contingent values as implicit contracts estimating minimum legal willingness to pay for conservation of large carnivores in sweden mean willingness to pay wtp based on multiple bounded discrete choice responses from contingent valuation surveys are normally obtained using some kind of parametric estimator this paper instead exploits the possibility to interpret the response to the discrete choice question as an implicit contract between the researcher and the respondent resulting in a minimum legal wtp mlw estimator never previously used in valuation literature it is used in this paper to estimate the wtp for the preservation of large carnivores in sweden based on a large scale national survey results show that mlw estimates only were 12 19 of the comparable parametric estimates in keeping with other results in contingent valuation literature we find that the mlw estimates are positively related to the educational level income and the fraction of urban population while negatively related to age among the advantages of the mlw estimator is its transparency as well as the fact that it rests on a contractual notion of wtp

paired comparison and contingent valuation approaches to morbidity risk valuation abstract this research uses an experimental approach for eliciting consumer valuations of morbidity risk reductions associated with safter chemical products and introduces the paired comparison questions approach to non market valuation in four applications the paired comparisons approach yields higher morbidity valuations than the more familiar contingent valuation approach however both methodologies produce large values of morbidity reduction benefits in comparison to estimates derived from wage hedonic studies explanations for the difference in the estimates and their magnitudes are suggested along with the public policy implications

semi nonparametric distribution free dichotomous choice contingent valuation abstract we apply a semi nonparametric distribution free estimator for binary discrete response data to the estimation of a dichotomous choice contingent valuation model using this estimator mean and median compensating and equivalent variation can be consistently estimated without making nontheoretically motivated assumptions on consumer preferences the approach is illustrated using a contingent valuation survey of willingness to pay for reduction of risk of premature death due to exposure to hazardous waste we find that a conventional parametric estimator and the proposed estimator give similar estimates of unconditional wtp but that conditional on explanatory variables the estimates are quite different

modeling individual preferences for energy sources the case of iv generation nuclear energy in italy the planned re introduction of nuclear energy in italy was abandoned in the aftermath of the fukushima nuclear accident twenty years earlier soon after the chernobyl accident italians had also voted against nuclear energy however a new nuclear energy technology i e fourth generation is under research and development this paper investigates its social acceptance by means of a robust methodology employing 1 choice experiments 2 structural equation modeling and 3 information treatments within an online nation wide survey results show a great deal of preference heterogeneity the majority of the sampled respondents oppose new nuclear plants in italy with some not willing to accept any monetary compensation at all however another segment of respondents more confident that fourth generation nuclear energy goals will be achieved show a modest support towards the implementation of new nuclear projects additional variables were found to affect opposition

valuing option existence and bequest demands for wilderness to assess the relative importance of current costs and future benefits of nuclear waste storage we develop a simple model of bequest value the basic model of nonparternalistic altruism is extended to account for the uncertain nature of the externality

protest responses and willingness to pay attitude toward paying for stormwater pollution abatement abstract in contingent valuation cv surveys there is often a proportion of individuals who are not willing to pay to obtain avoid an increase decrease in some attribute of a particular environmental public good some of these respondents might protest an aspect of the cv survey e g payment vehicle or the behavioral intention i e willingness to pay wtp constituting the measure of economic value respondents attitudes toward the behavior of paying for a particular public good may contribute to the decision to pay independent of other explanatory variables such as the price of the intervention household income and methodological characteristics of the cv survey moreover attitude toward paying for the good may manifest in protest responses as a reaction to higher prices and methodological factors e g the payment vehicle to the extent that protest beliefs are dependent on such matters of survey design they may be alleviated through changes in cv methodology however to the extent that protest beliefs are a reaction to the act of paying methodological remedies may not be effective cv surveys of stormwater pollution abatement were conducted in four australian state capital cities the surveys differed with respect to the type of pollution abatement intervention the payment regime the vector of prices used in the dichotomous choice question and the institution responsible for implementing the stormwater pollution intervention protest beliefs were measured for all respondents irrespective of their responses to the wtp question results indicated that attitude toward paying underpinned protest beliefs regarding the role of government in stormwater management and individual rights to unpolluted waterways this attitude was present in each city sample despite methodological differences between the cv surveys attitude toward paying explained variability in wtp and was a larger predictor than was price household income was significantly associated with attitude toward paying and this relationship was also invariant over city samples protest beliefs were not independent of either the wtp question or demographic factors such as household income rather these beliefs were related to wtp through attitudes toward the act of paying for stormwater pollution abatement censoring protest responses in the present study would bias cv samples toward those individuals who are favorably disposed toward paying for environmental public goods and those from higher income households

