understanding heterogeneous preferences in random utility models a latent class approach a finite mixture approach toconditional logit models is developed in whichlatent classes are used to promoteunderstanding of systematic heterogeneity the model is applied to wilderness recreationin which a branded choice experiment involvingchoice of one park from a demand system wasadministered to a sample of recreationists the basis of membership in the classes orsegments in the sample involved attitudinalmeasures of motivations for taking a trip aswell as their stated preferences overwilderness park attributes the econometricanalysis suggested that four classes of peopleexist in the sample using the model toexamine welfare measures of some hypotheticalpolicy changes identified markedly differentwelfare effects than the standard singlesegment model and provided insight into thedifferential impact of alternative policies

public preferences for hydrogen buses comparing interval data ols and quantile regression approaches we use a quantile regression qr approach to analyse contingent valuation estimates of public willingness to pay wtp for the air and noise pollution reductions associated with the introduction of hydrogen buses in london qr results show that variables that were not significant in interval regression or ordinary least squares regression become significant at certain quantiles along the wtp distribution in addition the determinants of wtp at the lower tail of the distribution differ from those at the higher end of the distribution our findings illustrate the usefulness of quantile regression methods for analysing contingent valuation data enhancing our understanding of the determinants of willingness to pay

sustainable consumption within a sustainable economy beyond green growth and green economies abstract in 1992 one unambiguous result of the unced conference was the need for changing consumption and production patterns with affluent countries taking the lead 20 years later at the 2012 uncsd little is left over and instead the green economy has been the theme pursued by the oecd the eu and other countries so the question needs to be answered if this is finally an attempt to put into practice what was promised 20 years ago or another diversion from what needs to be accomplished sustainable development is still a convincing concept if the original definition is taken avoiding the confusion caused by partisan interests reinterpreting the concept focussing on human needs fulfilment and respecting environmental limits it can still guide strong sustainable consumption green economy green growth on the other hand is a new terminology for what is known since 40 years as ecological modernisation it is indeed overdue but with its focus on efficiency and innovation it cannot guarantee to fulfil the brundtland sustainability criteria a factor analysis based on the i p a t formula demonstrates how optimistic the assumptions regarding future technologies must be to support the green growth concept consequently the authors pledge for a pragmatic risk avoiding approach by slimming the physical size of the economy this requires strong sustainable consumption including production as resource consumption which in turn requires a change of the societies institutional settings formal and informal mechanisms and orientations finally some elements of a strategy towards this end are pointed out with special emphasis on the role of non governmental organisations ngos through networking and advocacy they can both stimulate bottom up action and mobilise the pressure necessary for the institutional changes which are needed to mainstream strong sustainable consumption

qualitative and quantitative evidence on the true local welfare costs of forest conservation in madagascar are discrete choice experiments a valid ex ante tool summary protected areas may impose local welfare costs through the enforcement of use restrictions predicting their welfare impacts before their establishment could help with the design of compensation schemes discrete choice experiments dces are increasingly used for ex ante evaluations but their validity is largely untested in low income settings using a case study of a new redd reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation project in eastern madagascar we explore the validity of dces in two ways i whether the estimates of welfare costs derived from dce are affected by respondents prior experience of conservation ii whether dce results have high theoretical and content validity we surveyed households who have varying degrees of experience of restrictions to swidden agriculture we also qualitatively debriefed a sub sample of respondents to better understand their thought processes latent class analysis shows that dce outcomes vary with conservation experience households more experienced with forest protection are less willing to trade off rights to clear forest for swidden agriculture with any compensatory interventions whereas less experienced households highly favor support for alternative agricultural techniques and a secure right to clear one hectare of forest although the results show apparent non attendance to some attributes e g cash payments qualitative debriefings suggest that respondents infact do expect relatively low or no utility from the given attributes and hence have theoretically valid preferences similarly the dce has generally high content validity although dce can elicit current preferences in this context using ex ante dce to estimate the welfare costs of such a long term intervention requires caution we conclude that it is difficult to robustly estimate compensation in advance of an intervention there is therefore a need to rethink conservation approaches and the feasibility of achieving fair compensations for conservation imposed restrictions

disentangling the effects of policy and payment consequentiality and risk attitudes on stated preferences abstract incentivizing respondents to truthfully reveal their preferences in stated preference surveys requires that they believe their survey responses can influence decisions related to the outcome in question policy consequentiality and that they will have to bear their share of the coercive cost if the outcome is implemented payment consequentiality we investigate the effects of these two aspects of perceived consequentiality on stated preferences in a field survey concerning renewable energy development in poland we find that beliefs in policy and payment consequentiality strengthen the respondents interest in having the project implemented however policy consequentiality decreases and payment consequentiality increases their sensitivity to the project cost which respectively increases and decreases their willingness to pay for the project we conclude that the two aspects of consequentiality should be addressed separately additionally we inquire the theoretically speculated links between the respondents perceptions of policy and payment consequentiality and their risk attitudes and we find no significant relationship

the relative value of farm animal welfare abstract this paper examines the viability of an alternative to willingness to pay method of eliciting values for farm animal welfare improvements the matching method common in the health and safety literature appears to perform well generating results that as might be expected are driven both by scheme specific variables and individual respondent characteristics however the results do not converge well with equivalent willingness to pay based values from the same population one interpretation of this result is that benefit cost ratios from stated preference studies are arbitrary phenomena with obvious implications for any policymaking based on such findings

