choice modeling at the market stall individual versus collective interest in environmental valuation the market stall or valuation workshop has recently been proposed as a way of addressing some of the limitations of conventional stated preference analysis in this paper we attempt to combine a participatory technique similar to the citizens jury with choice modelling a stated preference technique increasingly being applied in environmental economics our focus is on how changes in the context of decision making between choices made in isolation and those made in a group setting and between choices made on individual well being versus collective criteria produce differences in estimated welfare measures the empirical context used is that of water quality improvements under the water framework directive the most significant reform in water legislation in the european union for many years we find that the choice experiment format can be successfully implemented in a valuation workshop and that moving from individual to collective choice produces in this instance a rather interesting change in both values and preferences which depends on the respondent s interests

the pricing of protected areas in nature based tourism a local perspective abstract this paper extends the literature on optimal pricing of recreation in protected areas by introducing price discrimination between groups of visitors and given that the agency charges different prices to subsets of visitors by including a distributional dimension that is particularly relevant for a national park agency receiving visitors from different origins other issues related to optimal entrance fees including negative ecological impacts and positive spillover effects on local communities resulting from changes in visitation are also discussed based on this model the paper provides an estimation of optimal entrance fees and revenues for the costa rican system of protected areas

design and analysis of simulated consumer choice or allocation experiments an approach based on aggregate data the authors integrate concepts in conjoint analysis and discrete choice theory in econometrics to develop a new approach to the design and analysis of controlled consumer choice or resource allocat

evaluating asset pricing models with limited commitment using household consumption data we evaluate the asset pricing implications of a class of models in which risk sharing is imperfect because of limited enforcement of intertemporal contracts lustig 2004 has shown that in such a model the asset pricing kernel can be written as a simple function of the aggregate consumption growth rate and the growth rate of consumption of the set of households that do not face binding enforcement constraints these unconstrained households have lower consumption growth rates than all other households in the economy we use household data on consumption growth from the u s consumer expenditure survey to identify unconstrained households to estimate the pricing kernel implied by these models and evaluate their performance in pricing aggregate risk we find that for high values of the relative risk aversion coecient the limited enforcement

integrating methods for ecosystem service assessment and valuation mixed methods or mixed messages a mixed method approach was used to assess and value the ecosystem services derived from the dogger bank an extensive shallow sandbank in the southern north sea three parallel studies were undertaken that 1 identified and quantified where possible how indicators for ecosystem service provision may change according to two future scenarios 2 assessed members of the public s willingness to pay for improvements to a small number of ecosystem services as a consequence of a hypothetical management plan and 3 facilitated a process of deliberation that allowed members of the public to explore the uses of the dogger bank and the conflicts and dilemmas involved in its management each of these studies was designed to answer different and specific research questions and therefore contributes different insights about the ecosystem services delivered by the dogger bank this paper explores what can be gained by bringing these findings together post hoc and the extent to which the different methods are complementary findings suggest that mixed method research brings more understanding than can be gained from the individual approaches alone nevertheless the choice of methods used and how these methods are implemented strongly affects the results obtained

differences between continuous and discrete contingent value estimates in a split sample contingent valuation study of willingness to pay wtp for food safety improvements the dichotomous choice dc elicitation method consistently generated much larger estimates of wtp than did a continuous method little or none of these differences was due to bias introduced by the statistical techniques used with the dc data most or all of the difference was due to differences in respondent behavior in addition the continuous wtp responses showed a significant scope effect while the dc responses did not the observed difference in behavior may be attributable in part to yea saying by dc respondents

what aspects of formality do workers value evidence from a choice experiment in bangladesh this study uses a choice experiment among 2 000 workers in bangladesh to elicit willingness to pay wtp for job attributes a contract termination notice working hours paid leave and a pension fund using a stated preference method allows calculation of wtp for benefits in this setting despite the lack of data on worker transitions and the fact that many workers are self employed which makes it difficult to use revealed preference methods workers highly value job stability the average worker would be willing to forego a 27 percent increase in income to obtain a 1 year contract relative to no contract or to forego a 12 percent increase to obtain thirty days of termination notice there is substantial heterogeneity in wtp by type of employment and gender women value shorter working hours more than men while government workers place a higher value on contracts than do private sector employees

a comparison of contingent preference models i compare the informational efficiencies of contingent rating contingent ranking and two contingent paired comparison methods as alternatives to the referendum contingent valuation method the contingent rating method is hypothesized to be most efficient because ratings convey information on preference intensities and can uniquely represent respondent indifference or ambivalence survey data on hunters ratings of alternative hypothetical hunting trips are used to estimate four alternative indirect utility models from which marginal willingness to pay measures for individual trip attributes are derived model comparison wtp estimates and their confidence intervals confirm the relative efficiency of the contingent rating approach

valuing global ecosystem services what do european experts say applying the delphi method to contingent valuation of the amazon rainforest valuing global public goods like the amazon rainforest by stated preference surveys of a representative sample of the global population would be very costly and time consuming we explore the use of the delphi method in contingent valuation cv by asking a panel of 49 european environmental valuation experts in two rounds what they think would be the result if a european cv survey of amazon rainforest protection plans was conducted the experts best guess for the mean willingness to pay wtp by european households for preserving the current amazon rainforest and thus avoiding a predicted loss in forest area by 2050 from currently 85 to 60 of the original forest in the 1970s was 28 per household annually as an additional income tax aggregated over all european households this amounts to about 8 4 billion annually this preliminary estimate indicate that wtp of distant beneficiaries is substantial and could justify preservation of global ecosystem services where aggregated benefits of the local population often do not exceed the opportunity costs of preservation in terms of lost income from commercial activities the income elasticity of wtp with respect to per capita income in the european countries is 0 5 0 6 recognizing the limitations and assumptions of the delphi cv method it could still be a time saving and cost effective benefit transfer tool for providing international donors with much needed order of magnitude estimates of the non use value of ecosystem services of global significance

