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

uncertainty in the availability of natural resources fossil fuels critical metals and biomass energy policies are strongly influenced by resource availability and recoverability estimates yet these estimates are often highly uncertain frequently incommensurable and regularly contested this paper explores how the uncertainties surrounding estimates of the availability of fossil fuels biomass and critical metals are conceptualised and communicated the contention is that a better understanding of the uncertainties surrounding resource estimates for both conventional and renewable energy resources can contribute to more effective policy decision making in the long term two complementary approaches for framing uncertainty are considered in detail a descriptive typology of uncertainties and a framework that conceptualises uncertainty as alternative states of incomplete knowledge both have the potential to be useful analytical and communication tools for the three resource types considered here we find that data limitations inconsistent definitions and the use of incommensurable methodologies present a pervasive problem that impedes comparison many aspects of resource uncertainty are also not commonly captured in the conventional resource classification schemes this highlights the need for considerable care when developing and comparing aggregate resource estimates and when using these to inform strategic energy policy decisions

peak oil and energy policy a critique energy policy has frequently been based upon assumptions about future oil prices at the end of the 1970s it was assumed oil prices would continue to rise now a similar assumption pervades policy design this article critiques the peak oil hypotheses which lie behind these forecasts and policy beliefs and considers that from a climate change perspective the challenge is too much not too little fossil fuel reserves the coming of shale gas its fungibility with oil via the electrification of transport along with technological advances in increasing the depletion rates of existing wells and new reserves together undermine that assumption that rising oil prices will rapidly make renewable and other low carbon technologies cost competitive without subsidies the paper suggests indexing carbon prices to the oil price infrastructure investment strategic storage and a focus on market failures provides a superior approach to energy policy rather than relying on forecasts of oil prices and picking winners

consumer valuation of health attributes for soy based food a choice modeling approach abstract given that soy foods possess health promoting attributes that offer the promise of reducing heart related chronic diseases this article employs choice experiments to estimate marginal willingness to pay wtp for soy attributes including taste contents of soy protein and health claim random parameter logit rpl models were estimated in consideration of potential heterogeneity across individuals in their preferences for soy food standard deviation parameters in the rpl models are highly significant indicating that individuals have widely varying preferences for soy based food products results suggest that while taste is the dominating attribute that drives consumers wtp for soy food products consumers do respond to the information provided in the health claim yet consumers do not seem to be recognizing soy protein as the link to health benefits of soy foods

causes consequences and cures of myopic loss aversion an experimental investigation we examine in an experiment the causes consequences and possible cures of myopic loss aversion mla for investment behaviour under risk we find that both investment horizons and feedback frequency contribute almost equally to the effects of mla longer investment horizons and less frequent feedback lead to higher investments however when given the choice subjects prefer on average shorter investment horizons and more frequent feedback exploiting the status quo bias by setting a long investment horizon or low feedback frequency as a default turns out to be a successful behavioural intervention that increases investment levels

demand for beef from cattle administered growth hormones or fed genetically modified corn a comparison of consumers in france germany the united kingdom and the united states we compare consumer valuations of beef ribeye steaks from cattle produced without growth hormones or genetically modified corn in france germany the united kingdom and the united states results suggest that french consumers place a higher value on beef from cattle that have not been administered added growth hormones than u s consumers however valuations of non hormone treated beef are statistically indistinguishable across germany the united kingdom and the united states results also suggest that european consumers place a much higher value on beef from cattle that have not been fed genetically modified corn than u s consumers copyright 2003 oxford university press

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

gender and competition at a young age gender gaps may be observed in a variety of economic and social environments one of the possible determining factors is that men are more competitive than women and so when the competitiveness of the environment increases the performance of men increases relative to that of women we test this hypothesis in a field study conducted with 9 year old children running on a track they first run alone and then in pairs over a short distance with different gender composition of the pairs the results support the hypothesis that performance in competition varies according to gender when children ran alone there was no difference in performance in competition boys but not girls improved their performance this finding relates to the discussion regarding single sex schools the outcomes of examinations in a mixed sex school can show a gender gap in favor of boys even when this gap does not reflect actual abilities girls who are as talented as boys will end up performing worse just because they are not as competitive and will not achieve as high scores in examinations as boys

oil scarcity what have the past three decades revealed oil shortages have been predicted over the past 30 years in fact oil is more plentiful now in an economic sense than in 1973 the reason for such misconceptions lies mainly in reliance on analytical techniques that do not comprehend oil as an economic commodity