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

of birds and books more on hypothetical referenda recently cummings et al 1997 have reported a test of whether a hypothetical referendum using a majority rule is incentive compatible motivated in part by the national oceanic and atmospheric administration s noaa initially proposed rules for using contingent valuation in natural resource damage assessments these authors conclude that results from our experiments which involve a relatively simple good that is valued in a simple and controlled setting suggest that this hypothesis the incentive compatibility of a hypothetical referendum using majority rule be rejected p 619 this note questions the relevance of the authors results for the recommendations in the noaa rules and in the process identifies the general difficulties posed in measuring the amount of a public good 1 the noaa rules for contingent valuation were proposed by a distinguished panel of social scientists including two nobel laureates in economics kenneth arrow and robert solow arrow et al 1993 the guidelines were intended to enhance the reliability of contingent valuation estimates of willingness to pay for restoring injured natural resources as part of damage assessments required by the comprehensive environmental response compensation and

heterogeneity in preferences for woody biomass energy in the us mountain west abstract millions of acres of public forest in the us mountain west are substantially degraded and are in need of restoration mechanized restoration treatments can improve forest health and reduce the likelihood of severe wildfire these treatments produce some timber and substantial amounts of forest residues that can be used to generate renewable energy and displace fossil fuels using the choice modeling method this study investigates social preferences for generation of energy with woody biomass produced by restoration treatments on public forests in the mountain west both multinomial logit and latent class logit lcl models are fit to the data and used to estimate marginal willingness to pay mwtp for increased amounts of woody biomass energy generation and important associated co benefits and costs positive and statistically significant mwtp is found for the number of homes powered with wood the extent of healthy forests avoiding increases in the number of large wildfires and local air quality significant heterogeneity was found in respondent preferences for the attributes the heterogeneity can be explained in part by sociodemographic and attitudinal characteristics of respondents the lcl revealed four classes of respondents with distinct preferences revealing conflicting viewpoints toward forest management for woody biomass energy generation

effect of government quality grade labels on consumer demand for pork chops in the short and long run abstract despite ample evidence of pork quality variability at present there are few signals that would incentivize growers to produce higher quality pork using split sample choice experiment data from a nationwide online survey of u s pork chop eaters this research determines changes in pork chop demand in response to a potential change in u s government policy that would introduce a new pork quality grading system based on color scores our simulations include novel short run projections in which the conditional and latent class logit models are inverted to yield inverse demand curves the inverse demand curves are used to calculate equilibrium prices and pork revenue given a fixed supply of different pork qualities we supplement these calculations with a more traditional long run analysis in which prices are fixed and quantities of different qualities adjust compared to the status quo control of no quality grades we find that two grading systems based on alternative nomenclatures select choice prime vs good better best both have the potential to increase pork chop sales and revenue to the pork industry however we also find that if only the highest quality is labeled revenue could fall as the increase in demand for the higher quality is offset by the fall in demand for the lower qualities results also highlight important heterogeneity in consumer preferences and although sensory studies strongly suggest redder pork chops are more highly preferred there remains a non trivial share of consumers who prefer whiter pork even after quality grade labeling overall this study offers several insights that can help inform labeling and quality grading policies

a probabilistic choice model for market segmentation and elasticity structure marketing scholars commonly characterize market structure by studying the patterns of substitution implied by brand switching though the approach is useful it typically ignores the destabilizing

the influence factors on choice behavior regarding green products based on the theory of consumption values abstract this study applies the theory of consumption values to determine the influence factors on consumer choice behavior regarding green products and examines whether there are significant differences in consumption values and choice behavior between consumers with different outlooks on environmental concerns one way analysis of variance and multiple regression is used to assess data collected by a questionnaire survey the results indicate that consumers with high environmental concern support green products more and show greater readiness to choose them this study concludes that the main influence factors on consumer choice behavior regarding green products include psychological benefit desire for knowledge novelty seeking and specific conditions and do not include functional values price and quality this study contributes to preliminary but vital insights in effective promotion of green products

a duopoly game with heterogeneous green supply chains in optimal price and market stability with consumer green preference abstract as environmental problems exponentially rising the necessity of environmental protection and green purchase behavior is addressed by the increasing consumers this paper aims to analyze the effects of consumer green preference on members optimal decisions and the speed of the adjustment of the optimal price strategies for heterogeneous green supply chains the results elaborate that consumer green preference significantly influences the product green level of the manufacturer and the supplier and has intricate effects on the speed of the adjustment of the boundedly rational supply chain which directly affects the social stability the vicious competition and the unbalance market are caused by the overreaction of the boundedly rational and naive supply chain to consumer green preference

benefit estimates for landscape improvements sequential bayesian design and respondents rationality in a choice experiment a multi attribute stated preference approach is used to value low and high impact actions on four major landscape components addressed by the rural environment protection scheme in ireland several methodological issues are addressed the use of prior beliefs on the relative magnitudes of parameters standardized description of different levels of landscape improvements via image manipulation software adoption of efficiency increasing sequential experimental design and sensitivity of benefit estimates to inclusion of responses from irrational respondents results suggest that bayesian design updating delivers significant efficiency gains without loss in respondent efficiency and estimates are upward biased when irrational respondents are included

willingness to pay for sustainability labelled chocolate an experimental auction approach this study evaluates young consumers attitudes to sustainable food and analyzes the determinants of their willingness to pay wtp for chocolate bars with different sustainability labels data were collected through experimental auctions in italy assessing respondents n 80 aged between 18 and 35 wtp for chocolate bars with three selected labels i e fair trade rainforest alliance and carbon footprint econometric outcomes reveal that several socio demographic factors exert a positive and statistically significant effect on wtp for all the selected chocolate bars namely age cohort older gender female and household income high respondents lifestyles and food consumption habits also had an effect on final bids this study offers valuable insights to policy makers and practitioners for efficiently targeting young consumers in campaigns to increase sustainability labelled food consumption

