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

integrating methods for ecosystem service assessment and valuation mixed methods or mixed messages a mixed method approach was used to assess and value the ecosystem services derived from the dogger bank an extensive shallow sandbank in the southern north sea three parallel studies were undertaken that 1 identified and quantified where possible how indicators for ecosystem service provision may change according to two future scenarios 2 assessed members of the public s willingness to pay for improvements to a small number of ecosystem services as a consequence of a hypothetical management plan and 3 facilitated a process of deliberation that allowed members of the public to explore the uses of the dogger bank and the conflicts and dilemmas involved in its management each of these studies was designed to answer different and specific research questions and therefore contributes different insights about the ecosystem services delivered by the dogger bank this paper explores what can be gained by bringing these findings together post hoc and the extent to which the different methods are complementary findings suggest that mixed method research brings more understanding than can be gained from the individual approaches alone nevertheless the choice of methods used and how these methods are implemented strongly affects the results obtained

cost function estimation under risk aversion standard definitions of the cost function do not admit risk standard ex post approaches to cost function estimation yield biased and inconsistent estimates when production is stochastic recently an ex ante approach to cost function estimation with stochastic production has been developed by imbedding the distance function in the cost function estimation problem we generalize the approach to consider risk aversion in decision making only two empirical studies have considered stochastic production in cost function estimation both have required constant returns to scale we demonstrate a methodology sufficiently general to consider nonconstant returns to scale

differences between continuous and discrete contingent value estimates in a split sample contingent valuation study of willingness to pay wtp for food safety improvements the dichotomous choice dc elicitation method consistently generated much larger estimates of wtp than did a continuous method little or none of these differences was due to bias introduced by the statistical techniques used with the dc data most or all of the difference was due to differences in respondent behavior in addition the continuous wtp responses showed a significant scope effect while the dc responses did not the observed difference in behavior may be attributable in part to yea saying by dc respondents

what aspects of formality do workers value evidence from a choice experiment in bangladesh this study uses a choice experiment among 2 000 workers in bangladesh to elicit willingness to pay wtp for job attributes a contract termination notice working hours paid leave and a pension fund using a stated preference method allows calculation of wtp for benefits in this setting despite the lack of data on worker transitions and the fact that many workers are self employed which makes it difficult to use revealed preference methods workers highly value job stability the average worker would be willing to forego a 27 percent increase in income to obtain a 1 year contract relative to no contract or to forego a 12 percent increase to obtain thirty days of termination notice there is substantial heterogeneity in wtp by type of employment and gender women value shorter working hours more than men while government workers place a higher value on contracts than do private sector employees

determinants of individual tourist expenditure as a network empirical findings from uruguay abstract this paper introduces the use of graphical models for assessing the determinants of individual tourist spending these models have the advantage of synthesizing and visualizing the relationships occurring within large sets of random variables through an easy to interpret output to this end individual data from a large official survey of international tourists in uruguay are used symmetric conditional independence structures are first investigated then subgraphs of each expenditure item s neighbourhood are extracted in order to assess the impact of main effects and interactions through proportional ordinal logistic regression results highlight the marginal role of socio demographic variables and direct importance of accommodation type destination and length of stay

adjustment costs from environmental change abstract the paper is concerned with the case whereby the distribution of a firm s productivity shocks changes without the knowledge of the firm over time the firm learns about the nature and extent of the change in the distribution of the shock and adjusts incurring adjustment costs in the process the long run loss in profits due to the shift in the distribution we term the equilibrium response the transitory loss in profits incurred while the firm is learning about the distribution shift is termed the adjustment cost the theory is then applied to the problem of measuring adjustment costs in the face of imperfectly observed climate change in agriculture the empirical part of the paper involves estimating a restricted profit function for agricultural land in a five state region of the midwest us as a function of prices land characteristics actual weather realizations and expected weather we then simulate the effect of an unobserved climate shock where learning about the climate shock is by observing the weather and updating prior knowledge using bayes rule we find adjustment costs to climate change are 1 4 of annual land rents

a comparison of contingent preference models i compare the informational efficiencies of contingent rating contingent ranking and two contingent paired comparison methods as alternatives to the referendum contingent valuation method the contingent rating method is hypothesized to be most efficient because ratings convey information on preference intensities and can uniquely represent respondent indifference or ambivalence survey data on hunters ratings of alternative hypothetical hunting trips are used to estimate four alternative indirect utility models from which marginal willingness to pay measures for individual trip attributes are derived model comparison wtp estimates and their confidence intervals confirm the relative efficiency of the contingent rating approach

acreage decisions under risk the case of corn and soybeans an acreage supply response model is developed under expected utility maximization the resulting framework is used to specify and estimate a system of risk responsive acreage equations for corn and soybeans in the united states particular attention is given to the truncation effects of government price supports on the distribution of corn and soybean prices also a wealth variable is included in the acreage equations the empirical results indicate that risk and wealth variables play an important role in cornsoybean acreage decisions the analysis also shows that cross commodity risk reduction is important in acreage allocation decisions