the impact of choice inconsistencies in stated choice studies a new test procedure revealing mutuallyinconsistent choices has been developed andapplied to stated choice data our analysisshows that inconsistent choices commonly occurin several stated choice tasks an applicationof the test to the norwegian value of timestudy data shows that failing to excludeinconsistent choices resulted in asubstantially higher value of time theinconsistent choices were made by less educatedparticipants as the tasks were undertaken inthe easy context of choosing travelalternatives with three attributes practitioners of more complex and cognitivedemanding designs should be particularilyconcerned with these results

choice experiment study on the willingness to pay to improve electricity services abstract modern forms of energy are an important vehicle towards poverty alleviation in rural areas of developing countries most developing countries households rely heavily on wood fuel which impacts on their health and socio economic status to ease such a dependency other modern forms of energy namely electricity need to be provided however the quality of the electricity service namely reliability is an important factor in reducing this dependency this paper discusses a choice experiment valuation study conducted among electrified rural households located in kisumu kenya in which the willingness to pay wtp to avoid power outages or blackouts was estimated a mixed logit estimation was applied to identify the various socio economic and demographic characteristics which determine preferences in reducing power outages among a household s users in conclusion several of the socio economic and demographic characteristics outlined in this paper were identified and can assist service differentiation to accommodate the diverse households preferences towards the improvement of the electricity service

social costs from proximity to hydraulic fracturing in new york state the study reports data from an economic choice experiment to determine the likely welfare impacts of hydraulic fracturing in this case using natural gas extracted by hydraulic fracturing for household electricity data were collected from an internet survey of 515 residents of new york state the welfare analysis indicated that on average households incur a welfare loss from in state hydraulic fracturing as the source of their electricity the evidence suggests that households in shale counties bear more costs from hf electricity than households out of shale counties the average welfare loss is substantive estimated at 40 46 of average household electric bills in shale counties and 16 20 of bills in counties without shale the evidence also suggests that relative proximity to hf well sites also increases cost borne by households

is individual environmental consciousness one of the determinants in transport mode choice this article models negative impact on the environment as one of the attributes of transport mode by this modelling we are able to examine whether individual environmental consciousness of this impact plays a significant role in his her choice of transport mode a survey data from saito and onohara area in northern osaka of japan is used to estimate the model with the heteroscedastic extreme value specification both of the estimated and simulated results imply that individual environmental consciousness does influence his her decision on transport mode choice in the sample furthermore the likelihood ratio tests indicate that both the utility and scale parameters are not equivalent across sub samples of university commuters research facility commuters and residents the results of the comparison across sub samples suggest that sometimes we may learn more from sub dividing a whole sample into several sub samples if we could distinguish them by their characteristics

using labels to investigate scope effects in stated preference methods insufficient sensitivity to scope variations in the scale of the environmental good on offer remains a major criticism of stated preference methods and many studies fail a scope test of some sort across a range of existing explanations for insensitivity to scope commodity mis specification embedding warm glows there seems to exist no clear conclusion on how to deal with the problem this paper provides an alternative explanation for insufficient sensitivity to scope based on re definition of the determinants of value for environmental goods within an attributes based choice model in the proposed framework respondents willingness to pay need depend not only on physical characteristics of a good but may also depend on the label under which the environmental good is sold in the hypothetical market to investigate this problem a choice experiment study of biodiversity was conducted we find that controlling for the effects of a label in this case national park designation leads to significant increase in the scope sensitivity of welfare measures

a cost benefit analysis of restoring the em river in sweden valuation of angling site characteristics and visitation frequency this article uses cost benefit analysis cba to evaluate restoration scenarios aimed at improving angling on the em river in sweden we find that none of the proposed projects are socially profitable when considering only values associated with angling we rely on a choice experiment ce to derive utilities and estimate the monetary value of angling site characteristics and then also use the utilities derived in a visitation frequency using a two stage budgeting approach the visitation frequency is then used to extract values for fishing license sales and business related income the case study illustrates how cba can provide useful insights into the potential economic returns of environmental restoration projects our case study also indicates that the results in terms of willingness to pay wtp and visitation frequency are general findings i e they appear similar across angling sites which is particularly useful from a policy point of view because it supports the use of benefit transfer for more cost effective river management

idiosyncratic risk and the equity premium evidence from the consumer expenditure survey abstract this paper investigates whether uninsured idiosyncratic risk accounts for the equity premium following mankiw j financial econ 17 1986 211 the paper develops an equilibrium factor model in which risk premia depend on the covariance between an asset s return and certain moments of the cross sectional distribution for consumption growth cross sectional consumption factors are constructed using data from the consumer expenditure survey but they do not appear to be promising candidates for explaining the equity premium the cross sectional factors are weakly correlated with stock returns and generate equity premia of 2 percent or less for preference specifications with low degrees of risk aversion

accounting for local impacts of photovoltaic farms the application of two stated preferences approaches to a case study in portugal abstract renewable energy sources for electricity generation are unequivocally more environmentally friendly than the traditional sources but are not impact free given the potential for solar photovoltaic energy to contribute to the energy mix in some countries it is timely to carefully consider the potential environmental costs of operation of photovoltaic farms which are experienced by the local population while the general benefits accrue to all we apply the contingent valuation method to a sample of local residents close to three selected photovoltaic farms in portugal also we design a discrete choice experiment to elicit the valuation of specific adverse impacts of electricity generation through photovoltaic energy by national residents our results show that the value elicited in the vicinity of the photovoltaic farms is non negligible on the other hand national residents ponder the trade offs implied by the choice sets and value positively the different adverse local impacts both of these estimates in conjunction or independently can be used to fully account for this often neglected cost of solar energy furthermore we argue that when studying the public acceptance of renewables using stated preference methods explicitly presents the trade offs between negative impacts and costs contributing to more realistic portrayal of public opinion

