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

the political economy of linguistic cleavages article i nfo this paper uses a linguistic tree describing the genealogical relationship between all 6912 world languages to compute measures of diversity at different levels of linguistic aggregation by doing so we let the data inform us on which linguistic cleavages are most relevant for a range of political economy outcomes rather than making ad hoc choices we find that deep cleavages originating thousands of years ago lead to better predictors of civil conflict and redistribution the opposite pattern emerges when it comes to the impact of linguistic diversity on growth and public goods provision where finer distinctions between languages matter 2011 elsevier b v all rights reserved

on the salience of ethnic conflict ray acknowledges support from the national science foundation under grants 0421852 and 0617827 esteban is a member of barcelona economics xrea and is grateful for support from the generalitat de catalunya and the cicyt sej 2006 00369 this research is part of the polarization and conflict research project cit2 ct 2004 506084 funded by the european commission dg research sixth framework program

willingness to pay attitudes and fundamental values on the cognitive context of public preferences for diversity in agricultural landscapes abstract our study set out to investigate if and how willingness to pay both hypothetical and actual might reflect individuals wider cognitive networks we draw on the idea of cognitive hierarchies i e the notion that concrete preferences and attitudes are embedded in networks of more abstract beliefs and values and explore if willingness to pay wtp as expressed through contingent valuation can be understood as part of such hierarchies to this end we elicited stated and actual wtp in a survey of public preferences and attitudes towards the establishment of an agri environmental payment scheme in northeim germany that rewards farmers for the provision of riparian buffer strips two main findings emerged from the study first only a very small proportion of those stating positive wtp did actually transfer the money second contrary to our hypotheses results from a structural equation model suggest that stated wtp was only poorly connected to attitudes towards the payment scheme and other potentially relevant more abstract beliefs and values this casts doubts on the meaningfulness of such statements of the ten different fundamental value types included only universalism and conformity played a significant role in the cognitive hierarchy and informed generalised environmental beliefs as well as attitudes towards the payment scheme as attitudes seemed to be better integrated in the cognitive network than wtp we discuss if surveys of public preferences should rely on attitude statements rather than solely on monetary values

marine trade offs comparing the benefits of off shore wind farms and marine protected areas the drive to increase renewable electricity production in many parts of europe has led to an increasing concentration of new wind energy sites at sea this results in a range of environmental impacts which should be taken into account in a benefit cost analysis of such proposals in this paper we use choice modeling to investigate the relative gains and losses from siting new windfarms off the coast of estonia relative to the option of creating a new marine protected area we find that while respondents are generally opposed to converting marine shoals to conventional wind farms and prefer the establishment of marine protected areas instead benefits from constructing environmentally friendly wind farms an alternative program which is also considered by the government are not statistically different with respect to consumers welfare to those associated with creating a new marine protected area methodologically the paper makes a contribution by showing the ability of the latent class mixed logit model to represent both within and between class preference heterogeneity and thus its power to provide a more sophisticated representation of preference heterogeneity than stand alone latent class or mixed logit approaches the paper also presents the first use of the latent class mixed logit model in willingness to pay space for environmental goods

enhancing the content validity of stated preference valuation the structure and function of ecological indicators stated preference surveys often provide ambiguous descriptions of ecological commodities yielding welfare estimates that have unclear interpretations and cannot be linked to measurable outcomes this paper proposes guidelines to promote ecological content validity in survey scenarios and defensible use of ecological information for welfare analysis these guidelines are illustrated through an application to migratory fish restoration content validity is evaluated vis a vis norms for communication of ecological changes in the ecological literature findings suggest that less structured treatment of ecological commodities may lead to an omission of information that is relevant to respondents and essential for valid welfare estimation