agriculture looks for shoes that fit the production responsibility system and its implications abstract by the end of 1981 problems clearly recognized within the communes included low productivity the failure to accumulate funds for modern inputs inefficient and corrupt cadres hidden unemployment inability to stimulate growth in other than major crops and disappointingly low levels of peasant incomes in many counties in north china peasants in 1980 began to divide up the collective fields on communes into smaller plots for cultivation by households and labour groups since then the face of china has been altered physically politically and organizationally by the creation of the responsibility system largely outside party control and influence document 75 of september 1980 sanctioning some form of production responsibility system was itself overtaken by events as a bewildering variety of forms emerged swamping the cadres practice was rapidly expanding beyond the theoretical discussions or pronouncements of officials like du runsheng the paper describes each of the many forms of contracting between peasant groups and the state now current in china with estimates of the relative proportions of the accounting units involved in each type table 3 new contradictions are already emerging in the changed rural set up partly because farm management problems bear similarities to those that confronted the open field strip farming of the european manor while the incentive to have more hands on family farms contradicts official chinese population policy

monitoring costs in chinese agricultural teams large productivity gains have been observed in chinese agriculture following the transition from collective farming to household contracting using a model of mutual monitoring in an egalitarian production team we estimate that labor supervision absorbed about 10 20 percent of total labor time for a sample of chinese agricultural teams during 1970 76 these agency costs are lower than comparable estimates derived from aggregate data

a repeated nested logit model of atlantic salmon fishing participation and site choice for atlantic salmon fishing are modeled in the context of a repeated three level nested logit model consumer s surplus measures are derived for different levels of species availability in the penobscot river the most important salmon river in new england for comparison six other travel cost models are estimated these include restrictive cases of the nested logit model a partial demand model and two single site demand models comparisons across these models indicate the importance of modeling the participation decision including income effects and of adopting a nested logit structure rather than a single level logit structure

valuation on the frontier calibrating actual and hypothetical statements of value the lack of robust evidence showing that hypothetical behavior directly maps into real actions remains a major concern for proponents of stated preference nonmarket valuation techniques this article explores a new statistical approach to link actual and hypothetical statements using willingness topay field data on individual bids from sealed bid auctions for a 350 baseball card our results are quite promising estimating a stochastic frontier regression model that makes use of data that any contingent valuation survey would obtain we derive a bid function that is not statistically different from the bid function obtained from subjects in an actual auction if other data can be calibrated similarly this method holds significant promise since an appropriate calibration scheme ex ante or ex post can be invaluable to the policy maker that desires more accurate estimates of use and nonuse values for nonmarket goods and services benefit cost analysis remains the dominant paradigm used throughout the public sector yet a recurring issue in properly estimating the total benefits of nonmarket goods and services is whether hypothetical statements map into real behavior some recently published studies provide evidence that suggests important differences exist between responses from real and hypothetical valuation questions 1 this observation triggered a search for an ex ante and ex post procedure to correct the systematic bias between intentions and actions in valuation exercises recent technology using ex ante procedures has produced some strong evidence that hypothetical bias can be overcome by using a cheap talk scheme see e g cummings and taylor list ex post calibration has also shown some signs of promise as work due to blackburn harrison

the choice theory approach to market research this paper surveys economic choice theory stressing developments that permit use of data from psychometric and conjoint experiments to produce market demand forecasts alternatives to the widely used multinomial logit model are summarized and a new method for estimating multinomial probits is described an integration of choice models with attitudinal scaling and perceptual mapping within a latent variable system is described estimation of such systems under either random effects or fixed effects descriptions of heterogeneity across individuals is discussed issues in the use of choice models to describe responses from conjoint experiments are presented new regression diagnostic tests for the consistency of multinomial logit representations are discussed

the european commission s sustainable consumption and production and sustainable industrial policy action plan abstract the promotion of sustainable consumption and production patterns is enshrined as a key objective in the renewed european union sustainable development strategy eu sds sustainable consumption and production is arguably the most challenging aspect of the eu sds it requires changes to the way products and services are designed produced used and disposed of taking into account producer and consumer behaviours this paper reviews the european commission s communication on the sustainable consumption and production and sustainable industrial policy action plan introduced on july 16 2008 the paper examines the priority areas identified for action the means adopted to improve energy and environmental performance of products as well as uptake by consumers the paper concludes that the absence of mandatory quantifiable targets and deadlines and a reliance on both cross sectoral and multi level relationships are likely to weaken the ability of the action plan s fundamental objective of decoupling economic growth from resource use

production technology option value the case of rbst in michigan agricultural producers are increasingly required to adjust production practices to satisfy retailer and ultimately consumer preferences this article highlights the option value that underlies decisions related to production technologies using the case of michigan dairy farmers and recombinant bovine somatotropin rbst welfare impacts were calculated for dairy producers when milk production systems which allowed the use of rbst were eliminated from the producer choice set those dairy producers using rbst just before its elimination realized a higher welfare loss than those not using the technology however significant welfare impacts were found for all dairy producers indicating that all producers valued the option to use this production technology

heterogeneity of preferences for the benefits of environmental stewardship a latent class approach since 2005 environmental stewardship es has been the principal agri environment scheme for england and is the key instrument for the delivery of increased environmental benefits from agricultural landscapes the main objective of this study is to investigate whether or not individuals preferences for the environmental benefits associated with es vary depending on types of landscapes within which these benefits are delivered a latent class model is applied to data obtained from a choice experiment survey of over 1000 respondents sampled across england the results suggest that individuals have heterogenous preferences for the benefits of es though different segments of the population with more homogenous preferences can be identified in particular higher levels of benefit are often associated with the operation of es in landscapes close to where respondents live this leads to the suggestion that in order to maximise the benefits of es its implementation could take this result into account by encouraging greater uptake from farmers whose land is closer to large populations