are citizens willing to pay for agricultural multifunctionality agricultural multifunctionality is the recognition of the joint exercise of economic environmental and social functions by the agricultural sector in order to make the concept operative for the design of public policies it is necessary to estimate the social demand for such functions the main objective of this article is to present an empirical application in this sense for this purpose we have adopted the agricultural system of cereal steppes in tierra de campos in spain as a case study the economic valuation technique used is the choice experiment the results suggest the existence of a significant demand for the different functions although the demand is heterogeneous depending on the socioeconomic characteristics of the individuals surveyed

tourists preferences for congestion residents welfare and the ecosystems in a national park the management of national parks and natural areas often faces a balance between the residents welfare the tourist activity and the pressure on ecosystems this paper assesses the benefits for a set of policies designed to address tourist congestion the increase in the welfare of the local populations and the improvements in the ecosystem services coral reefs mangroves dry forests and coastal and sandy ecosystems we utilize a discrete choice experiment approach with the consideration of potential heterogeneity results show that there are three segments of visitors with different preferences for the proposed policies those tourists with higher values for the environmental policies and welfare of the local communities also share a preference for a lower level of congestion at the natural areas the results have implications for managing natural areas at tourist destinations

the political economy of expenditures by the peruvian social fund foncodes 1991 95 the peruvian social fund foncodes was created by president alberto fujimori in 1991 with the stated objectives of generating employment alleviating poverty and improving access to social services this article uses province level data on monthly expenditures socioeconomic indicators and electoral outcomes to analyze political influences on the timing and geographic distribution of foncodes expenditures between 1991 and 1995 i reach three main conclusions first these expenditures increased significantly before national elections second foncodes projects were directed at provinces in which the marginal political effect of expenditures was likely to be largest third these projects favored the poorest provinces which suggests that the program also had a redistributive function the results are robust to a large number of specifications and controls the peruvian data support predictions made in the literature on political business cycles as well as the literature on political influences on the allocation of discretionary funds

using a choice experiment to estimate the benefits of a reduction of externalities in urban areas with special focus on electrosmog traffic noise air pollution and electromagnetic pollution i e nonionizing radiation also called electrosmog are typical negative local externalities in urban areas they are side effects of human and economic activities e g road transport telecommunication and they affect individuals well being negatively without compensation in recent years the increased number of mobile phone antennas in residential areas and thus the increased intensity of radiated power has aroused public concern discussions and protests the view of an antenna is annoying an increasing number of inhabitants in this article the stated choice experiment ce is used to estimate the willingness to pay wtp residents in the cities of zurich and lugano place on the reduction of these three environmental loads estimation results reveal that there is a positive and significant wtp for a reduction of air pollution and traffic noise levels to those limit values fixed by the government respondents also show wtp for reducing

an application of a stated preference method to value urban amenities this is a case study analysis of how residents value the amenities of a small us city missoula montana a measure of a community s amenity values is needed in city planning so as to protect those

modelling recreation demand using choice experiments climbing in scotland this paper is concerned with the use of thechoice experiment method for modelling thedemand for recreation using the example ofrock climbing in scotland we begin byoutlining the method itself including itstheoretical and econometric underpinnings datacollection procedures are then outlined wepresent results from both nested and non nestedmodels and report some tests for theimplications of choice complexity andrationality finally we compare our resultswith a revealed preference data model based onthe same sample of climbers

transferring economic values on the basis of an ecological classification of nature abstract in order to save research costs economists often try to transfer the economic value of existing nature areas to other planned areas because the existing area and the plan area are not similar such benefit transfers are generally not considered valid although some economists have paid attention to the ecological characteristics of sites in relation to transfers they do not seem to have decomposed ecosystems into spatially homogeneous units which are similar at different locations since ecologists have developed classifications of homogeneous units it is investigated whether it is possible to determine economic values for the elements of an ecological classification of nature which can be transferred from one location to another this investigation is conducted on the basis empirical data collected by means of a cvm survey at different nature reserves on the dutch coast the results indicate that the use of an ecological classification may offer economists new opportunities for transferring economic benefits within a limited geographical area

valuing alternative work arrangements abstract we employ a discrete choice experiment in the employment process for a national call center to estimate the willingness to pay distribution for alternative work arrangements relative to tr

do conditional cash transfers affect electoral behavior evidence from a randomized experiment in mexico this article reexamines the argument that targeted programs increase pro incumbent voting by persuading beneficiaries to cast ballots against their first partisan choice the evidence comes from the randomized component of progresa the pioneering mexican conditional cash transfer cct program experimental data show that early enrollment in the program led to substantive increases in voter turnout and in the incumbent s vote share in the 2000 presidential election the experiment also reveals that opposition parties vote shares were unaffected by the program thus the electoral bonus generated by ccts may be best explained by a mobilizing rather than persuasive mechanism these findings are difficult to reconcile with the notion that the electoral effects of ccts are a result of prospective concerns triggered by threats of program discontinuation or endogenous program enrollment instead the evidence in this article suggests that ccts mobilizing effects are compatible with programmatic politics

