split sample tests of no opinion responses in an attribute based choice model researchers using questionnaires to elicit preferences must decide whether to include response options that allow respondents to express no opinion using a split sample design we explore the implications of alternative answer formats including and not including no opinion responses in an attribute based choice experiment the results indicate that using multiple no opinion responses may enable researchers to differentiate between respondents who choose no opinion options due to satisficing and those expressing utility indifference existing literature suggests no opinion responses may be treated as no but our results show treating no opinion responses as no can yield substantially disparate preference estimates

effects of cheap talk on consumer willingness to pay for golden rice a large body of literature suggests willingness to pay is overstated in hypothetical valuation questions as compared to when actual payment is required recently cheap talk has been proposed to eliminate the potential bias in hypothetical valuation questions cheap talk refers to process of explaining hypothetical bias to individuals prior to asking a valuation question this study explores the effect of cheap talk in a mass mail survey using a conventional value elicitation technique results indicate that cheap talk was effective at reducing willingness to pay for most survey participants however consistent with previous research cheap talk did not reduce willingness to pay for knowledgeable consumers

induced technological change in a multi regional multi sectoral integrated assessment model wiagem impact assessment of climate policy strategies abstract this paper illustrates the representation of induced technological change in the multi regional multi sectoral integrated assessment model wiagem the main aim of the paper is to investigate quantitatively the economic impacts of climate policy measures due to the induced technological changes that are considered improved technological innovations are triggered by increased r d expenditures that advance energy efficiency model results show that induced technological changes due to increased investment in r d reduce compliance costs although r d expenditures compete with other investment expenditures we find that increased r d expenditures improve energy efficiency which substantially lowers abatement costs without the inclusion of induced technological changes emission targets are primarily reached by declines in production resulting in overall welfare reductions with the inclusion of induced technological changes emission mitigations can be achieved with fewer production drawbacks technological spillover effects also lead to improved terms of trade effects

modeling shifts in willingness to pay from a bayesian updating perspective this paper derives a structural shift empirical specification for a double bound dichotomous choice contingent valuation methodology premised upon willingness to pay wtp shifts ensuing from a representative model of respondent bayesian updating behavior we demonstrate by way of data simulations that a traditional structural shift specification may often fail at estimating true wtp in this context further simulations demonstrate that a simple extension of the traditional structural shift model derived explicitly from our bayesian framework can correct for much of the wtp bias with an empirical application confirming the simulation outcomes finally we investigate the relationship between strategic behavior and wtp shifts

contingent valuation of community forestry programs in ethiopia controlling for preference anomalies in double bounded cvm this study examines the welfare effects of community plantations in ethiopia via contingent valuation both single bounded and double bounded survey methods were considered and with respect to double bounded methods the potential for anomalous response behaviour was also taken into account the results generally confirm that there are statistically significant welfare benefits to be derived from community forestry however the range of the estimated benefits is large after controlling for anomalous response behaviour the range of estimated benefits narrows and our preferred estimates place the welfare gain between ethiopian birr etb 20 14 and 30 41 per household which is much lower than the estimated benefits without controlling for anomalous preference responses

valuing the incremental benefits of groundwater protection when exposure levels are known both economic theory and psychological research indicate that benefit functions for reductions in health risk exposures may be conditional on current exposures using nitrates found in household wells it is demonstrated that perceptions of health risks across exposure levels are affected by the individual s current exposure level thus providing support for a conditional benefits function approach functions of conditional incremental benefits are estimated from a contingent valuation study of households that had been informed of their water test results incremental benefits reach a peak at an intermediate level of nitrates and then decline possible explanations for this non convexity are provided