steady state of energy feedbacks and leverages for promoting or preventing sustainable energy system development abstract while energy demand has been growing over the last few decades and is projected to keep expanding the current energy system is pushing biophysical source and sink limits at the same time growing demand for energy globally is associated with an expansion of welfare to avoid undesired environmental and social implications of energy developments in the long run a systemic understanding of the dynamics promoting or preventing sustainable energy development is needed departing from daly s steady state economics theory this study conceptualizes a sustainable energy system using a systems thinking approach efficiency increase the central element of daly s theory defined as the service throughput ratio is put in the center of a conceptual analysis of a sustainable energy system and is carefully scrutinized meadows leverage points concept is used to facilitate an analysis of different policies that aim at promoting sustainable energy system development this study concludes that energy policies always need to be explored as part of the broader causality structure into which they are embedded otherwise their impacts on other variables in the system may be overlooked such as in the case of efficiency increase which is shown to have undesired side effects for the development of a sustainable energy system

contract farming configuration smallholders preferences for contract design attributes while contract farming cf can enhance smallholders income in developing countries empirical research on the motivation of smallholders to participate in cf is scarce this paper explores farmer preferences for particular contract design attributes we combined analytical hierarchy process and discrete choice experiments to investigate the importance of contract design attributes on the basis of data collected among potato farmers in ethiopia we found that input market uncertainty is more important than output market uncertainty in smallholders decision to participate farmers tend to minimize their risk by opting for the buyer firm above the state and ngos as providers of seed inputs and technical assistance the results imply that the success of a cf scheme depends on the willingness of the firm to incorporate the preferred contract design attributes institutional intervention in the input market could induce agribusiness firms to offer attractive contracts for smallholders

the status of conventional world oil reserves hype or cause for concern the status of world oil reserves is a contentious issue polarised between advocates of peak oil who believe production will soon decline and major oil companies that say there is enough oil to last for decades in reality much of the disagreement can be resolved through clear definition of the grade type and reporting framework used to estimate oil reserve volumes while there is certainly vast amounts of fossil fuel resources left in the ground the volume of oil that can be commercially exploited at prices the global economy has become accustomed to is limited and will soon decline the result is that oil may soon shift from a demand led market to a supply constrained market the capacity to meet the services provided by future liquid fuel demand is contingent upon the rapid and immediate diversification of the liquid fuel mix the transition to alternative energy carriers where appropriate and demand side measures such as behavioural change and adaptation the successful transition to a poly fuel economy will also be judged on the adequate mitigation of environmental and social costs

gender differences in competitiveness and risk taking comparing children in colombia and sweden we explore gender differences in preferences for competition and risk among children aged 912 in colombia and sweden two countries differing in gender equality according to macro indices we include four types of tasks that vary in gender stereotyping when looking at competitiveness running skipping rope math and word search we find that boys and girls are equally competitive in all tasks and all measures in colombia unlike the consistent results in colombia the results in sweden are mixed with some indication of girls being more competitive than boys in some tasks in terms of performance change whereas boys are more likely to choose to compete in general boys in both countries are more risk taking than girls with a smaller gender gap in sweden

do women shy away from competition do men compete too much we examine whether men and women of the same ability differ in their selection into a competitive environment participants in a laboratory experiment solve a real task first under a noncompetitive piece rate and then a competitive tournament incentive scheme although there are no gender differences in performance men select the tournament twice as much as women when choosing their compensation scheme for the next performance while 73 percent of the men select the tournament only 35 percent of the women make this choice this gender gap in tournament entry is not explained by performance and factors such as risk and feedback aversion only playa negligible role instead the tournament entry gap is driven by men being more overconfident and by gender differences in preferences for performing in a competition the result is that women shy away from competition and men embrace it

overlapping marathons what happens to female pace when men catch up we exploit a highly competitive environment in which elite female athletes are exposed to the presence of men but without being in direct competition with them specifically we use variation in how fast the fastest man runs in the new york city marathon to identify the potential influence of men on female performance while holding constant female runners marginal incentives to perform our results suggest that as the men overtake the female runners the performance of female runners declines differentially across ability with the largest declines concentrated among lower ability runners

gender specific starting point bias in choice experiments evidence from an empirical study abstract in this paper we test whether preferences and willingness to pay estimates obtained in a choice experiment study are susceptible to starting point bias as is often the case in dichotomous choice contingent valuation studies on the basis of a multinomial probit model we find that preferences are indeed susceptible to starting point bias in a split sample design our results suggest that varying the price levels displayed in a so called instructional choice set presented prior to the actual preference eliciting choice sets significantly impacts respondents preferences and willingness to pay for protecting danish nature areas from new motorway development in particular our results show that the bias is gender specific only female respondents are significantly affected results further reveal that the impact of the starting point bias decays as respondents evaluate more and more choice sets this supports the discovered preference hypothesis and on the basis of this we suggest a number of ways to potentially mitigate the starting point bias