a new unified approach to evaluate economic acceptance towards main green technologies using the meta analysis the aim of this paper is to analyze the main determinants of the economic acceptability of four green technologies gts alternative fuel vehicles energy savings in residential buildings smart meters and renewable electricity using a meta analysis on a sample of 35 selected papers which provided 245 primary data this approach allows detecting relationships across heterogeneous studies avoiding the subjectivity of qualitative surveys we implement a new two step procedure first we compute a measure of the implicit price for a kilogram of co2 avoided pco2 homogenizing the usable information for the gts considered second we conduct a meta regression using the computed pco2 values to estimate the socio economic determinants impact in general our results show a wide degree of acceptability for gts which is stronger among european citizens in particular it emerges that on average the estimated pco2 is positive for the gts considered and additional positive effects exist when respondents are confronted with an explicit reference to quantitative targets in terms of co2 abatement a clear proposal for payment timing and a specific renewable electricity mix these results indicate that information and transparency are crucial to spur gts deployment therefore to support gts market penetration public and private institutional stakeholders have to provide ad hoc information to the end users setting a clear and suitable system of prices to increase the economic value end users place on gts

does one size fit all heterogeneity in the valuation of community forestry programs abstract through the implementation of a choice experiment valuation exercise this study set out to identify the set of community plantation attributes that impact the welfare of potential community forestry program participants we employed a combination of choice models to evaluate the preferences welfare impacts and choice elasticities associated with alternative community forestry programs allowing for different assumptions regarding heterogeneity in line with economic theory increased participation costs reduced the demand for community forestry while increases in expected productivity raised the demand with respect to preferences for the other alternatives considered type of forest area enclosure and type of land upon which the forest was to be situated the results point to significant differences in preferences across the study population suggesting that programs should be tailored to the communities in which the program is to be implemented

valuing diversification benefits through intercropping in mediterranean agroecosystems a choice experiment approach abstract the agricultural sector faces a series of environmental challenges such as water and soil pollution erosion or biodiversity loss especially in monoculture systems alternatively crop diversification is seen as an option to reduce negative impacts and to enhance agricultural ecosystem services es most of these es such as improving resilience despite the benefits and the high social value do not take part in the market in this context the present paper presents an analysis of social preferences regarding crop diversification practices in mediterranean agroecosystems to do so a choice experiment has been developed to assess social demand for more welfare improving agricultural cropping systems benefits were obtained from improving environmental and cultural es provision due to intercropping as crop diversification practices the results show a strong social preference for crop diversification with regard to all the benefits considered in the experiment in fact the total economic value for non market goods and services provided by intercropping which ranges from 900 to 1400 ha year for some crops might be potentially higher than cropland financial benefits these results highlight the social support for a change in agricultural model to reach sustainable agroecosystems which is essential to ensure the success of agrarian and rural development policies

reconsidering heterogeneity and aggregation issues in environmental valuation a multi attribute approach the economic valuation of complex environmental goods composed of multiple attributes is an expanding field of research in ecological and environmental economics however several issues are still subjects of debate this paper focuses on three of them the linearity of the valuation function in the attributes aggregation criteria for obtaining social values and the heterogeneity of individuals utility functions a methodological approach based on multi attribute utility theory which enables us to contrast the impact of these concerns on the valuation of environmental goods is proposed we employ the methodology to value a protected natural area and from the results obtained we can conclude that the non linearity and the heterogeneity of the individual utility function are relevant aspects of environmental valuation that need to be taken into account when valuing environmental goods

perceptions versus objective measures of environmental quality in combined revealed and stated preference models of environmental valuation abstract this study examines perceptions and objective attribute measures in discrete choice models of recreation site choice behavior these forms of attribute measurement are examined in individual and combined revealed preference stated preference models our results suggest that the model based on perceptions slightly outperforms the models based on objective attribute measures however issues such as the definition of the choice set and the measurement of welfare present significant challenges when using perceptions data

length of stay for low cost tourism abstract awareness of tourists length of stay and the factors which determine that is an essential element for good planning and management at tourist destinations this article analyses to what extent the personal characteristics of the low cost tourist those of the trip and stay and those of the destination itself are significant in determining the duration of a trip to this end an econometric duration model is estimated the results obtained show that the effect of time restrictions seem to be relevant for explaining the observed differences in length of stay as well as the effects of the tourist s spending capacity prices and the differences between urban and sun and sand destinations furthermore the model also allows us to analyse changes in the likelihood of the stay being ended at a specific point in time hazard associated with changes in the explanatory variables and to obtain predicted survival times for different groups of tourists

willingness to accept compensation for the environmental risks of oil transport on the amazon a choice modeling experiment abstract this paper looks at the question of whether subsistence level indigenous people place a value on the preservation of ecosystems independent of direct impacts of environmental change such as impacts on their production activities the economics literature generally suggests that non use values don t exist among the poor and in the informal sector of the economy we examine this issue through a choice modeling experiment a survey was conducted of rainforest communities who live on the banks of the amazon river rio solimoes in the vicinity of proposed oil and gas pipelines the data were analyzed in the choice modeling framework revealing relatively high amounts of compensation that were necessary in order to accept the potential ecosystem damages associated with oil transport even if the people were completely compensated for direct damages such as loss of access to productive resources these results suggest that environmental quality is important for its own sake a result that is very different from the implicit assumption among many economists

ecotourism demand and differential pricing of national park access in costa rica ecotourism presents developing countries with growing opportunities for enhancing resource conservation and economic growth but also raises pressing management and policy challenges this paper presents a conceptual framework and empirical analysis of the impacts of introducing a differential entrance fee policy at three national parks in costa rica data are collected using a contingent behavior methodology designed to elicit information on foreign tourists hypothetical park visitation behaviors at alternative entrance fee levels park visitation demand functions and price and income elasticities are estimated revenue maximizing fees are calculated and applications of differential pricing principles to park management are discussed

do hypothetical and actual marginal willingness to pay differ in choice experiments application to the valuation of the environment abstract in this paper we test the validity of choice experiments with donations for environmental projects in particular we test whether or not there are differences in preferences between a hypothetical and an actual choice experiment our experiments indicate no differences in addition internal tests of validity indicate transitive and stable preferences in both experiments although there are some indications of possible learning effects during the experiment