initiating disclosure of environmental liability information an empirical analysis of firm choice this paper investigates potential motivations for late adopting u s companies to begin disclosing environmental liability amounts in their financial statements based on a review of 10 k reports filed from 1998 through 2012 inclusive we identified 55 firms initiating environmental liability disclosure over the period with all but three doing so by 2006 focusing on the disclosers up through 2006 we argue that the companies may have used the disclosure as a tool of impression management to avoid potential stakeholder mis estimation of previously undisclosed liability exposures we first compute tests to identify firms that may have begun the disclosure due to 1 materiality and 2 concerns of having proprietary costs imposed upon them due to changes in their environmental media coverage and environmental performance and we find very few cases where these explanations might hold for the remaining companies we compared their newly disclosed liability amount on average with the mean level of environmental liability being disclosed by other firms in the year prior to the sample companies initiation and find that it is significantly smaller thus supporting our impression management argument finally we find that overall level of environmental liability amounts was consistently decreasing over the time frame examined suggesting that earlier adoption would have made more sense however it may also explain why almost no new firms began disclosing after the mid 2000s

dubious and dubiouser contingent valuation and the time of day we collect contingent valuation data from 524 student survey respondents over a 3 day 72 hour period data analysis of a hypothetical campus referendum focuses on time of day effects on willingness to pay for a renewable energy project we find that subjects responding to the survey during the night time hours i e between 12 a m and 6 a m do not display the law of demand offering theoretically invalid responses to questions with important policy implications results from this research may have serious implications for the contingent valuation method cvm in short just like your father said nothing good happens after midnight when using the cvm jel q51

technological change in economic models of environmental policy a survey this paper provides an overview of the treatment of technological change in economic models of environmental policy numerous economic modeling studies have confirmed the sensitivity of mid and long run climate change mitigation cost and benefit projections to assumptions about technology costs in general technical progress is considered to be a noneconomic exogenous variable in global climate change modeling however there is overwhelming evidence that technological change is not an exogenous variable but to an important degree endogenous induced by needs and pressures hence some environmenteconomy models treat technological change as endogenous responding to socio economic variables three main elements in models of technological innovation are i corporate investment in research and development ii spillovers from r d and iii technology learning especially learning by doing the incorporation of induced technological change in different types of environmental economic models tends to reduce the costs of environmental policy accelerates abatement and may lead to positive spillover and negative leakage

efficient estimation methods for closed ended contingent valuation surveys closed ended contingent valuation surveys can be very useful in the evaluation of nonmarket resources respondents merely state whether they would accept or reject a hypothetical threshold amount either as payment for giving up access to the resource or as a fee for its use the authors develop a maximum likelihood procedure which exploits the variation in the threshold values to allow direct and separate point estimates of regression like slope coefficients and error standard deviations without truncation bias their illustration uses data from a survey of recreational fisherman to examine factors which influence individuals willingness to pay copyright 1987 by mit press

willingness to pay for quality improvements should revealed and stated preference data be combined abstract in this article we propose theoretically consistent welfare measurement of use and nonuse values for an improvement in environmental quality with revealed and stated preference data an analytical model based on the comparative static analysis of the variation function that describes the relationship between recreation demand and dichotomous choice contingent valuation models is estimated our results show that revealed and stated data should not be combined under the same assumed preference structure unless the two decisions imply the same change in behavior induced by the quality change in addition our results indicate scope effects in willingness to pay measures estimated with stated preference data

corporate political strategy an examination of the relation between political expenditures environmental performance and environmental disclosure two fundamental business ethics issues that repeatedly surface in the academic literature relate to business s role in the development of public policy suarez s l 2000 does business learn the university of michigan press ann arbor mi roberts r w and d d bobek 2004 accounting organizations and society 29 5 6 565 590 and its role in responsibly managing the natural environment newton l 2005 business ethics and the natural environment blackwell publishing oxford when studied together researchers often examine if and how corporations influence environmental policy decisions drawing from literatures on corporate political activity corporate social and environmental performance and corporate environmental disclosure we develop and empirically examine two research questions concerning the relations between corporate political expenditures environmental performance and environmental disclosure the questions are 1 do corporations that are poorer environmental performers spend more on political activities than their better performing counterparts 2 is there an association between corporations spending on political activities and the extent of their financial report environmental disclosures we investigated these questions through analyses of data we gathered on a sample consisting of 119 u s environmentally sensitive firms for the 2001 2002 election cycle after controlling for firm size and specific industry effects our tests reveal a significant inverse relationship between firm environmental performance and political spending this is consistent with the notion that u s firms with relatively poorer environmental performance records engage more intensely in corporate political activities as part of their overall strategic management of their relationship with the state in addition a significant and positive association between the amount of political spending and the extent of environmental disclosure suggests that environmental disclosure and political spending are both proactive complementary tactics to strategically manage public policy pressure if corporations strategies are intentionally designed to unreasonably limit their environmental responsibilities or to misrepresent firm environmental performance then we argue that these activities reflect a significant lapse in ethical conduct