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

an incentive compatible conjoint ranking mechanism a simple method for making ranking based conjoint analysis incentive compatible is proposed the incentive compatible mechanism involves people purchasing a product profile with a probability proportional to its assigned rank in an empirical application related to consumer preferences for beef attributes we find that the forecasted market share for a new pasture raised steak obtained using incentive compatible rankings was significantly greater than that implied from traditional hypothetical conjoint rankings people s rankings of ground beef products were not affected by the mechanism or by information about pasture raised beef copyright 2008 oxford university press

global oil depletion a review of the evidence within the polarised and contentious debate over future oil supply a growing number of commentators are forecasting a near term peak and subsequent decline in production but although liquid fuels form the foundation of modern industrial economies the growing debate on peak oil has relatively little influence on energy and climate policy with this in mind the uk energy research centre ukerc has conducted an independent thorough and systematic review of the evidence with the aim of establishing the current state of knowledge identifying key uncertainties and improving consensus the study focuses upon the physical depletion of conventional oil in the period to 2030 and includes an in depth literature review analysis of industry databases and a detailed comparison of global supply forecasts this communication summarises the main findings of the ukerc study a key conclusion is that a peak of conventional oil production before 2030 appears likely and there is a significant risk of a peak before 2020

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

contingent valuation a new perspective after several decades of academic research on the contingent valuation cv method a consistent behavioral explanation of hypothetical bias is still lacking based on evidence from economics economic psychology and the political sciences i propose an explanation that is based on two simple working hypotheses about respondent behaviour in contingent valuation surveys the first hypothesis is that survey respondents are unable to form consistent preferences about unfamiliar goods unless the choice context offers reliable informative cues that can be rationally exploited in simplified heuristics the second hypothesis is that the probability and impact of strategic responses in dichotomous choice questions about public goods depends on the extent to which the presented hypothetical costs differ from the actual costs the literature on hypothetical bias is revisited in the light of these behavioral hypotheses i find that the hypotheses are generally supported by the empirical data moreover the hypotheses are able to explain several important empirical phenomena that previous research has not been able to explain in particular they solve the puzzle that pre election polls but not cv surveys are able to predict actual referendum outcomes and they explain why income effects on willingness to pay are lower in cv responses than in actual votes if confirmed by further studies the hypotheses will have important implications for future research and practice first the hypothetical costs presented in the dichotomous choice question should to be close enough to the actual costs to be credible to all respondents this can be achieved by specifying the costs as a percentage rather than absolute change in taxes second the respondents should be given the option to answer based on information about the positions of large parties and interest groups with known political orientation rather than based on the raw policy information theory and evidence suggest that this new survey paradigm largely eliminates the fundamental problems of the conventional stated preference methods

on consumers willingness to purchase nutritionally enhanced genetically modified food this study assesses consumers willingness to purchase genetically modified gm food products with two different types of benefits an input i e reduced pesticides and an output trait benefit i e nutritionally enhanced data were collected using a telephone survey of an italian households sample discrete choice approach is used to elicit the purchase intentions of the respondents four separate probit models are estimated to examine the effect of various factors on choices results suggest that majority of italians are not willing to buy gm food products even if they are nutritionally enhanced however more consumers are willing to buy a nutritionally enhanced plant based gm product than a traditional plant based gm with input trait benefit willingness to buy for a nutritionally enhanced animal based gm product and for a traditional animal based gm product with input trait benefit are similar consumers unwilling to buy gm food would not buy it even if it is nutritionally enhanced and has lo

valuing wetland attributes an application of choice experiments abstract the interest for wetlands is increasing not only because of the possibility of a cost efficient uptake of nutrients but also because wetlands can be designed to provide other services what values that are supplied depend largely on the design there are numerous different design options and different actors may promote different alternatives whether we want to design a wetland for nutrient retention alone or one that also serves other interests policy makers need information about the value of different options conducting a choice experiment we are able to identify attributes that increase and decrease citizens perceived value of wetlands using a random parameter model we find that biodiversity and walking facilities are the two greatest contributors to welfare while a fenced waterline and introduction of crayfish decrease welfare

convergent validity of attribute based choice questions in stated preference studies the application of attribute based choice questions is well established in the marketing literature but there are unique aspects of the design that warrant investigation to assess their validity for economic welfare estimation three design issues are investigated in this paper 1 the placement of the monetary stimulus policy cost to respondents in the sequence of attributes 2 the number of policy alternatives respondents are asked to consider in choice questions two versus three and 3 the inclusion versus exclusion of a status quo alternative in choice questions the data used to implement these investigations are from a survey designed to estimate the value maine residents place on a farmland conservation easement program tests of convergent validity indicate that the placement of the monetary stimulus first versus last in the list of attributes did not affect estimates of preference parameters significant differences between questions with three versus two alternatives did occur and the inclusion exclusion of a status quo alternative did not affect preference parameters