the public value of improving a weather forecasting system in korea a choice experiment study abstractthe korean government plans to improve the quality of its weather forecasting system in order to increase its public utility the benefits arising from the implementation of this plan shoul

using choice experiments to value the natura 2000 nature conservation programs in finland this paper is concerned with the preferences of the finnish households for a controversial nature conservation program the european union s natura 2000 network since the program was mainly based on biological considerations it met strong public opinions from different interest groups in finland using the choice experimental method we attempt to estimate the values that the finnish households would place on different preservation levels it is found that the mean willingness to accept for a decrease in the nature preservation area is much greater than the mean willingness to pay for an increase by the same amount also the marginal willingness to pay becomes zero after an initial increase in the natural preservation area which is consistent with our earlier findings in a binary choice valuation study policy implications of these results are also discussed in relation to different decision criteria

valuing a wind farm construction a contingent valuation study in greece abstract our analysis is based on data from a double bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation study implemented to elicit public attitudes towards renewable energy generation and their willingness to pay for the construction of a wind farm in the area of messanagros in the island of rhodes greece results indicate that there are significant positive values deriving from the proposed project respondents report a mean willingness to pay a premium in their bi monthly electric bills of 8 86 for the sole purpose of the construction of the wind farm the estimated economic benefits to the local population are weighed against the investment cost in a cost benefit analysis to inform policy making and implications for eu energy policy are provided

low energy efficiency in rental properties asymmetric information or low willingness to pay abstract asymmetric information may explain low energy efficiency in rented properties energy ratings while a solution to the information problem will only lead to higher efficiency levels if renter s willingness to pay wtp exceeds landlord s investment costs using a sample of renters from one university this paper estimates this wtp using a discrete choice experiment where respondents choose from a hypothetical set of single bedroom apartments that differ according to a number of attributes including the energy rating results show that there is a strong disutility associated with the least efficient properties and that renters will pay significantly more for efficiency improvements at the lower end of the efficiency scale importantly our wtp estimates are calculated in a setting where respondents were informed about the energy rating system prior to choosing and where the rating was shown for every property therefore in order to maximise the impact of energy rating systems policymakers are encouraged to ensure that both these informational characteristics are in place

economic evaluation of environmental externalities in china s coal fired power generation abstract serious environmental externalities exist in china s power industry environmental economics theory suggests that the evaluation of environmental externality is the basis of designing an efficient regulation the purposes of this study are 1 to identify chinese respondents preferences for green development of electric power industry and the socio economic characteristics behind them 2 to investigate the different attitudes of the respondents towards pollution and co2 reduction 3 to quantitatively evaluate the environmental cost of china s coal fired power generation based on the method of choice experiments ce and the 411 questionnaires with 2466 data points we found that chinese respondents prefer pm2 5 so2 and nox reduction to co2 reduction and that the environment cost of coal fired power plants in china is 0 30 yuan per kwh in addition we found that the socio economic characteristics of income education gender and environmental awareness have significant impacts on respondents choices these findings indicate that the environmental cost of coal fired power generation is a significant factor that requires great consideration in the formulation of electric power development policies in addition importance should also be attached to the implementation of green power price policy and enhancement of environmental protection awareness

managing tourism in the galapagos islands through price incentives a choice experiment approach abstract this study analyzes nature based tourism in ecuador s galapagos national park which faces great risks of invasive species due to visitor contacts the analysis uses visitors preference data to evaluate the potential impacts of various pricing strategies on revenues data come from choice experiment surveys conducted in 2009 regarding four characteristics of a tour to the galapagos length of stay depth of experience in the islands ecosystem level of protective measures taken against invasive species and price we found that the typical tourist would be willing to pay 2 5 times more for a tour with high level of protection against invasive species than for a tour with the current level of protection and otherwise similar characteristics the mean marginal willingness to pay for a tour with an in depth natural experience is 1 8 times more than for a similar tour providing only an overview of the galapagos ecosystem further we determined that differences in elasticity of demand between long and short tours suggest that a pricing strategy may be used to encourage tourists to take longer tours without affecting total revenue such a pricing strategy would decrease the number of unique island visitor contacts per year thereby reducing the threat to the islands unique ecosystem

implications of endogenous group formation for efficient risk sharing the existing literature on sub game perfect risk sharing suffers from a basic inconsistency while a group of size n is able to coordinate on a risk sharing outcome it is assumed that deviating subgroups cannot i relax this assumption and characterise the optimal contract among all coalition proof history dependent contracts this alters the predictions of the standard dynamic limited commitment model i show that the consumption of constrained agents depends on both the history of shocks and its interaction with the current income of other constrained agents from this i derive a formal test for the presence of endogenous group formation under limited commitment

a latent class approach to tourists length of stay abstract in this paper a conditional demand function is estimated for the length of stay at a tourist destination the microeconomic model specifies the demand for the length of stay conditional on the remaining holiday characteristics that the tourist has chosen the destination type of accommodation etc the empirical model uses a latent class truncated poisson regression which acknowledges the existence of groups or segments of demand with different preferences in the case under study a distinction is made between two segments with a preference for either a longer or shorter holiday the statistical model also resolves a problem of multimodality acknowledged in previous analyses to be one of the main characteristics of this variable

using choice experiments to value the environment this paper we outline the choice experiment approach to environmental valuation this approach has its roots in lancaster s characteristics theory of value in random utility theory and in experimental design we show how marginal values for the attributes of environmental assets such as forests and rivers can be estimated from pair wise choices as well as the value of the environmental asset as a whole these choice pairs are designed so as to allow efficient statistical estimation of the underlying utility function and to minimise required sample size choice experiments have important advantages over other environmental valuation methods such as contingent valuation and travel cost type models although many design issues remain unresolved applications to environmental issues have so far been relatively limited we illustrate the use of choice experiments with reference to a recent uk study on public preferences for alternative forest landscapes this study allows us to perform a convergent validity test on the choice experiment estimates of willingness to pay

