factors influencing differences between survey and market based environmental value measures a unique us database combining survey and housing data is used to obtain household level stated and market based willingness to pay wtp measures to avoid living near landfills systematic differe

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

testing for non response and sample selection bias in contingent valuation analysis of a combination phone mail survey we use a combination phone mail survey to test for possible sample biases in contingent valuation we find no sample selection bias but do find non response bias we show how failure to correct for non response bias distorts aggregate benefit estimates

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

heterogeneity redistribution and the friedman rule we study monetary models with nondegenerate stationary distributions of money holdings we find that the friedman rule does not typically maximize ex post social welfare an increase in the rate of growth of the money supply has two effects the standard distortionary or rate of return effect makes money a less desirable asset for all moneyholders a second redistributive effect creates a transfer from one type of agent to the other an increase in the rate of growth of money away from the friedman rule can produce a rate of return effect that dominates the standard effect

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

a test of the equality of closed ended and open ended contingent valuations a test is developed to find whether open ended and closed ended contingent valuation mechanisms lead to significantly different results the test is based on joint estimation of willingness to pay responses to open and closed ended questions asked of the same sample of individuals in a public good example individuals do respond differently depending on question format possible explanations include different incentives for strategic behavior and respondents lack of familiarity with the open ended question type no differences in willingness to pay were found in a private good example

do reminders of substitutes and budget constraints influence contingent valuation estimates a test is performed of the recommendation by the noaa panel on contingent valuation that respondents be reminded about other substitute resources and their budget constraint prior to answering the willingness to pay wtp question the context for this experiment is a cvm study of the benefits from reducing fire hazards to old growth forests in oregon the test was performed using two mail surveys that were otherwise identical except for the inclusion of reminder statements prior to the wtp question the dichotomous choice logit equations were not statistically different between versions and the mean wtp results were identical

the worth of a possum valuing species with the contingent valuation method the focus of this paper is on methods of assessing the value peopleplace on the conservation of species for use in policy making of principalinterest is the relatively new methodology of contingent valuation whichis a method for asking people directly about their preferences the paperpresents an application of the contingent valuation method to theconservation of an endangered species in the state of victoria australia the results emphasise the importance of careful survey design implementation and analysis as well as the precise definition of theenvironmental good being valued consequently the contingent valuationmethod does provide information relevant to decision making processesbased on monetary economic considerations thus in orthodox economicterms it makes sense to conserve species but there are other moral andethical grounds for conserving species as well

household consumption of cheese an inverse hyperbolic sine double hurdle model with dependent errors the dependent double hurdle model is generalized by an inverse hyperbolic sine transformation of the dependent variable the resulting specification features a flexible parameterization accommodates heteroskedastic errors and nests a range of common limited dependent variable models results for u s household cheese consumption suggest that the homoskedastic and normal double hurdle model is misspecified income elasticities are small and vary across household groups foodstamp recipients are more responsive to income changes than nonrecipients foodstamp recipients are also less likely to consume cheese but conditional on consumption spend more than nonrecipients

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

working wives and food away from home the box cox double hurdle model household expenditures on food away from home are analyzed with the use of the bls 1989 consumer expenditure survey parameterization and distributional assumptions of cragg s double hurdle model are generalized for this purpose and the resulting model outperforms the more traditional ones results suggest households with working wives and those with higher income are more likely to consume food away from home and also to consume more than others wife s age and household size increase the conditional level of consumption education has conflicting effects on probability and conditional level of consumption

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

universal health insurance in the clinton plan coverage as a tax financed public good the financing arrangements embodied in the clinton health reform plan involve some important differences in the way in which public goods are usually financed the subsidies to small low wage firms mandated to provide benefits distort markets in both labor and products and offer incentives for the creation of small firms in addition the financing scheme implicitly envisions a head tax on families at modest income levels but offers a possible rationale for it nevertheless the main reason for many of the financing features appears to be an attempt to hold down the apparent budgetary cost of universal coverage

estimation of a type 2 tobit model with generalized box cox transformation this article considers estimation of a type 2 tobit model with bickel doksum transformation of the dependent variable of the regression equation the basic idea is that while the transformed depend

an analysis of under reporting for micro data sets the misreporting or double hurdle model abstract this paper analyzes under reporting through the two extended tobit models p tobit and double hurdle models the empirical results clarify the characteristics of under reporting misreporting plays an important role in under reporting