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

does altruism undermine existence value abstract the debate over the use of contingent valuation for existence values or passive use values has failed to explore the validity of motives for such values one potential motive altruism has conflicting implications for benefit cost analysis depending on whether the altruist is paternalistic this paper constructs models of three types of altruism and shows how benefit cost analysis responds to each type of altruism how damage assessment and restoration depend on each type and the implications of a population of heterogeneous altruists

valuing water supply reliability instead of creating water supply systems that fully insulate mankind from climate imposed water deficiencies it is possible that for municipal water systems a nonzero probability of water supply shortfall is efficient perfect water supply reliability meaning no chance of future shortfall is not optimal when water development costs are high designing an efficient strategy requires an assessment of consumer preferences pertaining to the reliability of water supply contingent valuations of both current and future shortfalls are reported the consistency of these measures is gauged using an expected utility model copyright 2000 oxford university press

deliberative monetary valuation in search of a democratic and value plural approach to environmental policy the use of deliberative methods to assess environmental values in monetary terms has been motivated by the potential for small group discussion to help with preference formation and the inclusion of non economic values in this review two broad approaches are identified preference economisation and preference moralisation the former is analytical concentrates upon issues of poor respondent cognition and produces a narrow conception of value linked to utilitarianism the latter emphasises political legitimacy appeals to community values and tends to privilege arguments made in the public interest both approaches are shown to embrace forms of value convergence which undermine the prospects for value pluralism as a result exclusion and predefinition of values dominates current practice in order to maintain democratic credentials the importance attributed to monetary value needs to be left as an open question to be addressed as part of a process determining an agreement to pay to this end we identify a discourse based approach as a third way consistent with the democratic and value plural potential of deliberative monetary valuation

evaluating the public perceptions of nuclear power in china evidence from a contingent valuation survey national natural science foundation of china 71303199 71373218 ministry of education foundation of china 13yjc790123 11jbgp006 13jzd010 fundamental research funds for the central universities 201122g008 2014221001 national social science foundation of china 13zd167

the effect of income choice on bias in policy decisions made using cost benefit analyses abstract cost benefit analysis cba is often used in policy decisions to determine the economic value of various choices although the effects of income disparity are well accepted one of the reasons for the success of this type of analysis is that many policy makers and analysts consider the results of a well crafted analysis to be largely free of partisan or political bias here i propose that tradeoffs between the benefits of various possible jobs or careers introduce a significant bias into values imputed based upon willingness to pay wtp measures in particular i demonstrate why we might expect the values of various segments of society to be differentially appreciated by cba empirical evidence is presented indicating that there is a significant negative correlation between the importance an individual places on income and the willingness of that individual to forgo consumption in favor of environmental improvement as well as a correlation between the importance of income and actual income these results suggest that cba as a tool of welfare economics is likely to be biased against environmental protection because concerned individuals are likely to choose careers which do not maximize consumption thus decreasing their ability to pay for both real and hypothetical environmental improvements moreover the size of this bias appears to be large

vertically summing public good demand curves an empirical comparison of economic versus political jurisdictions fiscal equivalence for efficient provision of a public good requires perfect correspondence between political and economic jurisdictions however the spatial extent of the economic jurisdiction is an empirical question drawing on four survey based valuation studies we measure the relative public good benefit gradient as a function of residential location from six natural resource public goods the results indicate commonly used state political jurisdictions reflect an average of 13 of total benefits in the economic jurisdiction although with a logarithmic form for distance the upper confidence interval of state benefits can include 100 for some species

trading mechanisms and stock returns an empirical investigation this paper examines the effects of the mechanism by which securities are traded on their price behavior we compare the behavior of open to open and close to close returns on nyse stocks given the differences in execution methods applied in the opening and closing transactions opening returns are found to exhibit greater dispersion greater deviations from normality and a more negative and significant autocorrelation pattern than closing returns we study the effects of the bid ask spread and the price adjustment process on the estimated return variances and covariances and discuss the associated biases we conclude that the trading mechanism has a significant effect on stock price behavior

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

modelling the non market environmental costs and benefits of biodiversity projects using contingent valuation data cv studies rarely ask willingness to accept wta questions yet there are a range of environmentalprojects where there are likely to be potential losersas well as gainers this paper presents evidence fromsix biodiversity projects that the inclusion ofcontingent compensation payments from thoserespondents who preferred the status quo cansubstantially reduce net project benefits even whenthe proportion of losers is relatively small astatistical model for estimating the mean welfaremeasure from dichotomous choice data which allows forboth positive wtp zero wtp and wta is described asmany environmental projects are likely to create bothgainers and losers we recommend that cv analysts giveserious consideration to the collection and analysisof wta data otherwise they risk generating biasedestimates of project benefits

widening price limit effects evidence from an emerging stock market abstractthis study investigates the impact of the widening of price limits on the taiwan stock exchange from 7 to 10 by comparing the differences in performance with the different price limit l