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

are choice experiments incentive compatible a test with quality differentiated beef steaks this study compares hypothetical and nonhypothetical responses to choice experiment questions we test for hypothetical bias in a choice experiment involving beef ribeye steaks with differing quality attributes in general hypothetical responses predicted higher probabilities of purchasing beef steaks than nonhypothetical responses thus hypothetical choices overestimate total willingness to pay for beef steaks however marginal willingness to pay for a change in steak quality is in general not statistically different across hypothetical and actual payment settings

environmental damage evaluation in a willingness to accept scenario a latent class approach based on familiarity in this paper we report on the results of the application of a latent class model that was designed to identify and characterize unobserved preference heterogeneity in the context of a willingness to accept wta framework involving negative environmental externalities stemming from the expansion of the port of valencia we investigated the hypothesis that respondents with greater familiarity with the targeted good and any related environmental damage would demand more compensation that is they would have a significantly higher wta based on respondents familiarity with the port of valencia and their pre existing knowledge about the negative consequences of its potential expansion three clusters based on six indicators are identified results show that contrary to what might be expected familiarity with a public good does not in all cases have a significant effect on stated wta

farmers willingness to contract switchgrass as a cellulosic bioenergy crop in kansas farmers adoption of cellulosic biofuel feedstock enterprises plays an important role in the future of agriculture and the renewable fuels industry however no set markets currently exist for bioenergy feedstocks outside of very localized geographic locations and farmers may be reluctant to produce the feedstocks without contracts that help mitigate uncertainty and risk this study examines farmers willingness to grow switchgrass under contract using a stated choice approach data were collected using an enumerated survey of kansas farmers and analyzed using latent class logistic regression models farmers whose primary enterprise is livestock are less inclined to grow switchgrass shorter contracts greater harvest flexibility crop insurance and cost share assistance increase the likelihood that farmers will grow switchgrass for bioenergy production

embracing model uncertainty strategies for response pooling and model averaging econometricians modeling stated preference sp data and most other types of data are confronted with the uncomfortable reality that our knowledge of the true model is limited with only certain variables suggested by the application at hand and general classes of functional forms and error structures suggested by the literature accepting our limited knowledge we pursue strategies for analyzing sp data that are more robust to uncertainties in our knowledge of the true model these include non parametric and parametric likelihood based tests of pooling responses from different elicitation formats and a frequentist based model averaging approach for estimating willingness to pay functions we argue that these strategies lead to increased econometric integrity and empower the ultimate users of models such as policy decision makers and even juries to better assess the robustness of the results we apply these approaches to an sp survey of saltwater angling in alaska which utilized split sample rankings and ratings elicitation methods while an important goal of our paper is to develop practicable modeling strategies that will ultimately lead to more robust conclusions and more confidence by the users of sp results an equally important goal is to engender a critical discussion of how we can make the analysis of sp data more robust

addressing preference heterogeneity multiple scales and attribute attendance with a correlated finite mixing model of tap water choice unobserved heterogeneity of error scale in choice models is a recent extension of the better investigated issue of heterogeneity of taste intensity it is achieved by fitting choice panel data with specifications that simultaneously handle inter personal variation in scale and taste the aim is to separate differences in preference intensities across respondents from differences in the degree of consistency in choice behaviour or preference discrimination while accounting for correlation between the two another recent substantive issue in choice data analysis is attribute non attendance we develop a finite mixing model to address simultaneously the three issues above we empirically prove the concept on stated preference data related to tap water attributes in a study for industry regulation

designing a payments for ecosystem services pes program to reduce deforestation in tanzania an assessment of payment approaches abstract payments for ecosystem services pes programs aim to improve environmental outcomes by providing direct incentives to land managers for the provision of ecosystem services participation in pes programs is voluntary so effective program design requires careful consideration of farmers preferences this study quantifies such preferences using a choice experiment the study site is the east usambara mountains tanzania an internationally recognized biodiversity hotspot we assess preferences for four payment approaches constant and variable annual cash payments to individual farmers a constant annual cash payment to a village fund on behalf of farmers and an upfront manure fertilizer payment we find that the manure fertilizer payment was statistically significant in motivating farmer participation while the group payment was non significant in addition the relationship between the likelihood of participation and the stringency of conditionality is surprisingly non linear in a test of external validity average willingness to accept wta values are found to be similar to the average opportunity cost of maintaining land uses consistent with conservation objectives

personality and economic choices abstract there is substantial variation in individual preferences for public goods yet much of that variation remains poorly understood however simple measures of personality can help to explain economic values and choices in a systematic way in this paper we examine the effects of personality on individual economic choices over public environmental goods based on three datasets from three separate stated preference studies we use a hybrid choice econometric framework to examine the effects of personality on preferences for the status quo changes in environmental quality and costs of investing in environmental improvements we find effects that are consistent across all datasets personality a stable feature of an individual s character that is simple to measure enriches explanations of why the demand for environmental goods varies across people provides an indication of how different people are likely to react to the introduction of environmental policies and explains substantial differences in willingness to pay

demand effects in stated preference surveys abstract we argue that demand effects in stated preference studies are understudied by demand effects we mean anything in the survey that unintentionally influences respondents beliefs about appropriate behavior which in turn might affect their responses in the survey we implement two methods for measuring and implicitly reducing the influence of demand effects the first approach random selection of good to be valued does not have any effect on respondent behavior the second approach a demand script and a control question with feedback has a sizable and statistically significant effect on respondent behavior in particular estimated marginal willingness to pay for improvements in water quality are substantially around 50 percent lower than a control treatment we attribute this decrease to a reduced demand effect our results suggest that stated preference methods tend to lead to biased willingness to pay estimates due to demand effects but that the bias can be reduced using simple measures