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

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

aggregation and deliberation in valuing environmental public goods starting from a distinction between kantian principle based and utilitarian preference based approaches in political theory this essay argues that we may understand normative judgments individuals make about policy to express principled views of the public interest or purpose not private preferences about their own consumption opportunities these judgments in other words state opinions about what we ought to do as a society rather than report preferences about what i want as a utility maximizer this essay then argues that contingent valuation can take into account these kinds of judgments which dominate public discourse about the environment only if it moves toward a deliberative discursive jury like research method emphasizing informed discussion leading toward a consensus based on an argument about the public interest

spike models in contingent valuation spike models allow for a nonzero probability of zero willingness to pay in referendum style contingent valuation experiments they include many of the often used models as special cases and allow various analyses that are not possible in standard applications in this paper the economic rationale for the spike models and their estimation techniques are discussed and empirical illustrations are provided one study suggests that mean willingness to pay is zero and both studies strongly suggest that median wtp is zero these results have some bearing on the continuing debate of the incentive properties of hypothetical surveys and the construction of scenarios in contingent valuation experiments

contingent valuation controversies and evidence contingent valuation cv has become one of the most widely used non market valuation techniques cv s prominence is due to its flexibility and ability to estimate total value including passive use value its use and the inclusion of passive use value in benefit cost analyses and environ mental litigation are the subject of a contentious debate this paper discusses key areas of the debate over cv and the validity of passive use value we conclude that many of the alleged problems with cv can be resolved by careful study design and implementation we further conclude that claims that empirical cv findings are theoretically inconsistent are not generally supported by the literature the debate over cv however has clarified several key issues related to nonmarket valuation and can provide useful guidance both to cv practitioners and the users of cv results

measuring impartial preference for biodiversity biodiversity undergoes unprecedented rates of erosion despite the important services it provides this is considered evidence that biodiversity is undervalued biodiversity valuation is accordingly a prominent issue in the literature economic valuations are however largely criticized numerous alternatives have been introduced most of them involve participatory protocols aimed at producing high quality results being time consuming and expensive it is difficult to implement and reproduce them at a large scale we produce an easily reproducible inexpensive survey methodology to measure impartial preference for biodiversity we implement it in switzerland through a mail based survey our result is that biodiversity should be ranked after retirement schemes and public transportation but before relations with foreign countries order and security and culture and leisure in the expanses of the state current expenses therefore substantially underestimate the value that swiss people grant to biodiversity our new method is a viable alternative to standard economic valuation given the impartiality achieved at least in the swiss political context our estimate can be used by decision makers to assess the legitimacy of conservation programs or to gauge public support at a philosophical level our measure is relevant for public policies because it captures the stances that people take when they participate in public decisions

do existence values for cost benefit analysis exist the use of the contingent valuation method to generate estimates of existence value for input to cost benefit analysis requires that individuals have utility functions defined over the relevant arguments the validity of the assumption that the required utility functions generally exist has been questioned it has been argued that some individuals will respond on the basis of lexicographic preference orderings it has also been argued that some individuals do not consider that market or individual willingness to pay criteria are appropriate where existence value type issues are at stake the paper considers survey evidence bearing upon these arguments it is concluded that the evidence is consistent with the view that it is incorrect to proceed on the assumption that individuals generally satisfy the assumptions required for the existence of existence values for use in cost benefit analysis

an independent sample test of yea saying and starting point bias in dichotomous choice contingent valuation abstract we developed several diagnostic tools to test the convergent validity of two common contingent valuation elicitation procedures data were collected from independent samples receiving dichotomous choice and payment card questions we compared actual with counter factual responses using deterministic and monte carlo methods and we found that wtp distributions and mean values varied by the value elicitation method we also developed a paired comparison test for procedure variance which indicated that yea saying and starting point bias influenced dichotomous choice responses

statistical models for zero expenditures in household budgets household budget surveys are an important source of data on consumer s expenditure not just for individual consumers but also for estimating national aggregates however it is a widespread finding that for certain commodities most notably tobacco and alcohol the estimate from the household survey falls short of the known consumption total calculated with some confidence from data on production imports exports and excise duties for example in the british family expenditure survey with which we shall largely be concerned total tobacco expenditure was underestimated in 1976 by 21 percent see kemsley redpath and holmes 1980 p 51 much of this understatement together with that on alcohol is thought to occur because of the design of the survey which excludes many persons amongst whom consumption of such items is thought to be atypically high e g prisoners hoteliers and their residents merchant seamen even so the possibility remains that some of the understatement is due to various types of misreporting by households included in the survey in this paper we consider a model in which the standard tobit specification tobin 1958 is supplemented by the operation of a simple binary censor the tobit model is essentially a linear regression model in which non positive observations of the dependent variable are replaced by zero we take this specification as our starting point but add a second censoring process that randomly replaces a fraction of the observations generated by the tobit model bv zeroes the combined model can serve as a representation of several types of

parametric and semi nonparametric estimation of willingness to pay in the dichotomous choice contingent valuation framework standard procedures for extractingwillingness to pay wtp from dichotomouschoice cv questionnaires rely heavily uponparametric assumptions regarding thedistribution and form of wtp in the sampledpopulation however theory provides littleguidance regarding which parametricspecification to use and the resulting wtpestimates can be sensitive to the selectionsmade here we compare and contrast severalparametric and semi nonparametric estimatorsthat have been proposed in the literature examining the sensitivity of the resulting wtpestimates to the underlying distribution ofpreferences and the estimation procedureemployed

the demand for alcoholic beverages in spain the objective of this study is to analyze the main determinants of alcoholic beverages consumption at home data comes from the latest spanish household national survey which provides information on expenditure and quantities of different food products by household because households are interviewed only 1 week a large number of zeros have been recorded among the existing censured demand models the double hurdle dh model the purchase infrequency model and the tobit purchase infrequency model among others and after carrying out model selection tests the dh model has been finally estimated all expenditure elasticities are positive corresponding the highest value to spirits own price elasticities are negative and also in this case the spirits exhibit the highest value socio economic variables also play an important role in explaining consumer purchase and consumption decisions