health behavior health knowledge and schooling the positive correlation between schooling and good health is well documented one explanation is that schooling helps people choose healthier life styles by improving their knowledge of the relationship between health behaviors and health outcomes that is schooling improves the household s allocative efficiency in producing health this empirical study uses direct measures of health knowledge to test this explanation part of the relationship between schooling and the consumption of cigarettes alcohol and exercise is explained by differences in health knowledge however most of schooling s effects on health behavior remain after differences in knowledge are controlled for

valuing the mortality risk of wildlife reintroduction heterogeneous risk preferences abstract this study is the first to value the mortality risk incurred from wildlife reintroduction we conducted choice experiments on wolf reintroduction in hokkaido japan in order to value the resulting mortality risk this process involves three unique factors the mortality risk is zero before the reintroduction the increment of the risk caused by the reintroduction is substantially small and the risk largely depends on citizens individual characteristics concerning reintroduction because of these factors the heterogeneity of risk preference is expected to be large in order to examine these heterogeneous risk preferences we use a random parameter logit model the estimation results confirm that considerable heterogeneous risk preferences exist finally the mean marginal willingness to pay to prevent the loss of one person per one billion people because of wolf reintroduction is several hundred yen

a satisfactory benefit cost indicator from contingent valuation abstract standard economic concepts are used to develop a model of individual behavior when subject to the constraints of the contingent valuation choice context the model yields refutable consequences that are consistent with previously reported empirical findings including some that have been thought to be anomalous the model is used to show that different contingent valuation formats have predictably different performance characteristics notably the hicksian compensating measures are satisfactory benefit cost indicators when elicited using any one of several formats identified in the text of the formats examined one form of a policy referendum appears to have the most satisfactory characteristics overall we conclude that contingent valuation is a progressing research program

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

does don t know mean no analysis of don t know responses in dichotomous choice contingent valuation questions the don t know response option in contingent valuation dichotomous choice questions is analysed using data from both willingness to pay and willingness to accept studies an empirical analysis is conducted to determine whether respondents are stating a response similar to yes or no responses or a middle response it is found that don t know responses are similar to no responses in the willingness to pay study in the willingness to accept study it is found that the don t know responses are similar to a middle response it is further suggested that researchers consider calculating ambivalence bounds when a don t know response is a middle response

the external costs of nuclear power ex ante damages and lay risks interest has been growing in embedding the external costs of fuel cycles resulting in electricity generation into prices in any attempt to internalize these costs for the nuclear cycle the remost but real possibilities of accidents and the wide gap between lay perceptions and expert assessments of such risks must be taken into account this paper discusses this including the following topics an expected utility model of power plant operations accident risks simulation comparison of experts versus lay risks comparison of experts versus lay risk literature simulation of expert versus lay risks current practice in estimating the damages from accidents at nuclear power plants appear to ignore significant features of the problem from the perspective of economic analysis individual aversion to risk the exante perspective in decision making under uncertainty and lay risk perception are all conceptually important elements of a damage estimate that accords with observation of behavior and the theory that underlies it but that are ignored by common practice 18 refs 1 tab

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

alternative approaches for incorporating respondent uncertainty when estimating willingness to pay the case of the mexican spotted owl abstract this paper explores the sources and patterns of respondents uncertainty regarding their willingness to pay wtp and presents alternative approaches for incorporating this uncertainty into estimation of the logit model recently proposed approaches are compared to methods proposed in this paper which allows for incorporation of uncertainty regarding both yes and no responses these approaches are evaluated by comparing the goodness of fit and variability of mean wtp extreme recoding of uncertain yes responses as no responses reduces the logit goodness of fit and the precision of the wtp estimate incorporating the degree of uncertainty of yes responses results in the highest goodness of fit and the smallest variability of mean wtp among the various models addressing uncertainty a regression model is used to determine the significant determinants of respondent uncertainty

the relationship between smoking quitting smoking and obesity in australia a seemingly unrelated probit approach smoking and obesity are two leading causes of preventable death further understanding of the relationship between these two risk factors can assist in reducing avoidable morbidity and mortality this study investigates the empirical association between obesity and the propensity to smoke and to quit smoking using a seemingly unrelated sur probit approach that takes into consideration the potential for reverse causality and unobserved heterogeneity using australian health survey data this article demonstrates the usefulness of the sur probit approach in generating information on the relationship between unobserved factors influencing both smoking behaviour and obesity and in providing estimates of the conditional probabilities of each risk factor results suggest the two risk factors are not independent the presence size and direction of correlation between the unobserved factors are found to vary by smoking behaviour and by gender estimates of conditional probabilities demonstrate smokers have a