ecosystem service value assessment for constructed wetlands a case study in hangzhou china abstract based on a comprehensive analysis of various classifications of natural resource values we summarized an ecological economic value system of constructed wetland cw ecosystems for treating eutrophic water using the cw located at the hangzhou botanical garden as an example the contingent valuation method cvm and shadow project approach spa were applied to estimate the economic values of cw system ecosystem services the cvm estimated a value of 800 000 yuan yuan chinese currency 7 6 yuan 1 usd as of august 2007 as the total economic value of the cw in a twenty year period meanwhile the spa calculated a value of 23 04 million yuan as the total economic value of the cw in a twenty year period it is determined that compared to the cvm the spa provides a more approximate value of the true monetary value of the hangzhou botanical garden cw this study could fill the gap of knowledge and provide a benchmark when evaluating constructed ecosystem services and help policy makers to promote the development of constructed wetlands in china

does the human capital educational sorting debate matter for development policy if education increases human capital subsidizing education can generate economic growth and combat poverty estimates of its return suggest that education is a good social investment in sorting models the return reflects in part the information about productivity revealed by the worker s education thus the social and private returns diverge it might appear that if we believe the sorting model we should be less swayed by evidence that estimated returns to education exceed the social discount rate and therefore less likely to support education based development policies this conclusion is shown to be incorrect this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

a stated preference valuation of the non market benefits of pollination services in the uk using a choice experiment survey this study examines the uk public s willingness to pay to conserve insect pollinators in relation to the levels of two pollination service benefits maintaining local produce supplies and the aesthetic benefits of diverse wildflower assemblages willingness to pay was estimated using a bayesian mixed logit with two contrasting controls for attribute non attendance exclusion and shrinkage the results suggest that the uk public have an extremely strong preference to avoid a status quo scenario where pollinator populations and pollination services decline total willingness to pay was high and did not significantly vary between the two pollination service outputs producing a conservative total of 379m over a sample of the tax paying population of the uk equivalent to 13 4 per uk taxpayer using a basic production function approach the marginal value of pollination services to these attributes is also extrapolated the study discusses the implications of these findings and directions for related future research into the non market value of pollination and other ecosystem services

valuation of environmental and societal trade offs of renewable energy sources abstract use of renewable energy sources is one solution to decrease green house gas emissions and the use of polluting fossil fuels renewables differ in their environmental and societal impacts and to design sound renewable energy policy societies need to assess the trade offs between alternative sources to enable the evaluation and comparison of renewable energy production alternatives in finland this paper applies the choice experiment to elicit the monetary information on people s preferences for four renewable energy sources wind power hydro power and energy from crops and wood and considers four impacts of energy production effects on biodiversity local jobs carbon emissions and household s electricity bill the nested logit analysis reveals that higher income male gender young age and pro environmental attitude increase the probability to choose renewable energy instead of the current energy mix wind power is on average the most popular renewable energy technology but regional differences exist biodiversity deterioration should be avoided the national aggregate willingness to pay based on stated preferences rather than preferences revealed by actual market behavior for a combination of renewable energy technologies that corresponds to finland s climate change and energy policy is over 500 million euros

revealing additional dimensions of preference heterogeneity in a latent class mixed multinomial logit model latent class models offer an alternative perspective to the popular mixed logit form replacing the continuous distribution with a discrete distribution in which preference heterogeneity is captured by membership of distinct classes of utility description within each class preference homogeneity is usually assumed although interactions with observed contextual effects are permissible a natural extension of the fixed parameter latent class model is a random parameter latent class model which allows for another layer of preference heterogeneity within each class this article sets out the random parameter latent class model and illustrates its applications using a stated choice data set on alternative freight distribution attribute packages pivoted around a recent trip in australia