validity of discrete choice experiments evidence for health risk reduction there is growing interest in discrete choice experiment dce as a method to elicit consumers preferences in the health care sector increasingly this method is used to determine willingness to pay wtp for health related goods however its external validity in the health care domain has not been investigated until now this paper examines the external validity of dce concerning the reduction of a health risk convergent validity is examined by comparing the value of a statistical life with other preference elicitation techniques such as revealed preference criterion validity is shown by comparing wtp values derived from stated choices in the experiment with those derived from actual choices made by the same individuals both tests provide strong evidence in favour of external validity of the dce method

a modified collective agriculture in rural growth with equity reconsidering the private unimodal solution abstract this paper identifies limitations of an agricultural structure of small private farms as a basis for rural growth with distributive equity and points out potential advantages of democratically managed collectives characterized by flexibility with respect to production scale group checks on inequality in land use and avoidance of the underemployment generating tendencies of large scale non collective agriculture after a critique of recent literature on scale economies and a discussion of stratification tendencies in private agriculture a model of democratic rural collectives incorporating features of chinese and tanzanian precedents is introduced and evaluated political feasibility is considered in a concluding discussion

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

national contexts matter the co evolution of sustainability standards in global value chains in this paper we investigate the role of key industry and other stakeholders and their embeddedness in particular national contexts in driving the proliferation and co evolution of sustainability standards based on the case of the global coffee industry we find that institutional conditions and market opportunity structures in consuming countries have been important sources of standards variation for example in the cases of fairtrade utz certified and the common code for the coffee community 4c in turn supplier structures in producing countries as well as their linkages with traders and buyers targeting particular consuming countries have been key mechanisms of standards transmission and selection unlike prior research which has emphasized the role of global actors and structures in promoting and hindering sustainability initiatives we argue that national economic and institutional conditions in consuming and producing countries have not only served as important drivers of standards multiplicity and co evolution but also as catalysts for the entire global sustainability movement

the effect of mail in utility rebates on willingness to pay for energy star textregistered certified refrigerators the number and variety of governmental programs designed to promote energy efficiency have increased over time examples include mandatory minimum efficiency standards subsidies for more energy efficient goods and services and consumer labels such as the united states environmental protection agency s energy star textregistered while there has been considerable research on the effects of these programs in isolation there has been less of a focus on joint effects or interactions between programs this study examines how the offer of a mail in rebate influences consumer willingness to pay for an energy star certified refrigerator data used for this study were collected from an online survey containing a hypothetical choice experiment conducted in the united states in 2009 results suggest that the offer of a rebate induces uncertainty about the quality of energy star certified refrigerators and thus could actually reduce willingness to pay for such refrigerators

combining attitudinal statements with choice experiments to analyze preference heterogeneity for functional dairy products abstract in this article we employ a discrete choice experiment to examine preferences for functional dairy product attributes and willingness to pay estimates for consumers in germany we estimate preference heterogeneity by linking stated preference choice data not only to socioeconomic characteristics but also to attitudinal statements in a latent class framework the empirical results indicate the existence of class specific preference heterogeneity based on the consumers attitude towards functional foods emphasizing the importance of attitudinal data in explaining consumers choice behavior our estimates demonstrate that within a class consumers preferences are in accordance with their responses to attitudinal statements that is functional food skeptics prefer non functional dairy products while functional food advocates have a negative preference for non functional dairy products the findings also show that all consumers place high value on dairy products enriched with known functional ingredients such as omega 3 fatty acids

the bunch of sustainability labels do consumers differentiate abstract a huge number of sustainable labels addressing the different pillars of sustainability emerged over the last years some labels promote factors which already imply other sustainability issues e g organic incl animal friendliness to a certain extent hence the question arises how consumers react towards the redundancies of different sustainability labels to add to the literature this study applies a latent class model for discrete choices first to test whether consumers take different sustainable labels into account when making their decision and second to test how consumers deal with different sustainable labels that are partly claiming the same aspect results indicate that three consumer segments with well distinguished preferences and willingness to pay measures for the respective attributes can be identified one group being the price sensitives exclusively deciding on the product with the lowest price regardless of any sustainable attribute of the product another group opts for products with a sustainable label without any clear preference for a specific sustainable attribute but expressing a clear willingness to pay more for all presented sustainable labels i e the label choosers a third group can be named price conscious label discriminators for them some sustainable aspects provide negative utility when labelled exclusively e g organic or free of genetically modified organisms but labelled together e g organic together with free of genetically modified organisms or animal welfare it provides them significantly positive utility even though being redundant by definition based on our findings there is no general statement to be made regarding the question whether different sustainable aspects complement or substitute each other the research rather emphasizes that a differentiated look at different consumer types and different labels symbolizing sustainability is needed the research adds to the existing literature by examining not only the relevance and acceptance of different sustainable labels to different consumer segments but also the interrelationship of different sustainable labels the study clearly shows that with regard to different sustainable labels the more the merrier does not always apply however almost 85 of the market could be satisfied with a universal sustainability label

