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

green market expansion by reducing information asymmetries evidence for labeled organic food products abstract we investigate how the provision of objective information about the environmental and health impact of organic labels by policy makers can influence the willingness to pay of consumers for labeled organic apples in flanders belgium using a stated choice experiment we initially find that flemish consumers are willing to pay a positive price premium of some 33 eurocent per kilogram for labeled organic apples after the provision of information on the actual environmental and health effects of organic apple production this price premium becomes even more pronounced and increases to 57 eurocent per kilogram using a conditional logit model with covariates and a mixed logit model we find evidence of preference heterogeneity also the effect of information provision is more pronounced for certain groups of consumers such as non vegetarians infrequent buyers of organic products and members of a nature protection organization as such this paper illustrates that there is a role for policy makers and csr producers in providing more accurate and reliable information about socially responsible production processes moreover it is important to take the observed preference heterogeneity into account and tailor policies to specific consumer groups

qualitative assessment of eco labels on fresh produce in flanders belgium highlights a potential intention performance gap for the supply chain abstract when it comes to making sustainable food purchasing choices consumers trust on information provided to them by eco labels this article studies the labels for fresh produce available to consumers in flanders belgium concluding that the existing labelling landscape fails at enabling consumers to make adequate decisions for purchasing environmentally sound food a consumer survey supports the need for additional information on the sustainability of fruits and vegetables a potential intention performance gap is found for producers and in the wider sense for the entire supply chain since current labels found on fresh produce are input or practice based labels farmers adhering to those labels can be considered as having the intention to produce sustainably however this intention alone cannot guarantee good environmental performance in order to close the potential intention performance gap for the supply chain and provide more adequate information to consumers we conclude that performance based labels covering the entire food chain of fresh produce using the life cycle assessment approach lca and including situational parameters such as time of consumption origin and production and distribution mode are indispensable

valuing the attributes of renewable energy investments increasing the proportion of power derived from renewable energy sources is becoming an increasingly important part of many countries s strategies to achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions however renewable energy investments can often have external costs and benefits which need to be taken into account if socially optimal investments are to be made this paper attempts to estimate the magnitude of these external costs and benefits for the case of renewable technologies in scotland a country which has set particularly ambitious targets for expanding renewable energy the external effects we consider are those on landscape quality wildlife and air quality we also consider the welfare implications of different investment strategies for employment and electricity prices the methodology used to do this is the choice experiment technique renewable technologies considered include hydro on shore and off shore wind power and biomass welfare changes for different combinations of impacts associated with different investment strategies are estimated we also test for differences in preferences towards these impacts between urban and rural communities and between high and low income households

optimum subsidies for education in two sector economies abstract this note presents a view on educational subsidies based on the recognition that educational cost is a kind of turnover cost from unskilled to skilled labor the level of optimum educational subsidies is given for three types of two sector economies a pure two sector economy economy of income sharings in the traditional sector economy with unemployment in the manufactural sector

performance indicators in higher education a survey of recent work this article surveys recent work on the construction of performance indicators in higher education focusing particular attention on degree results student wastage and research output performance indicators ought to provide measures of value added by the various institutions under review as such crude measures of output which fail to take account of input differences across institutions are inappropriate so it is necessary to investigate what factors underlie inter institution differences in measured output in order to correct for input variations in assessing overall performance the absence of market prices for teaching and research outputs severely hinders the construction of composite measures of the performance of higher education institutions since in their absence no objective weights can be assigned to the different roles of these institutions the resource implications of performance measurement exercises need to be clarified if rankings exercises are to have the desired incentive effects copyright 1992 by oxford university press

price information and bidding behavior in repeated second price auctions examining panel data on bidding behavior in over forty second price auction markets with repeated trials we observe that i posted prices influence the behavior of the median naive bidder ii posted prices do not affect the behavior of the median experienced bidder or the bidder for familiar goods and iii anticipated strategic behavior wanes after two trials the results suggest that while affiliation might exist in auctions for new goods the repeated trial design with nonprice information removes the correlation of values and provides the experience that bidders need to understand the market mechanism