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

preference heterogeneity for renewable energy technology abstract this study explores heterogeneity in individual willingness to pay wtp for a public good using several different variants of the multinomial logit mnl model for stated choice data these include a simple mnl model with interaction terms between respondent characteristics and attribute levels a latent class model a random parameter mixed logit model and a hybrid random parameter latent class model the public good valued was an increase in renewable electricity generation the models consistently show that preferences over renewable technologies are heterogeneous among respondents but that the degree of heterogeneity differs for different renewable technologies specifically preferences over solar power appear to be more heterogeneous across respondents than preferences for other renewable technologies comparing across models the random parameter logit model and the hybrid random parameter latent class model fit the choice data best and did the best job capturing preference heterogeneity

an evaluation of does economic inequality breed political conflict studies contradictory findings that economic inequality may have a positive negative or no impact on political conflict are a puzzle for conflict studies three approaches have been used t o explain the inconsistent findings of the ei pc economic inequality political conflict nexus statistical modeling formal modeling and theory building because analysts have tended to possess different research skills these three approaches have been employed in isolation from one another singly however all three approaches have proved deficient and are unlikely to solve the ei pc puzzle the most fruitful approach is to combine the assumptions of the theory builders and the deductive approach of the formal modelers with the various empirical tests of the statistical modelers such an approach to the ei pc puzzle produces a crucial test of the deprived actor and rational actor theories of conflict the approach is also our best hope for solving the other long standing puzzles in conflict studies

history institutions and economic performance the legacy of colonial land tenure systems in india we analyze the colonial land revenue institutions set up by the british in india and show that differences in historical property rights institutions lead to sustained differences in economic outcomes areas in which proprietary rights in land were historically given to landlords have significantly lower agricultural investments and productivity in the post independence period than areas in which these rights were given to the cultivators these areas also have significantly lower investments in health and education these differences are not driven by omitted variables or endogeneity problems they probably arise because differences in historical institutions lead to very different policy choices

participation and evaluation for sustainable river basin governance this paper introduces a special section devoted to participation and evaluation for sustainable river basin governance the departing point for this research was the recognition that although there is a relative agreement regarding the need to develop new multi dimensional inclusive and plural approaches to water resource management there is still a deficiency of related methodologies and tools this acknowledgement has motivated the undertaking of the advisor integrated evaluation for sustainable river basin governance research project which aimed at improving the understanding of evaluation processes as part of river basin planning and management and to test the use of specific tools to support the conduct of participatory processes the paper starts with a discussion of the concept of integrated water resources management and an illustration of the water policies that have been adopted in different countries as a response to these trends the conceptual framework that was developed in advisor is then presented as well as the main results from the ex post analysis of the decision processes regarding five water related projects in different european countries this analysis concluded that in most situations the decision making processes fell short of including the interests perceptions and values of affected parties the remaining of the paper introduces the articles that form this special section mostly devoted to the testing of new platforms for participation and deliberation in the final section a discussion on the assumptions and limitations of deliberative processes is presented based on the results from the application of the different methods further research needs on the integration of different deliberative tools and on the integration of deliberation with decision processes are identified

clarifying protected and utilitarian values of critical capital abstract sustainable development may be defined as a non declining value of capital stocks social natural built and human over time the ability for substitution between and within each stock over time has been widely debated resulting in the identification and then preservation of critical capital stocks we propose that critical can be defined from two ethical perspectives teleological or consequentialist goal or ends based and deontological moral duty and rule based the consequential ethic ensures critical capitals are utilitarian in value and they generate goods and services for the maintenance of human wellbeing whilst deontologically critical capital depends on culturally and psychologically protected values which may vary locally or at least as for e g biodiversity be open to conflicting opinions this separation in the basis for defining critical capital stocks leads to awareness that some tradeoffs between critical capital stocks may be irreconcilable or likely to lead to outrage a framework is developed to guide practitioners as to how to identify critical capital stocks using both protected and utilitarian values examples show that protected values are likely to be specific to community ethnic religious cultural etc and require different methods for resolving substitutability of capital stocks to achieve sustainable development

conflict and distribution abstract we develop a behavioral model that links the level and pattern of social conflict to the societywide distribution of individual characteristics the model can be applied to groups that differ in characteristics such as wealth ethnicity religion and political ideology we settle questions of existence and uniqueness of conflict equilibrium conflict is seen to be closely connected with the bimodality of the underlying distribution of characteristics however in general the conflict distribution relationship is nonlinear and surprisingly complex our results on conflict patterns also throw light on the phenomena of extremism and moderation journal of economic literature classification numbers d63 d72 d74