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

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

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

do protest responses to a contingent valuation question and a choice experiment differ it is suggested that the number of protest responses in stated preference surveys depends inter alia on the valuation method used choice experiments ce are said to generate a lower number of protest responses than contingent valuation cv however no comparison of both methods with respect to protest responses has been conducted to date we used both ce and cv in a survey on forest biodiversity in two german regions protest beliefs were measured for all respondents irrespective of whether they were willing to pay or not the results show no clear pattern of differences between ce and cv regarding protest beliefs and protest responses using an attitude scale based on respondents protest beliefs we see a significant negative effect of this attitude on willingness to pay in both methods however in one of the two study regions the effect is weaker in ce than in cv

market potential for smart growth neighbourhoods in the usa a latent class analysis on heterogeneous preference and choice with data from a 2011 national association of realtors community preference survey we examined individuals preferences and the resulting market potential for smart growth neighbourhoods in the usa using a latent class choice model we discovered four classes of individuals that reveal distinctive behaviours when choosing smart growth neighbourhoods based on the interplay between aspects of community design socioeconomic characteristics and personal attitudes based on these results we estimated the demand for smart growth neighbourhoods given the way they are planned and built by linking the results of the latent class choice to a market diffusion model we were able to evaluate the effectiveness of a proposed smart growth neighbourhood design in inducing less sprawling development

property rights regimes in complex fishery management systems a choice experiment application the tonle sap wetland fishery was previously divided into 3 different management zones for conservation open access fishing and private fishing rights to the private fishing zone involved auctions for exclusive rights to temporarily designated plots this paper aims to explore the auction based system by investigating how this fishery management system affects different groups of small scale fishermen and how different characteristics of the fishing lots affect the bidding a choice experiment approach was used to model fishermen s choices in a hypothetical auction market by offering fishermen the choice between purchasing different potential fishing lots and a no purchase option implying fishing only in the communal fishing grounds the preferred latent class model with two segments of fishermen showed that the bidding behavior of the more privileged group out competes the other group irrespective of the lot characteristics this result suggests that it is unlikely that the redesign of the auction system itself would be an effective way of securing access to fishing resources for the two observed groups of fishermen this implies that open access fishing grounds and or other regulations may also be needed in future management as they serve an important role for the poorer segments

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

environmentally sustainable household consumption from aggregate environmental pressures to priority fields of action unsustainable consumption patterns of the north or rather of the global affluent consumers class have been identified by agenda 21 as one of the key driving forces behind the unsustainable development however neither accounting based on the system of national accounts sna nor household economics provide the proper instruments to assess the environmental impact of household decision making eco efficiency assessments as familiar in the business sector provide no appropriate tool for households as an alternative an environmental space based assessment scheme is suggested covering the major pressures on the environment caused by household decisions the methodology is used twice once to analyse the environmental relevance of the main activity clusters of household consumption and once to identify the dominant acts of consumption within each cluster the latter provide the basis for deriving environmental performance indicators a rough analysis of household influence potentials permits to identify housing eating and mobility as the three priority fields for action for minimising the environmental impact of households extending the influence analysis actor matrixes are derived allocating influence and thus responsibility for environmental pressures to different groups of economic agents

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

activities in models of recreational demand scholars have taken divergent approaches to incorporating on site activities into their empirical specifications of site choice models we provide a framework for assessing this methodological heterogeneity through a model that explicitly allows individuals to choose both on site activities and site attributes this model not only conditions the marginal value of site attributes on the choice of an activity but also explicitly recovers the marginal rates of substitution across activities this eliminates previously unrecognized biases in the welfare analysis of changes in site attributes we test hypotheses generated by our model by comparing rival models of demand for access to beaches in costa rica

consumers willingness to pay for sustainable food products the case of organically and locally grown almonds in spain abstract organically and locally grown products have positive environmental impacts due to the reduction in the greenhouse emissions required for their production this paper contributes to this research stream by investigating consumers preferences and their willingness to pay for almonds that have different sustainable labels distance claims 100 km 800 km and 2000 km and the organic logo established by the european union to achieve the objective consumers participated in a non hypothetical choice experiment latent class modeling was employed to identify distinct patterns of valuation the results suggest that consumers were willing to pay a positive price premium for locally grown traveled the shortest distance and organically produced almonds whereas they were not willing to pay a price premium for almonds that have traveled longer distances moreover the findings show that consumer preferences for these claims were heterogeneous with three consumer segments identified as conventional consumers short distance consumers and sustainable consumers overall results confirm the results of previous studies because spanish consumers were willing to pay a premium price for those almonds that are organically and locally produced and therefore generate fewer greenhouse gases emissions the findings of this study added scientific value to scholars of sustainable consumer behavior because of the use of real choice experiment since no hypothetical evaluation method simulates real markets with real products and a transaction of money real choice experiment provides better approximations of true willingness to pay for organic and local almonds therefore real choice modeling eliminates hypothetical and social bias the results of this study contribute to insights in the promotion of sustainable consumption among citizens by policy makers in this regard promotional and educational campaigns could drive different segments of consumers to increase their knowledge on the benefits of reduction of the quantity of ghg emissions required for organic and locally grown production

sustainability labels on food products consumer motivation understanding and use this study investigates the relationship between consumer motivation understanding and use of sustainability labels on food products both environmental and ethical labels which are increasingly appearing on food products data was collected by means of an online survey implemented in the uk france germany spain sweden and poland with a total sample size of 4408 respondents respondents expressed medium high to high levels of concern with sustainability issues at the general level but lower levels of concern in the context of concrete food product choices understanding of the concept of sustainability was limited but understanding of four selected labels fair trade rainforest alliance carbon footprint and animal welfare was better as some of them seem to be self explanatory the results indicated a low level of use no matter whether use was measured as self reported use of different types of information available on food labels or as use inferred from the results of a choice based conjoint analysis hierarchical regression indicated that use is related to both motivation and understanding and that both motivation understanding and use are affected by demographic characteristics human values as measured by the schwartz value domains and country differences the results imply that sustainability labels currently do not play a major role in consumers food choices and future use of these labels will depend on the extent to which consumers general concern about sustainability can be turned into actual behaviour

a latent class approach to investigating demand for genetically modified banana in uganda this study explores consumer acceptance and valuation of a genetically modified gm staple food crop in a developing country prior to its commercialization we focus on the hypothetical introduction of a disease resistant gm banana variety in uganda where bananas are among the most important staple crops a choice experiment is used to investigate consumer preferences for various attributes related to the banana such as bunch size technology producer benefit and price and examine their opinions on gm foodstuff choice data come from 421 banana consuming households randomly selected from three regions of uganda a latent class model is used to investigate the heterogeneity in consumers preferences for selected attributes related to the banana and to profile consumers who are more or less likely to accept gm bananas our results reveal that there is significant heterogeneity in consumer preferences across our sample gm bananas are valued the most by poorer households located in the rural areas of the eastern region these food insecure households would experience the highest benefits i e welfare gains from the commercial release of gm bananas in contrast urban consumers are less accepting of gm bananas and they would experience significant welfare losses if gm banana is released according to our welfare estimates both the total welfare benefits acquired by the gainers and the total welfare losses borne by the losers of this technology are significant and large these results suggest the need for further investigation of the overall welfare effects of the introduction of gm bananas on the ugandan society as a whole