demand for food commodities by income groups in indonesia an analysis of the structure of demand was performed on household data classified into income groups for urban indonesia a demographically augmented linearized almost ideal demand system was used to estimate the structural parameters of the demand equations endogenous switching regression techniques yielded unbiased and consistent demand parameter estimates for the low income group which had a large number of zeros for some food groups standard seemingly unrelated equation techniques were used to estimate the demand parameters for the other income groups the results showed demands for the medium to high and high income households to be responsive to prices income and demographic variables demands for the medium to low income households were responsive to income and prices only demands for low income households were responsive to income and prices of rice and fish only

endogeneity of risk perceptions in averting behavior models this paper examines the relationship between averting expenditures choices and perceived health risks models in the literature often employ risk perceptions as explanatory variables without addressing the potential endogeneity of the perceived risk we examine the implications of ignoring endogeneity in this context using an application to both drinking water choices and expenditures and perceived health risks our data are from an internet based cross canada survey that employs a novel interactive risk ladder to elicit mortality risk perceptions relating to water we employ two fundamentally different methods to assess the impact of risk perceptions on behavior an analysis of expenditures on alternate water sources and a model of proportional choice of water sources results suggest the presence of averting behavior with respect to perceived mortality risks and that the estimated effect of water risks is greater than 3 times higher when using approaches that correct for endogeneity compared to models that do not

nonresponse in contingent valuation reducing uncertainty in value inference this paper focuses on problems associated with nonresponse in contingent valuation surveys the results from a telephone follow up survey show that value inference can be considerably improved by information on nonrespondents attitudes

does question format matter valuing an endangered species a three way treatment design is used to compare contingent valuation response formats respondents are asked to value an endangered species the red cockaded woodpecker and the restor ation of its habitat following a natural disaster for three question formats open ended payment card and double bounded dichotomous choice differences in survey response rates item non response rates and protest bids are examined bootstrap techniques are used to compare means across formats and to explore differences in willingness to pay wtp distribution functions convergent validity is found in a comparison of mean wtp values although some differences are apparent in the cumulat ive distribution functions differences across formats are also identified in item non response rates and proportion of protest bids overall the payment card format exhibits desirable properties relative to the other two formats

flexible functional form estimation of willingness to pay using dichotomous choice data abstract this paper introduces fully flexible semi nonparametric methods for calculating willingness to pay wtp bounded between zero and the respondent s income for dichotomous choice contingent valuation a method to estimate median wtp using fully flexible functional forms is also presented finally the numerical illustration demonstrates the importance of considering jensen s inequality in calculating wtp with nonlinear models

rising cigarette prices and rising obesity coincidence or unintended consequence economists have begun to debate if the rise in cigarette prices in the u s in recent decades has contributed to the nation s rise in obesity reaching conclusions that are surprisingly sensitive to specification i show that allowing for the effect to occur gradually over several years leads to the conclusion that a rise in cigarette prices is actually associated with a long run reduction in body mass index and obesity this result is robust to the different methodologies used in the literature i also provide evidence that indirect effects on exercise and food consumption may explain the counterintuitive result

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 microstructure and securities values evidence from the tel aviv stock exchange abstract this paper examines the value effects of improvements in the trading mechanism selected stocks on the tel aviv stock exchange were transferred gradually from a daily call auction to a mechanism where the call auction was followed by iterated continuous trading sessions this event was associated with a positive and permanent price appreciation the cumulative average market adjusted return over a period that started five days prior to the announcement and ended 30 days after the stocks started trading by the new method was approximately 5 5 in addition we find positive liquidity externalities spillovers across related stocks and improvements in the value discovery process due to the improved trading method finally there was a positive association between liquidity gains and price appreciation

a box cox double hurdle model of wildlife valuation the citizen s perspective abstract a stated preference approach is used to elicit the attitudes of the general public towards coyote conservation the payment vehicle is presented in a way that explicitly prompts respondents to adopt a citizen perspective rather than a consumer perspective when responding to the survey to deal with the large numbers of zero responses a box cox double hurdle specification is used to model separately individuals choices about whether to support conservation or not and their choice about the level of support the results show that simpler analyses that do not account explicitly for these two different decisions would lead to misleading conclusions in the study of nuisance wildlife the study uses primary data from prince edward island canada

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

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

adopt a hypothetical pup a count data approach to the valuation of wildlife the willingness to pay wtp for a coyote conservation program is estimated using a novel payment vehicle based on how many problem coyotes respondents would be willing to sponsor for a year this hypothetical scenario mimics an increasingly popular type of actual market data from a phone survey conducted in prince edward island are analyzed using count data models that consider different processes explaining zero responses and the level of positive responses this is particularly important in the case of coyotes often regarded as an economic bad estimates of wtp per coyote per year around 18 22 and annual wtp per contributor of about 46 57 are obtained