attribute causality in environmental choice modelling when selecting attributes in environmentalchoice modelling studies preference should begiven to those attributes that aredemand relevant policy relevant andmeasurable the use of these criteria willoften result in a short list of environmentalattributes of which some are causally related the inclusion of attributes that have a cause effect relationship may stimulate somerespondents to seek to understand the causalrelations among attributes in order to assigngreater meaning to the alternatives andpotentially simplify the decision makingprocess this may have implications for theweights they assign to each of the attributeswhen identifying the preferred alternatives and subsequently for the implicit prices and orwelfare estimates a test of the impact ofincluding an attribute that causesimpacts on ecosystem health as well as anattribute relating to ecosystem health effectson parameter estimates implicitprices and welfare estimates is conducted twoquestionnaires are developed one with the causal attribute included and one without acomparison of results indicates that when the causal attribute is included in the vector ofchoice attributes the implicit value of asingle endangered species falls by 34 per centwhilst no significant difference is detected inthe parameter estimates importantly however estimates of compensating surplus for a givenpolicy package do not differsignificantly across the two treatments thisimplies that to the extent that the inclusionof a causal attribute reduces the implicitprices for one or more of the effect attributes the associated loss in utility isapproximately offset by the utility nowassociated with the new attribute

the economic benefits of reducing the environmental effects of landfills heterogeneous distance decay effects this paper estimates the economic benefits of different alternative policies considered for reducing the external effects caused by the utilization of landfills in solid waste management the preferences of the local population in the surrounding areas of a landfill are evaluated utilizing a discrete choice experiment in which subjects are presented with alternative policy decisions that involve reducing the material processed through the landfill various models were employed in order to capture heterogeneous preferences resulting in a mixture of normals modelling approach mn mnl outperforming other alternative models of heterogeneity the results show that the policy of moving the landfill away from the population does not provide the most benefits when compared to a policy of increasing recycling in the household the economic benefits of the waste management policies are heterogeneous across the population surrounding the landfill and so the distance decay functions thus the economic benefits for most waste management policies can increase or decrease the further away the subject lives from the landfill depending on the preferences of his her segment and the type of policy employed

incorporating marginal citizens and voters the conditional electoral effects of targeted social assistance in latin america in this article we study how social assistance shapes election results across latin america case studies in several countries have found electoral effects yet it remains unclear whether and how effects vary cross nationally and whether electoral effects are due to mobilization or persuasion we theorize that programs mobilize non voters and convert the opposition simultaneously but that the effects vary based on country level political and programmatic differences using 2012 americasbarometer data we develop a unified cross national model that confirms that public assistance makes recipients more likely to turn out and once at the polls to vote for the incumbent compulsory voting laws and program politicization magnify the electoral effects of social assistance but effects do not vary by presidential ideology or program conditionalities these findings are consistent with the perspective that latin american voters are boundedly rational retrospective agents whose behavioral choices depend on t

policy announcements and welfare in the presence of idiosyncratic risk the public revelation of information about uncertain aggregate outcomes such as policy choices can be detrimental to social welfare by announcing informative signals on non insurable aggregate risk the policy maker distorts agents insurance incentives and increases the riskiness of the optimal allocation that is feasible in self enforceable arrangements as an application we consider a monetary authority that may reveal changes in the inflation target and document that the negative effect of distorted insurance incentives can very well dominate conventional effects in favor for the release of better information

using choice experiments to investigate the policy relevance of heterogeneity in farmer agri environmental contract preferences agri environmental contracts are used to provide incentives for nature management on private land in e g the european union the aim of this article is to investigate preference heterogeneity for agri environmental contracts among farmers in order to discuss potential policy improvements utilising heterogeneity we used a choice experiment to elicit farmers stated preferences for afforestation contracts four attributes are investigated purpose of afforestation option of cancelling the contract monitoring and compensation level all attributes present a potential conflict between farmers and authorities interests which emphasises the importance of knowing how to handle these interests a random parameter logit model shows that having the option to cancel the contract decreases farmers required compensation level and monitoring increases it furthermore farmers are willing to accept a lower compensation when the aim is to protect biodiversity and ground water relative to recreation latent class models with class probability variables reveal discrete heterogeneity and support a division into four groups with divergent preferences for example a group of farmers who already have forest areas does not find the option of cancelling the contract important whereas another group relying on the farm for income requires higher compensation the findings indicate potential for efficiency gains from targeting the contracts

using conjoint analysis to derive estimates of compensating variation abstract we use several approaches to derive estimates of hicksian compensating variation from conjoint ratings data the different estimation approaches produced mixed results with respect to consistency with utility theory statistical significance of key variables magnitude of welfare estimates and confidence bounds on welfare estimates these findings suggest conjoint analyses are not a panacea for the problems being debated regarding contingent valuation and travel cost methodologies and conjoint questions appear to share many of the advantages and disadvantages associated with dichotomous choice contingent valuation questions

decoy effects in choice experiments and contingent valuation asymmetric dominance while a dominated choice involves a situation in which one option clearly dominates another on all relevant dimensions an asymmetrically dominated choice typically arises where at least two options do not dominate each other and one but not both of those options does dominate a third option we demonstrate that the introduction of such an asymmetrically dominated option can have a significant impact upon choices between non dominated options within the same choice set for non market goods furthermore we show that this effect can then translate into significant impacts upon subsequent valuations for those non dominated options

economics and elections revisited the economics and elections connection has been heavily investigated although mostly through single country studies the first comparative survey based research on economic voting by lewis beck