interviewer effects on the valuation of goods with ethical and environmental attributes this paper investigates the impact of interviewer effects on willingness to pay wtp estimates face to face surveys were conducted with two interviewers both interviewers used a transcript and conducted the survey at the same location and at the same time we found that responses to the wtp questions differ across eco labeled products and by interviewer this interviewer effect is particularly relevant when we analyze the impact on wtp estimates for eco labeled products grown in countries associated with the origin of one of the interviewers

temporal reliability of willingness to pay from the national survey of fishing hunting and wildlife associated recreation 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 1 a previous version of this article was presented at the 129th annual meeting of

construct validity of dichotomous and polychotomous choice contingent valuation questions in this note we conduct construct validity tests for dichotomous choice dc and polychotomous choice pc contingent valuation questions contrary to previous results we find that dc and pc estimates of willingness to pay are theoretically valid convergent valid and similar in terms of statistical precision similar to previous results pc respondents are less sensitive to information than dc respondents we conclude that dc and pc valuation questions are construct valid for this study sequential pc valuation questions could be used in studies where obtaining information about the certainty or intensity of respondent preferences would be useful

modelling zero values and protest responses in contingent valuation surveys in contingent valuation surveys the category of zero bidders refers to individuals that are not willing to pay anything for the programme under analysis specific questions can help to identify true zero values coming from people that are indifferent to the programme separately from protest responses the latter are generally excluded from the analysis this paper introduces a mixture sample selection model that takes into account both zero values and protest responses in the estimates the model is applied to the valuation of a traffic calming scheme aimed at reducing risks for residents in three villages in the north east of england

going home evacuation migration decisions of hurricane katrina survivors in the wake of hurricane katrina many evacuees from the gulf region began the difficult process of deciding whether to rebuild or restart elsewhere we examine pre katrina gulf residents decision to return to the postdisaster gulf region which we call the return migration decision we estimate two separate return migration models first using data from a mail survey of individuals in the affected region and then focusing on self administered questionnaires of evacuees in houston our results indicate that return migration can be affected by household income age education level and employment marital and home ownership status but the results depend on the population under consideration we find no effect of connection to place on the return migration decision although the effect of income is relatively small within subsamples we find a much higher proportion of middle income households planning to return than lower income households when comparing across the subsamples in addition the real wage differential between home and host region influences the likelihood of return larger implicit costs in terms of foregone wages for returning induce a lower likelihood of return exploiting this difference at the individual level we are able to produce estimates of willingness to pay wtp to return home average wtp to return home for a sample of relatively poor households is estimated at 1 94 per hour or 3954 per year

a contingent valuation estimate of the benefits of wolves in minnesota in this paper we estimate the willingness topay for a wolf management plan and a wolfdamage plan in minnesota using the contingentvaluation method the theoretical definition ofwillingness to pay for wolf protection iscomposed of use and non use values weincorporate a don t know response option in thedichotomous choice valuation questions a largenumber of respondents answered don t know themultinomial logit model is used todifferentiate between don t know and noresponses non use motives are importantfactors that explain willingness to pay we usethese benefit estimates in combination with twoalternative cost estimates to consider theefficiency of the wolf management and damageplans both plans have estimated benefitsgreater than costs