public preferences for alternative electricity mixes in post fukushima japan abstract using representative household survey data from japan after the fukushima accident we estimate peoples willingness to pay wtp for renewable nuclear and fossil fuels in electricity generation we rely on random parameter econometric techniques to capture various degrees of heterogeneity between the respondents and use detailed regional information to assess how wtp varies with the distance to both the nearest nuclear power plant and to fukushima compared to fossil fuels we find a positive wtp for renewable and a negative wtp for nuclear fuels these effects in absolute terms increase with the proximity to fukushima

protest response and willingness to pay for culturally significant urban trees implications for contingent valuation method the contingent valuation method cvm could assist green space planning management and appreciation by assigning a monetary value to urban trees however the use of cvm is limited by its inherent methodological weaknesses a critical concern is the existence of a large proportion of survey respondents providing zero willingness to pay wtp and that these responses are not amenable to economic theory known as protest responses censoring protest responses from further treatment is a common practice which warrants reconsideration in light of our cvm survey results the survey involved 800 residents requested to state their wtp for preserving the culturally significant stonewall trees in urban hong kong about 28 of respondents returned a zero wtp for all respondents the strength of protest beliefs was assessed and the relationship between protest beliefs and wtp were examined our analysis produced contradictory results some protest items varied negatively with wtp as expected but other items increased with it respondents stated positive wtp harbored latent protest beliefs which are related to non economic preference the findings stand at odds with the assumptions underlying the censoring treatment and raise questions about the validity of wtp estimates these methodological implications should be taken into account in using cvm

price limit performance evidence from the tokyo stock exchange price limit advocates claim that price limits decrease stock price volatility counter overreaction and do not interfere with trading activity conversely price limit critics claim that price limits cause higher volatility levels on subsequent days volatility spillover hypothesis prevent prices from efficiently reaching their equilibrium level delayed price discovery hypothesis and interfere with trading due to limitations imposed by price limits trading interference hypothesis empirical research does not provide conclusive support for either positions we examine the tokyo stock exchange price limit system to test these hypotheses our evidence supports all three hypotheses suggesting that price limits may be ineffective

cutting through the smoke separating the effect of price on smoking initiation relapse and cessation i employ a large national representative dataset current population survey tobacco use supplements to investigate how cigarette prices affect smoking decisions a standard econometric approach is to estimate the relationship between cigarette prices and smoking participation at a point in time i extend this approach to model past year decisions to start resume or quit smoking considering reverse causality i apply an instrumental variable excise taxes for cigarette prices i include an index of state level anti smoking sentiment to control for omitted variable bias after estimating separate models for smoking initiation relapse and cessation and for different age groups i find no evidence that increasing taxes on cigarettes can prevent the onset of youth smoking neither does it effectively induce young smokers to quit however cigarette prices do play an important role to prevent relapse and encourage quitting at older ages

problems in valuing the benefits of biodiversity protection this paper considers two problems in valuing the benefits of biodiversity protection these are firstly that preferences for biodiversity protection may be lexicographic rather than utilitarian the more individuals for whom this is true the less is cost benefit analysis validated as a means of decision making for biodiversity protection since lexicographic preferences are incompatible with the kaldor hicks compensation test secondly people may be poorly informed about the meaning of biodiversity complicating the use of contingent valuation as a means of measuring preservation benefits this paper first discusses the meaning of biodiversity and trends in diversity over time we offer some empirical evidence with regard to lexicographic preferences consider the implications of having poorly informed consumers and then report the results of a contingent valuation study of biodiversity protection with varying levels of information we find that willingness to pay for biodiversity protection increases with the level of information provided

protest beliefs in contingent valuation explaining their motivation abstract the definition and treatment of protest responses in contingent valuation cv can have a significant influence on the estimated values of the good in question if these responses are censored in order to understand how protest responses are motivated in a cv about forest biodiversity in germany we used an item battery to identify respondents protest beliefs the items were measured for all respondents irrespective of their willingness to pay wtp in principle then a scale based on these beliefs is taken as a dependent variable of regression analyses in addition to environmental concern we used norms the warm glow of giving and dilemma concern as further explanatory variables the latter focuses on cooperation problems in protecting the environment our results show that protest beliefs are significantly influenced by the explanatory factors furthermore the protest beliefs themselves have a significant effect on the decision to be wtp as well as on the amount of money stated by those who are wtp the censoring of protest responses may therefore be indefensible

expanding contingent value sample estimates to aggregate benefit estimates current practices and proposed solutions a mail survey was administered to a panel of colorado consumers to obtain estimates of willingness to pay wtp for preserving union park detailed socioeconomic data for all surveyed individuals was available a priori we develop and employ the multiple