the effects of information on willingness to pay values of endangered species the contingent valuation method cvm has been employed in several research studies to measure the economic value of environmental commodities brookshire kramer and mercer loehman park and boldt lohr battard and bath the use of cvm allows for flexibility and for application to a wide range of environmental amenities not only those that can be measured in conjunction with some marketable goods however because of its hypothetical character the validity of cvm is often disputed a structural element that might have an especially strong influence on cvm valuation is the contingent market information structure bergstorm stoll and randall information content and presentation in contingent markets are controlled by the researcher the design of an information structure can influence a participant s cognitive valuation process and in turn final revealed valuations information is thus conceptualized as an input into the cognitive decision process of which stated valuations are the final result the role of information in a contingent valuation methodology is extremely important because it conveys the knowledge of an environmental issue with which the respondent will assimilate and base value judgment on this research study proposes that information disclosure can influence an individuals reported willingness to pay wtp values for the preservation of an endangered species the means by which information is disclosed by the researcher is critical in the valuation process new information disclosed about an ecological good might affect the wtp behavi r of the individuals kula

the design of optimal education policies this paper studies the education policy chosen by a utilitarian government in the model households differ in their income and in their children s ability income is observed by the government but ability is private information households can use private education but cannot borrow to finance it the government can finance education with income tax but at the cost of blunting the individuals incentive to exert labour market effort the optimal education policy we derive is elitist it increases the spread between the educational achievement of the bright and the less bright individuals compared to private provision it is also such that the education received by less bright individuals depends positively on their parental income finally the optimal education policy is input regressive in the sense of arrow 1971 quarterly journal of economics 38 175 208 households with higher income and brighter children contribute less in tuition fees towards the cost of the education system than households with lower income and less bright children

the marginal excess burden of different capital tax instruments others have measured the addition to deadweight loss from an increase in an effective capital income tax rate but there is no single way to raise such a rate in the authors general equilibrium model with multiple distortions in the allocation of real resources they find that an increase in the statutory corporate income tax rate has the highest marginal excess burden because it distorts intersectoral and interasset decisions as well as intertemporal decisions an investment tax credit reduction has negative marginal excess burden because it raises revenue while reducing interasset distortions more than it increases intertemporal distortions copyright 1989 by mit press

choice modelling approaches a superior alternative for environmental valuation in this paper we examine some popular choice modelling approaches to environmental valuation which can be considered as alternatives to more familiar valuation techniques based on stated preferences such as the contingent valuation method a number of choice modelling methods are consistent with consumer theory and its focus on an attribute based theory of value permits a superior representation of many environmental management contexts however choice modelling surveys can place a severe cognitive burden upon respondents and induce satisficing rather than maximising behavioural patterns in this framework we seek to identify the best available choice modelling alternative and investigate its potential to solve some of the major biases associated with standard contingent valuation we then discuss its use in the light of policy appraisal needs within the eu an application to the demand for rock climbing in scotland is provided as an illustration

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

response bias in a conjoint analysis of power outages abstract a methodology is proposed for estimating status quo effects resistance to change and loss aversion willingness to pay is less than willingness to accept from consumer survey data conjoint data on israeli households attitudes to electricity outages reveal that both of these effects are pronounced and that they depend on the interviewees characteristics ordered conditional logit estimation indicates that while the estimates are rank sensitive the suggested methodology continues to be applicable finally the conjoint estimates are compared with those obtained by applying the method of contingent valuation

the demand for education under capital market imperfections this paper studies the theoretical implications of the demand for education assuming the same regime for financing consumption and the direct costs of education when the capital market is not perfect it is motivated by the policy concerns on the financing of post secondary education in case of an imperfect capital market the separation theorem see e g wallace and ihnen 1975 is not valid and the theoretical implications substantially deviate from their counterparts under a perfect capital market regime for example in a capital market with credit rationing the borrowing rate exerts a positive effect on the demand for education whereas this effect is negative in case of a perfect capital market the theoretical results are used to discuss the effects of government policy on the demand for post compulsory education