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

multivariate mixed models for open ended contingent valuation data willingness to pay for conservation of monk seals although dichotomous choice dc contingent valuation cv has been recommended by the us noaa blue ribbon panel for large scale contingent valuation studies useful information can still be obtained from smaller open ended oe studies often undertaken as a precursor to a dc survey the cv study considered here was carried out in greece and looked at willingness to pay wtp for protecting the mediterranean monk seal monachus monachus in the aegean area this is the most endangered seal in the world and the application of the cv methodology was the first such application in greece the oe data consist of two responses first a binary response detailing whether or not respondents were in principle prepared to pay for the protection of this seal secondly those respondents who answered yes to the first question were then asked to state their maximum wtp for such protection a multivariate binomial log normal mixture model is used to develop a bid function including explanatory variables such as income sex age and education such a modelling approach provides an alternative to more commonplace tobit estimation however the model is extended to include further information which was collected on

a double hurdle model of cigarette consumption this paper shows the importance of the double hurdle approach for modelling individuals cigarette consumption using data from the uk general household survey and argues that participation and consumption should be treated as separate individual choices the likelihood function for the full double hurdle is derived and it is shown how restrictions on the stochastic specification of the model and auxillary information which identifies ex smokers allow it to be decomposed the empirical results highlight the value of the sample separation information and the need to model starting and quitting as separate decisions

scope effects in contingent valuation does the assumed statistical distribution of wtp matter abstract economic theory assumes that willingness to pay wtp increases with the quantity of the consumed good this implies that there should be a scope effect in contingent valuation studies however in previous issues of ecological economics several authors criticized the contingent valuation cv method for the absence of such effect or its inadequacy in this paper we contribute to this ongoing debate by proposing to systematically apply several wtp statistical distribution assumptions to test for scope effects and check its plausibility following whitehead s 2016 recent recommendations we perform this approach using data from a swiss case study assessing the wtp for an increased surface of forest reserves we find that both mean wtp and scope effects are sensitive to the statistical distribution assumption regarding plausibility scope elasticities provide mixed result and also depend on the assumed statistical distribution of wtp for small sample size cv studies a non parametric analysis a spike model or an open ended format can thus be better suited to reveal scope effects than the classical parametric dichotomous choice analysis we thus recommend to systematically apply several statistical distribution assumptions of wtp to test for scope effects and their plausibility

the values jury to aid natural resource decisions congressional legislation emphasizes that public resource allocation should reflect the values citizens assign to those resources yet information about assigned values and preferences of members of the public including economic measures of value required by decision makers is often incomplete or unavailable existing sources of information about the public s values for use in resource allocation decisions and damage assessment include existing markets public surveys including contingent valuation and public involvement each of these sources has serious limitations

contingent valuation and the activation of environmental norms abstract this paper uses contingent valuation cvm as the context in which to explore the implications of a model of altruistic norm activation a model is presented which provides a framework for thinking about the factors that individuals consider when formulating their responses to cvm questions and the processes by which they bring such factors together the activation of personal environmental norms and hence positive willingness to pay depends on four main categories of belief awareness and acceptance of environmental need consequences of personal action responsibility for personal action and acceptance of policy initiatives the model is illustrated with a qualitative case study and some of the implications for cvm are considered in light of these findings it is argued that whilst notions of fairness may not present problems from a demand prediction economic standpoint such notions may be more problematic for the cost benefit analysis use of results

valuing public goods discrete versus continuous contingent valuation responses independent applications of open ended and dichotomous choice formats are compared using tests of means estimating joint likelihood functions and nonparametric tests of distributions the null hypothesis of no difference in the open ended and dichotomous choice estimates of central tendency cannot be rejected for two out of three data sets while estimated standard deviations are significantly different for all three data sets in addition actual dichotomous choice means and standard deviations exceed those from comparable synthetic dichotomous choice data sets suggesting either open ended questions underestimate values or dichotomous choice bid structures may lead to systematic overestimates

the relationship between the income elasticities of demand and willingness to pay abstract the relationship between income and willingness to pay for collectively provided public environmental goods is investigated we show that while the income elasticity of willingness to pay and the ordinary income elasticity of demand are related knowledge of one is insufficient to determine the magnitude or even the sign of the other the income elasticity of willingness to pay is influenced by additional factors which are generally unobservable examples are provided to illustrate the degree to which the two income elasticities may diverge our results indicate that even when goods are demand luxuries they may or may not have income elasticities of willingness to pay which are greater than one

measuring the existence value of wildlife what do cvm estimates really show two research programs are brought together to contribute to the growing body of work on alternatives to standard welfare based approaches to environmental valuation and policy the first is the theoretical literature undermining the new welfare

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