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

information and effort in contingent valuation surveys application to global climate change using national internet samples this contingent valuation study investigates the issues of information access and respondent effort and is based on a series of national internet samples the focus is on a split sample treatment basic information bi versus enhanced information ei in the latter significantly expanded information is provided about global climate change and the kyoto protocol using a referendum format we compare the treatment effect bi versus ei on willingness to pay wtp we develop measures of respondent effort in accessing optional information through the technology of web based surveys and jointly model effort and wtp using a simultaneous estimation approach results support the use of the joint modeling approach for objective measures of respondent effort and wtp respondent effort is shown to be positively and significantly related to wtp however use of the optional menu is rather modest counts of pages and time spent and is highly variable both across pages and respondents

a joint latent class model combining likert scale preference statements with choice data to harvest preference heterogeneity in addition to choice questions revealed and stated choices preference surveys typically include other questions that provide information about preferences preference statement data include questions on the importance of different attributes of a good or the extent of agreement with a particular statement the intent of this paper is to model and jointly estimate preference heterogeneity using stated preference choice data and preference statement data the starting point for this analysis is the belief that the individual has preferences and both his her choices and preference statements are manifestations of those preferences our modeling contribution is linking the choice data and preference statement data in a latent class framework estimation is straightforward using the e m algorithm even though our model has hundreds of preference parameters our estimates demonstrate that 1 within a preference class the importance anglers associate with different green bay site characteristics is in accordance with their responses to the preference statements 2 estimated across class utility parameters for fishing green bay are affected by the preference statement data 3 estimated across class preference statement response probabilities are affected by the inclusion of the choice data and 4 both data sets influence the number of classes and the probability of belonging to a class as a function of the individual s type

resolving questions about bias in real and hypothetical referenda despite 10 years of research on behavior in hypothetical referenda conflict remains in the literature on whether or not the mechanism generates biased responses compared to real referenda and the nature and source of any such bias almost all previous inquiry in respect of this issue has concentrated on bias at the aggregate level this paper reports a series of three experiments which focuses on bias at the individual level and how this can translate to bias at the aggregate level the authors argue that only an individual approach to hypothetical bias is consistent with the concept of incentive compatibility the results of these experiments reflect these previous conflicting findings but go on to show that individual hypothetical bias is a robust result driven by the differing influence of pure self interest and other regarding preferences in real and hypothetical situations rather than by a single behavioral theory such as free riding in a hypothetical situation these preferences cause yea saying and non demand revealing voting this suggests that investigation of individual respondents in other hypothetical one shot binary choices may also provide us with insights into aggregate behavior in these situations

relating environmental attitudes and contingent values how robust are methods for identifying preference heterogeneity we assess the importance and robustness of cluster analysis and latent class analysis as methods to account for unobserved heterogeneity we provide a critique and comparison of both methods in the context of measuring environmental attitudes and a contingent valuation study involving endangered species we find strong evidence of robustness for these methods group characterization and assignment of individuals to groups are similar between methods and willingness to pay estimates are consistent in addition there are significant differences in willingness to pay across environmental attitudinal groups and we find that accounting for unobservable heterogeneity provides a significantly better fitting model

evaluating water policy scenarios against the priorities of the rural poor summary a stated choice method evaluates how well water policy responds to the preferences of the rural poor in south africa household priorities to experimental scenarios of water resource and water services attributes are investigated in two communities with poor water access in a semi arid zone results identify improved water accessibility as the most important intervention for social welfare gains particularly benefiting female water collectors a latent class specification reveals two sub groups with different weighted preferences this specification reinforces the primacy of domestic water access and also identifies a smaller but significant group with preferences for water availability for kitchen garden irrigation

effects on welfare measures of alternative means of accounting for preference heterogeneity in recreational demand models multiattribute revealed preference data are used to investigate heterogeneity in a sample of kayakers for a panel of whitewater sites in ireland this article focuses on a comparison of preference heterogeneity using a random parameter logit model with correlated tastes and a latent class model in terms of the implications for welfare measures of environmental quality and site access changes recreationalists skill levels are found to affect preferences in both approaches statistics for the estimated distribution of welfare changes for the average respondent are computed for changes in site attributes but contrary to previous work these are found to be of similar magnitude