designing choice sets for stated preference methods the effects of complexity on choice consistency abstract we vary the complexity of choice sets used in stated preference methods to evaluate the impact on choice consistency we define five measures of complexity that capture either the amount of information or the correlational structure of information in a choice set using these measures as randomly assigned treatments in a large experiment we analyze the consistency of respondents choices using a heteroskedastic multinomial logit model we find that i all of our measures of choice set complexity affect choice consistency ii changes in the correlational structure of information have the largest impact on choice consistency and iii choice complexity significantly distorts welfare estimates our results confirm economists initial worry that moving from contingent valuation to conjoint methods will increase complexity induced choice inconsistency however our analysis also shows that these negative impacts may be mitigated if precautions are taken at the design and estimation stages of stated preference methods

using a choice experiment to account for preference heterogeneity in wetland attributes the case of cheimaditida wetland in greece abstract this paper aims to assist policy makers in formulating efficient and sustainable wetland management policies in accordance with the ramsar convention and the european union water framework directive 2000 60 ec by providing results of a valuation study on the cheimaditida wetland in greece a choice experiment is employed to estimate the values of changes in several ecological social and economic functions that cheimaditida wetland provides to the greek public in addition to the conditional logit model a random parameter logit model a random parameter logit model with interactions and a latent class model are estimated to account for heterogeneity in the preferences of the public for the various functions of the wetland the results reveal that there is considerable preference heterogeneity across the public and on average they derive positive and significant values from sustainable management of this wetland the estimated economic benefits of sustainable wetland management are weighed against the costs of alternative wetland management scenarios results of this cost benefit analysis can aid in the design of socially optimal policies for sustainable management of the cheimaditida wetland with possible implications for other similar wetlands in greece and the rest of europe

effects of different descriptions of the ecological good on willingness to pay values abstract the contingent valuation cv method is a survey based method that is used to put a price on ecological goods due to its hypothetical character the validity of the cv method forms part of an ongoing debate this article deals with one aspect of this validity viz the proper description of the ecological good of interest the question is whether and if so to what extent different descriptions meant as representations of the same good influence respondents willingness to pay wtp do different descriptions of the ecological good result in the same representation of that good or will these descriptions result in different images of the good and consequently in different values if the latter occurs a validity problem arises a field experiment was conducted to study the effects of three descriptions of the good a clean environment around the year 2015 the results of this experiment show that rather large differences in the description of this good have a significant effect on wtp values as well as on the number of protest bidders smaller differences in the description however do not show such an effect it seems as if certain information thresholds have to be overcome in order to affect wtp values

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

environmental labeling and incomplete consumer information in laboratory markets abstract survey evidence suggests that consumers care about the environment and are willing to pay a higher price for a product that generates less environmental harm we induce buyer preferences over quality in a laboratory posted offer market to study sellers incentives to offer products of differing quality buyers are unaware of the product quality before purchase as is often the case for goods with differing environmental quality we first document the market failure that arises from incomplete information when no signaling or reputations are possible we then study various treatments that could remedy this failure seller reputations and unverified cheap talk signals sometimes increase the number of higher valued green goods the only reliable way to improve product quality in the experiment however is to use a third party that charges a fee to certify product quality claims

willingness to pay for natural organic and conventional foods the effects of information and meaningful labels vague food labels and distorted product claims have persisted in the natural food industry while organic claims can be certified by the u s department of agriculture usda using experimental methods and a sample of randomly selected subjects we test food label and information treatment effects on subjects willingness to pay wtp for organic natural and conventional foods random nth price auctions are used to elicit wtp after subjects received one of five randomly assigned information treatments we find large information effects including asymmetric cross market effects for natural and organic foods perhaps surprising is that organic premiums increase in response to subjects seeing the natural foods industry s perspective on its products demographics effects are also important the results have practical implications for natural and organic food marketing and valuing products where there are vague claims about their attributes