have efforts to reduce smoking really contributed to the obesity epidemic i introduction two of the most notable trends in public health over the past 30 yr are the reductions in smoking rates and the rapid increase in obesity rates based on data from the national health interview survey the smoking rate among adult americans was roughly 37 in the early 1970s and is 21 today a reduction of more than 40 in contrast the adult obesity rate increased 135 from 14 in the early 1970s to 32 2 in 2004 national health and nutrition examination survey nhanes 71 04 figure 1 because the medical literature has shown that smoking cessation is associated with weight gain these trends have given rise to a puzzling question have efforts to reduce smoking rates in the united states inadvertently caused increases in rates of obesity there is substantial evidence that at least in the short term smoking and obesity are not independent klesges and shumaker 1992 found that reductions in smoking and or quitting altogether is associated with increases in dietary intake as well as metabolic changes that promote weight gain as a result weight gain is often an unwanted side effect of quitting smoking the 1990 surgeon general s report the health benefits of smoking cessation concluded that the average weight gain after smoking cessation was about 5 pounds or 2 3 kg u s department of health and human services 1990 however there is additional evidence that this increase may be short lived mizoue et al 1998 found that given enough time the weight of former smokers inevitably returns to that of never smokers as a result the long term impact on weight of efforts to reduce smoking rates may be negligible figure 1 omitted to date three articles have attempted to quantify what proportion of the increase in obesity rates over the past several decades is caused by efforts to reduce smoking chou grossman and saffer 2004 used repeated cross sections from 1984 to 1999 behavioral risk factor surveillance system brfss data to estimate the impact of several state level measures on body mass index bmi and on the probability of being obese including increases in state level cigarette prices figure 1 the results of this study suggest that increases in cigarette prices may be responsible for as much as 20 of the increase in bmi and trends in obesity rates over this period this finding is used to argue that rising obesity rates are an unintended consequence of the success of the antismoking movement gruber and frakes 2006 extended the models presented in chou grossman and saffer 2004 using the same data set they examined the relationship between cigarette taxes and body weight and argue that cigarette taxes are a more appropriate measure than prices because price changes may be driven by market factors that affect the rates of smoking and eating their specification also includes several other differences including controls for state and year effects gruber and frakes found that cigarette taxes are negatively associated with body weight suggesting that increases in cigarette taxes result in reductions in bmi this result is in direct contrast with the findings of chou grossman and saffer however not even the authors find their result plausible p 196 flegal 2007 presents yet another analysis of the link between smoking and obesity using nhanes data the author models the contemporaneous relationship between smoking and weight and then reestimates the current prevalence of obesity under the assumption that past smoking levels had remained unchanged using this approach she concludes that decreases in the prevalence of cigarette smoking had only a small effect less than 1 percentage point on the overall prevalence of obesity in this article we revisit the analyses presented by chou grossman and saffer and gruber and frakes to explain the dichotomy of results and provide further evidence of the relationship between antismoking efforts and increases in bmi

fairness in the contingent valuation of environmental public goods attitude toward paying for environmental improvements at two levels of scope abstract respondents to contingent valuation cv surveys give a variety of reasons for not wanting to pay money this variability is likely to reflect people s attitudes toward paying for the public good change their attitudes toward paying for public goods in general and a component that is independent of these attitudes but unique to particular beliefs about paying e g i can t afford to pay negative attitudes toward paying can contribute to an apparent insensitivity to different levels of the same public good in a telephone survey northern wisconsin property owners were asked about their wtp for four environmental public goods biodiversity indian spearfishing water quality and wolves at two levels of scope part and whole for water quality and spearfishing the part was a chain of lakes that was geographically nested within a larger region of lakes similarly the biodiversity whole represented a region comprising the smaller level of the public good the scope conditions for wolves were quantitatively nested levels of returning 300 and 800 wolves to northern wisconsin respondents beliefs about paying for each public good and level of scope were measured in order to test their generality across the different public goods and levels of scope negative attitudes toward paying that are general across public goods place restrictions on the use of cv for environmental public goods however negative attitudes that are tied to specific environmental public goods suggest that the valuation method might be difficult to implement in these cases only moreover negative attitudes toward paying that are either general or specific may contribute to perfect embedding when they are expressed across different levels of scope for the same public good respondents beliefs about paying for each public good were associated with an attitude toward paying for the respective good and an attitude toward paying for public goods in general at both levels of scope the general attitude was more explanatory of beliefs about paying for wolf reintroduction and spearfishing than were the specific attitudes the distribution of beliefs was sensitive to the type of good being valued but less so to the scope of the public good change contingent valuation practitioners should seek improvements in respondents perceptions of the fairness of the valuation process in order to facilitate citizens involvement in decisions about environmental public goods avenues for future research are proposed and discussed