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

when do people exploit moral wiggle room an experimental analysis of information avoidance in a market setup abstract we investigate if decision makers avoid information to exploit moral wiggle room in green market settings we therefore implement a laboratory experiment in which subjects purchase products associated with externalities in six between subjects treatments we alter the availability of information on the externalities the price of revealing information as well as the nature of the externality which could either affect another subject or change the amount spent by the experimenters on carbon offsets we find that subjects do not strategically avoid information when revealing information is costless when a very small cost of revealing information is introduced their behavior depends on the relation between prices and externalities in situations in which it is relatively cheap to have a large impact on the recipient s payoff subjects avoid information in order to choose selfishly for other parameterizations subjects behave either honestly egoistically or altruistically

random coefficient models for stated preference surveys abstract this paper combines the use of random coefficient discrete choice models that allow for correlated errors in the form of unobserved preference heterogeneity with an investigation of the reliability and usefulness of rankings data for the data we examine we find significant unobserved preference heterogeneity in the rankings which violates the underlying assumptions of the rank ordered logit model further directly modeling unobserved preference heterogeneity results in significant improvement in the precision of the parameter estimates and in estimated willingness to pay wtp the reliability and usefulness of rankings data should be re examined with econometric models not subject to the independence of irrelevant alternatives iia

fuzzy logic and preference uncertainty in non market valuation in seeking to value environmental amenities and public goods individuals often have trouble trading off the vague good or amenity against a monetary measure valuation in these circumstances can best be described as fuzzy in terms of the amenity being valued perceptions of property rights and the numbers chosen to reflect values in this paper we apply fuzzy logic to contingent valuation employing a fuzzy clustering approach for incorporating preference uncertainty obtained from a follow up certainty confidence question we develop a fuzzy random utility maximization frum framework where the perceived utility of each individual is fuzzy in the sense that an individual s utility belongs to each cluster to some degree the model is then applied to a swedish survey that elicited residents willingness to pay for enhanced forest conservation and to a canadian survey of agricultural landowners that elicited their willingness to accept compensation for a tree planting program both the wtp and wta measures we obtain using the fuzzy approach are well below those obtained using standard probability methods based on goodness of fit measures and monte carlo experimentation a case can be made for using a fuzzy preference approach for modeling preference uncertainty as opposed to incorporating respondent uncertainty within the random utility maximization framework

a semiparametric smooth coefficient estimator for recreation demand we introduce a semiparametric smooth coefficient estimator for recreation demand data that allows more flexible modeling of preference heterogeneity we show that our sample of visitors each has an individual statistically significant price coefficient estimate leading to clearly nonparametric consumer surplus and willingness to pay wtp distributions we also show mean wtp estimates that are different in economically meaningful ways for every demographic variable we have for our sample of beach visitors this flexibility is valuable for future researchers who can include any variables of interest beyond the standard demographic variables we have included here and the richer results price elasticities consumer surplus and wtp estimates are valuable to planners and policymakers who can easily see how all these estimates vary with characteristics of the population of interest

recreation demand models with taste differences over people we estimate random parameter logit models of anglers choice of fishing site the models generalize logit by allowing coefficients to vary randomly over anglers rather than being fixed the models do not exhibit the restrictive independence from irrelevant alternatives property of logit and can represent any substitution pattern estimation explicitly accounts for the fact that the variation in coefficients over anglers induces correlation in unobserved utility over trips by the same angler willingness to pay for improved fish stock and the value to anglers of specific sites are calculated from the models and compared with the estimates obtained from a standard logit model

the structure and contradictions of productive relations in socialist agrarian reform a framework for analysis and the chinese case this article attempts to develop a complex analytical framework for analysing socialist agrarian reform and to apply it to the case of post mao china perhaps the most sweeping agrarian reform in the history of socialism the purpose of doing so is to disaggregate the complex changes which have been wrought under the responsibility systems in order to get a more nuanced sense of what has and has not changed how the various parts fit together and where the axes of contradiction posed by the reform may lie this analytical framework may also be of use in comparative analysis of socialist agriculture though that enterprise is not attempted here one basic argument of this study is that the responsibility systems of the recent chinese reforms are neither socialist nor capitalist but something distinctive whose potentially heterogeneous elements must be identified disaggregated analysed one by one and then reconstituted in order to expose their nature dynamics and contradictions

testing the influence of substitute sites in nature valuation by using spatial discounting factors this paper investigates the effect of nearby nature substitute sites on preferences for nature restoration contrary to prior studies we use a respondent centric approach to control for substitute sites we assess each respondent specific spatial context by computing densities of nature substitute sites within various ranges from each respondent s home this approach considers the use and non use values of nature together data from three similar discrete choice experiments carried out in flanders belgium are compared different spatial discounting factors are tested to explore how the substitution effect behaves with regard to distance latent class analyses are performed to account for preference heterogeneity among respondents we observe divergent behaviours across groups of respondents the distance to substitutes affects how respondents gauge substitute sites we find a significant influence of the squared average buffer distance but this effect varies in sign across case studies and classes of respondents our results demonstrate that individual specific gis data can significantly improve the representation of the spatial context and the transferability of value functions however the roles played by preference heterogeneity and nature perception on respondents capacity to value nature still deserves further attention in future research

are hypothetical referenda incentive compatible a comment in a recent article in this journal cummings al 1997 offer experimental evidence rejecting the hypothesis that a hypothetical referendum is an incentive compatible mechanism for obtaining the social value of or willingness to pay for changes in the allocation of environmental goods and services while cautions in offering a blanket rejection of hypothetical referenda as a means of measuring economic values on the basis of their findings the authors do suggest that at least in experimental settings respondents appear to behave differently when real money is changing hands wheather hypothetical situations adequately mimic real market situations has been debated in the contigent valuation literature since its inception see cummings brookshire and schulze 1986 cummings et al s finding of incentive incompatibility appears to offer strong evidence for the critics of hypothetical referenda

respondent experience and contingent valuation of environmental goods abstract respondent experience i e a respondent s information set has long been suspected to influence contingent valuation estimates of environmental values we assess the influence of experience by explicitly modeling the relationship between respondent experience and both fitted individual resource values and the conditional variance of these estimated values using three different joint specifications for experience and wtp normal censored normal poisson censored normal and zero inflated poisson censored normal we find discrete jumps in resource values as experience increases from zero and that more experienced respondents have smaller conditional variances simulation of arbitrary levels of experience allows standardization of the amount of information when developing welfare estimates