ethnicity and conflict an empirical study this paper examines the impact of ethnic divisions on conict the empirical specication is informed by a theoretical model of conict esteban and ray 2011 in which equilibrium conict is related to just three distributional indices of diversity ethnic polarization ethnic fractionalization and a greenberg gini index constructed across ethnic groups our empirical ndings verify that these distributional measures are signicant correlates of conict the underlying theory permits us to use these results to make inferences about the relative importance of public goods in conict as well as the extent of within group cohesion in conictual activity these eects are further strengthened as we introduce country specic measures of group cohesion and the relative importance of public goods and combine them with the distributional measures exactly as specied by the theory

linking conflict to inequality and polarization in this paper we study a behavioral model of conflict that provides a basis for choosing certain indices of dispersion as indicators for conflict we show that a suitable monotone transform of the equilibrium level of conflict can be proxied by a linear function of the gini coefficient the herfindahl hirschman fractionalization index and a specific measure of polarization due to esteban and ray jel classification d74 d31

decentralization effects in ecological fiscal transfers a bayesian structural time series analysis for portugal portugal has a unitary system in which the central government transfers funds to lower government levels for their public functions in 2007 portugal introduced ecological fiscal transfers eft where municipalities receive transfers for hosting protected areas pa we study whether introducing eft in portugal incentivized municipalities to designate pa and has led to a decentralization of conservation decisions we employ a bayesian structural time series approach to estimate the effect of introducing eft in comparison to a simulated counterfactual time series quantitative results show a significant increase in the ratio of municipal and national pa designations following portugal s eft introduction which we infer to be a causal consequence the analysis furthermore places emphasis on the importance of relevant municipal conservation competencies for the functioning of the instrument results have important implications for conservation policy making in terms of allocating budgets and competencies in multi level governments

environmental valuation and rationality economic valuation of the envi structuring the empirical model or adding ronment is disputed in part due to the number auxiliary hypotheses the presumption is of anomalies reactions to these anomalies have that consistent preferences are there just included adding new auxiliary hypotheses to the to be uncovered thus errors are mea core model or dismissing the whole undertaking surement this paper takes a third route and uses observa biases to be corrected by retions made in valuation studies to improve choice fined methods mitchell and carson theory the paper covers the information prob 1989 certainly many studies can be critlem the issue of preference formation and under icized for being of low quality still the lines the role of the social sphere in defining what development of concepts like starting becomes individually rational while the findings point bias posit ion bias question ormay not simplify theory they may help us be der bias yea saying protest bids come more realistic and to understand errors pro and part whole bias all seem very ad duced by illegitimate simplifications

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

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

ecosystems contingent valuation and ethics the case of wetland re creation this paper addresses a current issue in environmental valuation namely the extent to which environmental preferences depart from the usual economic paradigm to incorporate some lexicographic elements after a theoretical discussion the paper reviews attempts to explore this question empirically by supplementing contingent valuation analyses with an exploration of the motives behind willingness to pay responses including zero bids and refusals to answer this is followed by the presentation of new evidence investigating respondents willingness to pay for the creation of a wetland taken from 713 personal interviews of the british public 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

motives behind willingness to pay for improving biodiversity in a water ecosystem economics ethics and social psychology this paper reports on empirical work extending the standard economic approach to valuation by including psychological and philosophical factors more specifically a contingent valuation method survey was applied to biodiversity improvement while simultaneously assessing rights based beliefs consequentialism and the theory of planned behaviour the latter was assessed using measures of attitudes subjective norms and perceptions of control over willingness to pay the results show that standard socio economic explanatory variables are far inferior to those of social psychology and philosophy and that these factors offer a better understanding of the motives behind responses to contingent valuation the implication is that alternative means of measuring an individual s pluralistic values should be taken into account in order to assess the validity and meaning of willingness to pay