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

evaluating change in objective ambiguous mortality probability valuing reduction in ambiguity size and risk level this article develops a valuation model to evaluate mortality probability changes under objective ambiguity where multiple mortality probabilities are exogenously given we construct the valuation model based on upalpha maxmin expected utility to evaluate the reduction in ambiguity size and risk level as well as estimate the subjects ambiguity attitude our model can bring an interesting policy implication if the subjects are ambiguity averse a reduction in ambiguity size with a constant risk level can increases welfare thus even if risk level cannot be lowered reduction in ambiguity size can also be used as a measure toward increasing welfare our model can empirically estimate this welfare change resulting from the reduction in ambiguity size to demonstrate how our model works we apply it to survey data on a public program that reduces mortality probability in accidents caused by wildlife

uncertainty and measurement error in welfare models for risk changes abstract most welfare models of environmental or mortality risk reductions assume that risks are exogenously determined and known with certainty however a growing body of research suggests that uncertainty about risks can affect choices over risky prospects i present a decision weighted random utility model that decomposes welfare losses into those attributable to an increase in the deterministic component of risk and those attributable to uncertainty about risk i apply the model to an illustrative dataset of subjects perceived mortality risk and willingness to accept the risk of nuclear waste transport i estimate the model using lewbel s 2000 strictly exogenous regressor approach to account for endogeneity bias and measurement error subjects display aversion to both risk and uncertainty about the risk of a transport accident so that increases in either leads to social welfare losses roughly 12 of the external cost of nuclear waste transport is attributable to the public s uncertainty about transport risk

dichotomous choice contingent valuation with dont know responses and misreporting a new approach is presented that simultaneously deals with misreporting and don t know dk responses within a dichotomous choice contingent valuation framework utilising a modification of the standard bayesian probit framework a gibbs with metropolis hastings algorithm is used to estimate the posterior densities for the parameters of interest several model specifications are applied to two contingent valuation datasets one on wolf management plans and one on the us fee demonstration program we find that dks are more likely to be from people who would be predicted to have positive utility for the bid therefore a dk is more likely to be a yes than a no we also find evidence of misreporting primarily in favour of the no option the inclusion of dk responses has an unpredictable impact on willingness to pay estimates since it impacts differently on the results for the two datasets we examine copyright c 2009 john wiley sons ltd

contingent valuation of ecotourism in annapurna conservation area nepal implications for sustainable park finance and local development abstract to determine willingness to pay wtp for candidate entry fees contingent valuation surveys were administered to 315 foreign visitors to the annapurna conservation area nepal during april and may of 2006 the results of logit regression showed that the bid amount family size visitors satisfaction the use of a guide and group size were the most significant predictors of wtp results suggest that most visitors would be willing to pay an entry fee considerably higher than the current fee of 27 u s dollars usd the mean and median wtp were 69 2 and 74 3 usd respectively the most common explanation for wtp by respondents was a desire to better protect the environment the most common explanation for unwillingness to pay was that the bid was simply too expensive two models were developed based upon different predictions of visitor numbers an optimistic case and pessimistic case to calculate the expected revenue production and likely gross local economic impact of candidate entry fees based on this analysis we recommend an increase in the entry fee to usd 50 in the optimistic scenario this higher entry fee leaves a budget surplus in the pessimistic scenario it would reduce current budget deficits

choice under uncertainty problems solved and unsolved ffifteen years ago the theory of choice under uncertainty could be considered one of the success stories of economic analysis it rested on solid axiomatic foundations it had seen important breakthroughs in the analytics of risk risk aversion and their applications to economic issues and it stood ready to provide the theoretical underpinnings for the newly emerging information revolution in economics 1 today choice under uncertainty is a field in flux the standard theory is being challenged on several grounds from both within and outside economics the nature of these challenges and of our profession s responses to them is the topic of this paper

the influence of task complexity on consumer choice a latent class model of decision strategy switching the literature indicating that person context and task specific factors cause consumers to utilize different decision strategies has generally failed to affect the specification of choice models used by practitioners and academics alike who still tend to assume an utility maximizing omniscient indefatigable consumer this article 1 introduces decision strategy selection within a maintained compensatory framework into aggregate choice models via latent classes which arise because of task complexity 2 it demonstrates that within an experimental choice task the model reflects changing aggregate preferences as choice complexity changes and as the task progresses the import of these findings for current practice model interpretation and future research needs is examined

social interactions and the contemporaneous determinants of individuals weight obesity and overweight are central issues in the public health debate in most developed countries in this debate some of the socio economic determinants of obesity and overweight are still relatively unexplored this paper presents an empirical examination of the possible influence of social interactions on contemporaneous obesity and over underweight a joint estimation model for obesity and self image is applied to a sample for spain taken from the european union household panel for 1998 the results suggest that obesity might be in part a social phenomenon connected to individuals social life