the gender of opponents explaining gender differences in performance and risk taking abstract analyzing 8169 contestants over 32 years of the us game show jeopardy we find that women compete more aggressively become marginally more competitive and take on more risk when paired against men specifically a woman is more likely to win a jeopardy episode and within the show to respond to a clue once responding she is also marginally more likely to respond correctly potentially most surprising even the sizeable gender gap in risk taking analyzing daily double wagering decisions disappears once a woman competes in an otherwise all male field of competitors men on the other hand wager significantly less when paired against women only but the gender of opponents does not affect their competitive performance otherwise our rich sample allows us to control for a host of potentially confounding factors and player fixed effects thereby eliminating potential biases from unobservable individual characteristics our findings are consistent with an explanation that emphasizes an adaptation to social norms applied to gender

gender competitiveness and career choices gender differences in competitiveness have been hypothesized as a potential explanation for gender differences in education and labor market outcomes we examine the predictive power of a standard laboratory experimental measure of competitiveness for the later important choice of academic track of secondary school students in the netherlands although boys and girls display similar levels of academic ability boys choose substantially more prestigious academic tracks where more prestigious tracks are more math and science intensive our experimental measure shows that boys are also substantially more competitive than girls we find that competitiveness is strongly positively correlated with choosing more prestigious academic tracks even conditional on academic ability most important we find that the gender difference in competitiveness accounts for a substantial portion about 20 of the gender difference in track choice

the impact of the menstrual cycle and hormonal contraceptives on competitiveness we examine whether competitiveness in women is influenced by biological factors female participants in a laboratory experiment solve a simple arithmetics task first under a piece rate and then under a competitive tournament scheme participants can then choose which compensation scheme to apply in a third round we find that the likelihood of selecting into the competitive environment varies strongly and significantly over the menstrual cycle and with the intake of hormonal contraceptives the observed patterns are consistent with a negative impact of the sex hormone progesterone on competitiveness we show that the effect of the menstrual cycle and hormonal contraceptives on competitiveness is due neither to an impact on performance nor to an impact on risk aversion or overconfidence

choice modelling and its potential application to tropical rainforest preservation abstract loss of rainforest occurs in part because of a global market failure problem markets routinely transmit signals about international demands for forest products such as timber but fail to transmit signals about demands for preservation to make efficient resource allocation choices decision makers need some framework to estimate the non use values that might be held by an international community for rainforest preservation non market valuation techniques can be used for this purpose but framing and other problems limit the application of the contingent valuation method cvm an alternative technique choice modelling cm appears to hold some promise because it can be used to model complex situations and to frame choices consistent with real life choices in this paper a cm experiment to assess the values that australians hold for rainforest conservation in vanuatu is reported the experiment disguises effectively the issue of interest rainforest conservation in vanuatu within a pool of other conservation locations also the experiment demonstrates that choice tradeoffs may involve a variety of environmental and socio economic factors rather than be concentrated on some monetary tradeoff the results demonstrate that a variety of predictive and valuation tools can be gained from a cm experiment and suggest that further development is warranted

performance in competitive environments gender differences even though the provision of equal opportunities for men and women has been a priority in many countries large gender differences prevail in competitive high ranking positions suggested explanations include discrimination and differences in preferences and human capital in this paper we present experimental evidence in support of an additional factor women may be less effective than men in competitive environments even if they are able to perform similarly in non competitive environments in a laboratory experiment we observe as we increase the competitiveness of the environment a significant increase in performance for men but not for women this results in a significant gender gap in performance in tournaments while there is no gap when participants are paid according to piece rate this effect is stronger when women have to compete against men than in single sex competitive environments this suggests that women may be able to perform in competitive environments per se

consumer willingness to pay for genetically modified food in kenya genetically modified gm crops are popular in many regions of the world but their deployment in africa is hindered by safety concerns and regulatory issues although the continent is in dire need of boosting its food production although consumers acceptance of gm food has been analyzed in many continents no such studies have been conducted in africa therefore a survey of 604 consumers was conducted in nairobi kenya in 2003 to gauge consumers awareness of gm crops their willingness to pay wtp for gm food and the factors that influence their wtp consumers knowledge of gm crops was limited and only 38 of the 604 respondents were aware of gm crops people in higher education and income groups were more aware than others regardless people were generally appreciative of the technology and a large majority 68 would be willing to buy gm maize meal at the same price as their favorite brand consumers were however concerned about possible side effects especially on the environment and biodiversity wtp was estimated using a double bounded dichotomous choice model and the mean wtp was found to be 13 8 higher than the average price of non gm maize meal perceptions of health risk and ethical and equity concerns had a negative influence on the likelihood of purchasing gm maize meal whereas trust in government to ensure food quality had a positive influence on wtp people with at least some secondary education and those in the high income category were more likely to purchase gm maize meal at the same price the study concludes that because awareness is still low appropriate communications are needed to involve the consumer in the debate consumers acceptance in this study was high but the research needs to be expanded to rural areas where most consumers live and other survey methods need to be explored

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