the eu 20 20 2020 targets an overview of the emf22 assessment three computable general equilibrium models are used to estimate the economic implications of a stylized version of eu climate policy if implemented at the lowest possible cost the 20 emissions reduction would lead to a welfare loss of 0 5 2 0 by 2020 second best policies increase costs a policy with two carbon prices one for the ets one for the non ets could increase costs by up to 50 a policy with 28 carbon prices one for the ets one each for each member state could increase costs by another 40 the renewables standard could raise the costs of emissions reduction by 90 overall the inefficiencies in policy lead to a cost that is 100 125 too high the models differ greatly in the detail of their results the ets non ets split may have a negligible impact on welfare while the renewables standard may even improve welfare the models agree however that the distortions introduced by total eu package imply a substantial welfare loss over and above the costs needed to meet the climate target the marginal total and excess costs reported here are notably higher than those in the impact assessment of the european commission

landscape externalities from onshore wind power the expansion of renewable energy is a central element of the german federal government s climate and energy policy the target for 2020 is to produce 30 of the electricity from renewable energies wind power has been selected to be a major contributor to this change replacing old wind turbines by modern ones and building new turbines on land will be crucial in meeting this target however the expansion of onshore wind power is not universally accepted in several regions of germany residents are protesting against setting up new wind turbines to determine the negative effects two choice experiments were applied in westsachsen and nordhessen germany in both regions the externalities of wind power generation until 2020 based on today s state of technology were measured the results show that negative landscape externalities would result from expanding wind power generation using latent class models three different groups of respondents experiencing different degrees of externalities were identified

beyond rationality towards reasonableness enriching the theoretical foundation of deliberative monetary valuation economic valuation is often deemed an important source of information for land use decisions stated preference sp methods are a particularly potent class of economic valuation methods but they are also particularly controversial in response to accumulating criticism of sp deliberative monetary valuation dmv has been proposed as an alternative approach and has gained considerable attention in recent years however being a combination of elements from two theories neoclassical welfare economics and theory of deliberative democracy it lacks a convincing consistent theoretical foundation in our paper we propose some clarifying adjustments regarding rationality assumptions and aggregation issues by drawing upon the work of amartya sen we find that many of his ideas lead to a harmonisation of dmv s theoretical foundations e g meta rankings of preferences impartial spectator and the plurality of impartial reasons

an evaluation of monetary and non monetary techniques for assessing the importance of biodiversity and ecosystem services to people in countries with developing economies abstract biodiversity supports a range of ecosystems services that are of fundamental importance to people in poor countries economic valuation of biodiversity is important for the development of policies that protect biodiversity and alleviate poverty this paper provides an evaluation of monetary and non monetary techniques for assessing the value of biodiversity to people in least developed countries ldcs specifically research questions include 1 to what extent have monetary and non monetary techniques been used to assess the value of biodiversity and ecosystem services in ldcs 2 what are the key methodological practical epistemological and policy challenges to assessing the value of biodiversity and ecosystem services in ldcs 3 how can valuation methods be improved to allow more accurate valuation in ldcs

using neuroeconomics to understand environmental valuation contingent valuation choice experiments and other stated preference methods are frequently used to capture the nonmarket valuation of natural resources and ecosystem services the emerging field of neuroeconomics which assesses the neuroscience underlying decision making plots a promising course to explore the mechanisms underlying complex environmental valuation decisions neuroeconomic methods offer a unique capacity to isolate value components that contribute to willingness to pay wtp separating an individual s response to natural resource attributes that are of interest to economists from other attributes or influences on the decision process neuroimaging data can also aid in understanding differences in response between preference elicitation techniques and identifying the use of different decision processes and heuristics during valuation this article surveys the benefits and limitations of using neuroeconomics methods to assess the value of environmental goods and focuses on three examples where neuroeconomics may inform environmental valuation protest responses comparison of hypothetical and consequential choice contexts and the evaluation of environmental attributes and optimization of study design in stated choice experiments neuroeconomics methods offer a foundation for positive collaboration between environmental economists and cognitive neuroscientists yielding metrics that complement and augment current stated preference methods of determining environmental valuation