protest responses in contingent valuation a significant number of respondents to contingent valuation surveys tend to either state a zero bid or refuse to state a bid at all for reasons associated with the process of valuation these protest responses are routinely removed from contingent valuation samples because it is assumed that they are not indicative of respondents true values the censoring of protest responses has led to the emergence of a definitional controversy one view is that the definition of protest responses and the rules for censoring them are dependent on whether the practitioner conceives of the contingent valuation survey as a market or as a referendum however what is not acknowledged is the possibility that protest responses and their meaning may vary according to the type of good being valued the elicitation format and the interaction between these elements and external factors this potential renders the development of unambiguous rules for censoring protest responses difficult moreover when willingness to pay is viewed as a behavioural intention it becomes important to determine what the responses actually mean this approach does not assume an interpretative position a priori against which the responses should be judged but seeks to inform an existing understanding which is inadequate

evaluating the effect of alternative risk communication devices on willingness to pay results from a dichotomous choice contingent valuation experiment two versions of a contingent valuation questionnaire that differ only in the device used to communicate risks from hazardous waste were sent to california households both risk communication devices provide wtp functions which vary in a statistically significant fashion with the absolute risk reduction however these empirical results also demonstrate that different risk communication devices produce statistically different logit equations and hence estimates of willingness to pay wtp for reductions in exposure to hazardous waste the pros and cons of using each risk communication device in cvm surveys is also discussed

schooling health knowledge and obesity the connection between schooling and health is well documented an important empirical issue that needs to be examined however is whether schooling s effects are due to individual health knowledge differences this empirical study examines this issue with an increasingly important health indicator obesity since provision of health knowledge is a major tool of public agencies promoting health this empirical study uses a new direct measure of health knowledge to test this hypothesis the results show that knowledge is inversely related to the probability that an individual is obese schooling s effects on relative weight and the probability of being obese are explained by differences in knowledge this result may imply that schooling s effect on the allocative efficiency of the household production of health is the main reason schooling is linked to health behaviour the result also may imply that the most effective method of health education is to highlight the disease element of poor dietary habits a

eliciting public preference for nuclear energy against the backdrop of global warming one of the most important issues related to sustainability is to reduce the use of fossil fuels due to the reduction in greenhouse gases ghg emission nuclear power results in low carbon emissions and is thus important to mitigating the adverse effects of global warming and climate change however the downside of nuclear power cannot be overlooked and consequently nuclear power is a controversial issue in many countries around the world thus an important question concerns how people should support nuclear power do the climate and energy security benefits of nuclear power outweigh its risks and costs therefore we use a modified double bounded contingent valuation model to explore the attitudes and the willingness to pay wtp of a country in order to demonstrate its implications for policy we confirm that supporters and opponents of nuclear power are balanced both in terms of their numbers and in terms of their wtp the policy implication is that people do not support any dramatic increase or reduction in nuclear power and that nuclear power should still be an important means of generating electricity in taiwan the current share of nuclear power in electricity generation of 20 should be maintained in the near future

attitudes toward catastrophe in light of climate change and other global threats policy commentators sometimes urge that society should be more concerned about catastrophes this paper reflects on what society s attitude toward low probability high impact events is or should be we first argue that catastrophe risk can be conceived of as a spread in the distribution of losses based on this conception we review studies from decision sciences psychology and behavioral economics that explore people s attitudes toward various social risks contray to popular belief we find more evidence against than in favor of catastrophe aversion the preference for a mean preserving contraction of the loss distribution and discuss a number of possible behavioral explanations next we turn to social choice theory and examine how various social welfare functions handle catastrophe risk we explain why catastrophe aversion may be in conflict with equity concerns and other regarding preferences finally we discuss current approaches to evaluate and regulate catastrophe risk

statistical approaches to the fat tail problem for dichotomous choice contingent valuation if a cumulative density function esti mated from dichotomous choice data has an unre alistically fat right hand tail mean willingness to pay wtp will be overestimated truncating the range of integration results in a lower bound esti mate of the true mean wtp a normalization pro cedure proposed by boyle welsh and bishop 1988 unnecessarily depresses the estimate further a new statistical approach is presented that allows a best guess estimate of mean wtp because this estimate involves extrapolation beyond the range of the data it tends to be highly variable jel q21

the effect of risk characteristics on the willingness to pay for mortality risk reductions from electric power generation the objective of this study is to estimate willingness to pay wtp for the reduction of mortality risks caused by fossil fuel natural gas coal and oil versus nuclear electric power generation systems and to examine the influence of risk characteristics involved with electric power generation on wtp a choice experiment was conducted to achieve these objectives the attributes for nuclear risks in the experiment included the probability of disasters and the expected losses if a disaster occurs we find evidence of i a baseline effect where wtp is sensitive to hypothetical versus actual baseline expected mortality ii a labeling effect where surprisingly the term nuclear has no effect on wtp but the term fossil fueled power generation results in lower wtp and iii disaster aversion meaning that people focus on the conditional loss from a nuclear disaster not the probability we also find that the wtp for reducing deaths from a nuclear disaster is about 60 times the wtp for routine reducing fossil fuel generation related deaths

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