combining ecological and recreational aspects in national park management a choice experiment application increasing pressure to diversify development of national parks emphasizes the need for new and relevant information for park management decisions in this paper we use choice experiment to value different tradeoffs that evolved in park development scenarios specifically we examine which kind of development profiles are worth considering and which paths not to follow we focus on biodiversity and recreational services provided by oulanka national park in finland which represents a popular recreation site attracting a large number of visitors the increase of biodiversity was the most highly valued feature by the respondent national park visitors thus our results show that the protection of biodiversity and recreational and tourism use of national parks can cause conflicting welfare effects if managed in inappropriate ways increasing the number of visitors expanding present resting places constructing new resting places and an intense increase in information boards especially if combined with shrinking biodiversity are welfare reducing managerial actions in national parks

valuing financial health and environmental benefits of bt cotton in pakistan data from a farm survey and choice experiment are used to value the benefits of bt cotton in pakistan unlike previous research on the economic impacts of bt which mostly concentrated on financial benefits in terms of gross margins we also quantify and monetize positive externalities associated with technology adoption due to lower chemical pesticide use on bt cotton plots there are significant health advantages in terms of reduced incidence of acute pesticide poisoning and environmental advantages in terms of higher biodiversity and lower soil and groundwater contamination these positive externalities are valued at us 79 per acre of which half is attributable to health and the other half to environmental improvements adding average gross margin gains of us 204 results in an aggregate benefit of us 283 per acre of bt or us 1 7 billion for the total bt cotton area in pakistan

using a choice experiment to account for preference heterogeneity in wetland attributes the case of cheimaditida wetland in greece abstract this paper aims to assist policy makers in formulating efficient and sustainable wetland management policies in accordance with the ramsar convention and the european union water framework directive 2000 60 ec by providing results of a valuation study on the cheimaditida wetland in greece a choice experiment is employed to estimate the values of changes in several ecological social and economic functions that cheimaditida wetland provides to the greek public in addition to the conditional logit model a random parameter logit model a random parameter logit model with interactions and a latent class model are estimated to account for heterogeneity in the preferences of the public for the various functions of the wetland the results reveal that there is considerable preference heterogeneity across the public and on average they derive positive and significant values from sustainable management of this wetland the estimated economic benefits of sustainable wetland management are weighed against the costs of alternative wetland management scenarios results of this cost benefit analysis can aid in the design of socially optimal policies for sustainable management of the cheimaditida wetland with possible implications for other similar wetlands in greece and the rest of europe

the length of stay in the demand for tourism abstract one of the main characteristics of current tourism is the reduction in the length of stay at a destination nevertheless this variable has received little attention in literature this paper examines the microeconomic determinants of the length of stay at one of the mediterranean s leading sun and sand destinations the estimation of a conditional demand function model highlights the explanatory power of the tourist s sociodemographic profile and of holiday characteristics as well as the sensitivity of the length of stay to price changes

quantitative asset pricing implications of endogenous solvency constraints we study the asset pricing implications of an economy where solvency constraints are endogenously determined to deter agents from defaulting while allowing as much risk sharing as possible we solve analytically for efficient allocations and for the corresponding asset prices portfolio holdings and solvency constraints for a simple example then we calibrate a more general model to u s aggregate as well as idiosyncratic income processes we find equity premia risk premia for long term bonds and sharpe ratios of magnitudes similar to the u s data for low risk aversion and a low time discount factor article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

altruism spillovers are behaviors in context free experiments predictive of altruism toward a naturally occurring public good abstract this paper addresses the external validity of experiments investigating the characteristics of altruism in the voluntary provision of public goods we conduct two related experiments that allow us to examine whether individuals who act more altruistically in the context free environment are also more likely to act altruistically toward a naturally occurring public good we find that laboratory behavior can be predictive of contributions toward naturally occurring goods but not in a uniform way in fact parametric measures of altruism do a poor job of predicting which subjects are most likely to contribute to a naturally occurring public good

integrated assessment of sustainability trade offs and pathways for global bioenergy production framing a novel hybrid approach abstract current controversies and debates on bioenergy production in the areas of greenhouse gases emission reduction food and energy security social exclusion and welfare erosion and ecosystem deterioration attest to the challenges which the bioenergy sector has to overcome to achieve its global production potentials because it is yet an evolving sector the sustainability of bioenergy production in different regions is very elusive experiences show that bioenergy policies in one region can have impacts not only on its own but also on other regions social economic and ecological sustainability it is thus important to assess development pathways for bioenergy to exploit the potential benefits and forestall any unnecessary costs this paper frames a novel hybrid approach for assessing bioenergy potentials for regions with diverging economic social and ecological systems the approach is based on a conceptual framework that takes into account trade offs decisions on sustainability goals and production options in the assessment of bioenergy pathways it combines different empirical techniques for the systematic investigation of trade offs and pathways including fuzzy logic conjoint logit and path analyses to show the relevance and utility of these techniques for the integrated assessment of trade offs and pathways in bioenergy development we illustrated their application using results and data from previous related studies

vacation length choice a dynamic mixed multinomial logit model abstract this paper uses panel data to develop and estimate a dynamic model of choice of the length of stay of a vacation controlling for unobserved heterogeneity and state dependency length of stay options vary from short 1 3 nights medium 4 9 nights to long vacations 10 nights or more and the decision not to go on vacation in a particular year independent variables include family lifecycle stage income month and lags of the dependent variable results indicate that long holidays are most strongly affected by trips made previously in the same year than medium and short vacations in contrast there is an increased need for a vacation when any medium or long trips were not yet made in the current year month specific variables confirm that respondents have preferences for making leisure trips during the main holidays and warm seasons the observed differences given the various lifecycle stages reflect imposed constraints given age and or household composition that are typical of each particular group