influencing the perception of what and who is important in ecological economics abstract in a recent article using citation analysis hoepner et al 2012 make strong claims to have identified the most influential works authors journals and institutions in a hypothetical field they call environmental and ecological economics this paper shows that their work is biased by its framing far from the non subjective approach they claim and highly sensitive to minor data errors more than this the exercise can be seen as another example of how ecological economics is susceptible to suppression by a dominant mainstream economic perspective which attempts to override belittle and dismiss a whole range of alternative thought including that which is heterodox interdisciplinary from the natural sciences and based in the non economic social sciences ecological economics is not the same as agricultural resource or environmental economics and if it were it would be pointless neither can it be understood or treated as a subfield of resource and environmental economics as done by hoepner et al 2012 i argue that the study promotes a limited perspective on social environmental and economic problems that includes an implicit political and ideological framing what is most influential important or high quality in ecological economics is certainly not defined by such work

information bias in contingent valuation effects of personal relevance quality of information and motivational orientation abstract a laboratory experiment examined the potential for information bias in contingent valuation cv consistent with the view that information about a public or private good can function as a persuasive communication willingness to pay wtp was found to increase with the quality of arguments used to describe the good especially under conditions of high personal relevance under low personal relevance wtp for a public but not for a private good was higher when an altruistic as opposed to an individualistic orientation was activated it is concluded that the nature of the information provided in cv surveys can profoundly affect wtp estimates and that subtle contextual cues can seriously bias these estimates under conditions of low personal relevance

willingness to pay for unfamiliar public goods preserving cold water coral in norway the world s largest concentration of cold water coral cwc is found off the norwegian coast most cwc discoveries are recent posing new challenges for norwegian coastal and fishery authorities regarding the management of deep sea resources scientific knowledge of cwc is limited and many citizens have not even heard about them this creates problems for the application of the stated preference methods to capture their economic value and very few such studies have been conducted to fill this gap we designed a discrete choice experiment which was implemented in a valuation workshop setting in order to derive estimates of participants willingness to pay wtp for increasing the protection of cwc despite the fact that marine industries such as oil gas and fisheries could be adversely affected by cwc protection this did not reduce the respondents willingness to pay for further protection the possibility that cwcs play an important role as habitat for fish was the single most important variable to explain respondents wtp for cwc protection the survey revealed a high degree of preference heterogeneity while we found an average wtp for cwc protection in the range of eur 274 287

pathways for environmental evaluation a walk in the hanging gardens of babylon the paper gives a methodological overview of the valse project which was a european programme of research into valuation procedures for aiding the formulation and evaluation of sustainability policy a notion of valuation from the point of view of complexity is built up through emphasising the permanent co existence of multiple perspectives and more particularly the permanent possibility of shifts in perspective scientific enquiries and analyses are tested validated or invalidated partly by reference to internal norms of coherence and rigour and partly by reference to external considerations relating to the particular social and ecological context of the enquiry through reference to the four valse case studies it is shown how the application of a chosen method of analysis structures the enquiry while the researcher also learns about the reality through listening to what is said about the situation and about the research method itself from other points of view this demonstrates an approach to the design and implementation of environmental valuation studies that fully reconciles scientific and political dimensions of a social science process 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

rural versus urban preferences for renewable energy developments development of renewable energy resources such as wind farms and hydro electric schemes are being promoted as a new method of expanding and diversifying employment in rural areas however such energy projects are associated with a range of environmental impacts which might be detrimental to other economic activities such as those based on nature tourism the authors use a choice experiment to quantify peoples preferences over environmental and employment impacts that may result from the deployment of renewable energy projects in rural areas of scotland focussing in particular on any differences between the preferences of urban and rural dwellers and on heterogeneity within these groups rural and urban households are shown to have different welfare gains which are dependent on the type of renewable energy technology and on the scale of project under consideration