asset holding and consumption volatility we investigate the possibility that limited participation in asset markets and the stock market in particular might explain the lack of correspondence between the sample moments of the intertemporal marginal rate of substitution and asset returns in u k data we estimate ownership probabilities to separate likely shareholders from nonshareholders enabling us to control for changing composition effects as well as selection into the group we then construct estimates of the imrs for each of these different groups and consider their time series properties we find that the consumption growth of shareholders is more volatile than that of nonshareholders and more highly correlated with excess returns to shares in particular one cannot reject the predictions of the consumption capital asset pricing model for the group of households predicted to own both assets this is in contrast to the failure of the model when estimated on data for all households

dynamic hypothetical bias in discrete choice experiments evidence from measuring the impact of corporate social responsibility on consumers demand abstract this paper is aimed at studying the dynamics of consumers preferences for corporate social responsibility the data come from both a discrete choice experiment dce and a field experiment conducted in a real market setting the results show that in a static setting first month predictions of a standard dce study and real market shares are statistically similar for the various profiles of corporate social responsibility however as time evolves real market shares present some dynamic patterns that are not mirrored by the standard dce predictions the overall conclusion is that differences between real market behavior and dce data can be attributed to the lack of learning experience or adaptation in dce surveys rather than to the hypothetical nature of the experiments

opportunistic political cycles test in a young democracy setting this paper tests the theory of opportunistic cycles in a decade old democracy russia finds strong evidence of cycles and provides an explanation for why previous literature often found weaker evidence using regional monthly panel data we find that 1 the budget cycle is sizable and short lived public spending shifts toward direct monetary transfers to voters 2 the magnitude of the cycle decreases with democracy government transparency media freedom voter awareness and over time and 3 preelectoral manipulation increases incumbents chances for reelection the short length of the cycle explains underestimation of its size by previous literature because of low frequency data used in previous studies

debt constrained asset markets we develop a theory of general equilibrium with endogenous debt limits in the form of individual rationality constraints similar to those in the dynamic consistency literature if an agent defaults on a contract he can be excluded from future contingent claims markets trading and can have his assets seized he cannot be excluded from spot markets trading however and he has some private endowments that cannot be seized all information is publicly held and common knowledge and there is a complete set of contingent claims markets since there is complete information an agent cannot enter into a contract in which he would have an incentive to default in some state in general there is only partial insurance variations in consumption may be imperfectly correlated across agents interest rates may be lower than they would be without constraints and equilibria may be pareto ranked

who delivers partisan clients in the argentine electoral market why do some parties fail to benefit from patronage in pork ridden political systems this article analyzes the interaction between patronage and partisanship to explain why some incumbents are more likely to benefit from pork politics than others we explain such differences by focusing on political parties access to resources supply side and voters dependence on fiscal largesse demand side we show how these differences affect the patron s choice of public sector wages and employment we use subnational level data to show different electoral returns from patronage for the two major political coalitions in argentina peronism and the ucr alianza and their effect on preferences over public sector wages and employment w hy do some political parties fail to benefit from patronage in pork ridden political systems this article analyzes the interaction between patronage and partisanship to explain why some incumbents are more likely to benefit from pork politics than others we explain returns to patronage by highlighting differences in the political parties access to resources supply side and the voter s dependence on public sector jobs demand side we propose that just as political parties cater their policies to particular groups of voters they pursue different strategies when allocating pork in exchange for support on the supply side we highlight the importance of partisan biases in the fiscal and electoral institutions that regulate the access and distribution of public resources on the demand side we show that patronage is a distributive mechanism that provides different returns to voters with different skills and labor market expectations

equilibrium subprime lending this paper develops an equilibrium model of a subprime mortgage market our goal is to offer a benchmark with which the recent subprime boom and bust can be compared the model is tractable and delivers plausible orders of magnitude for borrowing capacities as well as default and trading intensities we offer simple explanations for several phenomena in the subprime market such as the prevalence of teaser rates and the clustering of defaults in our model both nondiversifiable and diversifiable income risks reduce debt capacities thus debt capacities need not be higher when a larger fraction of income risk is diversifiable

self enforcing wage contracts we examine long term wage contracts between a risk neutral firm and a risk averse worker when both can costlessly renege and buy or sell labour at a random spot market wage a self enforcing contract is one in which neither party ever has an incentive to renege in the optimum self enforcing contract wages are sticky they are less variable than spot market wages and positively serially correlated they are updated by a simple rule around each spot wage is a time invariant interval and the contract wage changes each period by the smallest amount necessary to bring it into the current interval

incentive compatibility tests of choice experiment value elicitation questions abstract this paper uses laboratory experiments with induced values to address fundamental issues related to the incentive compatibility of choice experiment value elicitation questions in particular we compare two versus three option choice sets and the effect of using alternative provision rules including one where the outcome is influenced by both participant and regulator votes we find the overall proportion of choices that are inconsistent with induced preferences is rather low however there are more deviations from induced preferences for two option choice sets and for alternatives to a simple plurality vote implementation rule a multinomial probit analysis of choices in tandem with a mixed logit welfare analysis suggests there is a statistically significant but modest degree of bias towards selecting the status quo option

a comparison of stated preference methods for environmental valuation this paper presents an empirical comparison of contingent valuation cvm and choice experiments which are used to value environmental quality changes both of these methods require individuals to state their preferences for environmental qualities however choice experiments differ from cvm in that environmental attributes are varied in an experimental design which requires respondents to make repeated choices between bundles of attributes the empirical application involved the effect of environmental quality changes arising from forest management practices on recreational moose hunting values significant differences were found between the values derived from the two methods however detailed examination of the implied choice behaviour suggested that respondents ignored substitute recreation areas in the cvm question restricting the choice experiment model to consider only the one site where quality was varied resulted in welfare estimates similar to the cvm model this highlights the importance of substitutes in environmental valuation and suggests that choice experiments may be more appropriate than cvm in some cases