estimating fishing and hunting leisure spending shares in the united states abstract we apply a bivariate censored demand system to estimate hunting and fishing trip related spending shares in the united states using data from off site surveys the approach considers fishing and hunting destination decisions and includes respondents who were inactive i e did not hunt or fished in a particular season the statistical significance of correlation coefficient parameter supports the use of a joint e g bivariate rather than separate e g univariate decision modeling process for fishing or hunting share equations most individual characteristics are statistically significant as explanatory variables respondents holding recreation licenses tended to spend significantly more on recreation than those without licenses all own price and cross price elasticities are statistically significant and suggest that hunting and fishing are complements the results also suggest that the popularity of hunting may decline as the population ages

choice experiment study on the willingness to pay to improve electricity services abstract modern forms of energy are an important vehicle towards poverty alleviation in rural areas of developing countries most developing countries households rely heavily on wood fuel which impacts on their health and socio economic status to ease such a dependency other modern forms of energy namely electricity need to be provided however the quality of the electricity service namely reliability is an important factor in reducing this dependency this paper discusses a choice experiment valuation study conducted among electrified rural households located in kisumu kenya in which the willingness to pay wtp to avoid power outages or blackouts was estimated a mixed logit estimation was applied to identify the various socio economic and demographic characteristics which determine preferences in reducing power outages among a household s users in conclusion several of the socio economic and demographic characteristics outlined in this paper were identified and can assist service differentiation to accommodate the diverse households preferences towards the improvement of the electricity service

an integrated model of tourists time use and expenditure behaviour with self selection based on a fully nested archimedean copula function abstract this study presents an integrated model of tourists time use expenditure by explicitly incorporating the influence of destination visit behaviour based on the concept of self selection inter destination interactions between time use decisions between expenditure decisions and between decisions on both time use and expenditure are incorporated by using a multilinear utility function the study uses a type ii tobit model with a frank type fully nested archimedean copula to deal with issues caused by correlation between these variables the archimedean copula is used to combine marginal distributions to obtain a joint distribution of error terms of utility functions with the help of dependency parameters the effectiveness of the model is confirmed empirically by using data collected in the tottori prefecture of japan in 2007 dependence structures across destinations inter destination interactions and the relative importance of each destination in decisions are examined

social costs from proximity to hydraulic fracturing in new york state the study reports data from an economic choice experiment to determine the likely welfare impacts of hydraulic fracturing in this case using natural gas extracted by hydraulic fracturing for household electricity data were collected from an internet survey of 515 residents of new york state the welfare analysis indicated that on average households incur a welfare loss from in state hydraulic fracturing as the source of their electricity the evidence suggests that households in shale counties bear more costs from hf electricity than households out of shale counties the average welfare loss is substantive estimated at 40 46 of average household electric bills in shale counties and 16 20 of bills in counties without shale the evidence also suggests that relative proximity to hf well sites also increases cost borne by households

is individual environmental consciousness one of the determinants in transport mode choice this article models negative impact on the environment as one of the attributes of transport mode by this modelling we are able to examine whether individual environmental consciousness of this impact plays a significant role in his her choice of transport mode a survey data from saito and onohara area in northern osaka of japan is used to estimate the model with the heteroscedastic extreme value specification both of the estimated and simulated results imply that individual environmental consciousness does influence his her decision on transport mode choice in the sample furthermore the likelihood ratio tests indicate that both the utility and scale parameters are not equivalent across sub samples of university commuters research facility commuters and residents the results of the comparison across sub samples suggest that sometimes we may learn more from sub dividing a whole sample into several sub samples if we could distinguish them by their characteristics

introducing new futures contracts reinforcement versus cannibalism abstract in order to assure survival futures exchanges around the world are in constant search of new futures contracts that will generate a profitable level of trading volume introducing new futures contracts may increase or decrease the volume for those contracts already listed using a multi product hedging model in which the perspective has been shifted from portfolio to exchange management we study these effects using data from two exchanges that differ regarding assets traded and market liquidity amsterdam exchanges versus chicago board of trade we show the usefulness of the proposed method the method may also be used to evaluate the benefits for exchanges that plan to internationalize their activities by merging with another exchange or by cross listing other exchanges futures contracts

using labels to investigate scope effects in stated preference methods insufficient sensitivity to scope variations in the scale of the environmental good on offer remains a major criticism of stated preference methods and many studies fail a scope test of some sort across a range of existing explanations for insensitivity to scope commodity mis specification embedding warm glows there seems to exist no clear conclusion on how to deal with the problem this paper provides an alternative explanation for insufficient sensitivity to scope based on re definition of the determinants of value for environmental goods within an attributes based choice model in the proposed framework respondents willingness to pay need depend not only on physical characteristics of a good but may also depend on the label under which the environmental good is sold in the hypothetical market to investigate this problem a choice experiment study of biodiversity was conducted we find that controlling for the effects of a label in this case national park designation leads to significant increase in the scope sensitivity of welfare measures

accounting for local impacts of photovoltaic farms the application of two stated preferences approaches to a case study in portugal abstract renewable energy sources for electricity generation are unequivocally more environmentally friendly than the traditional sources but are not impact free given the potential for solar photovoltaic energy to contribute to the energy mix in some countries it is timely to carefully consider the potential environmental costs of operation of photovoltaic farms which are experienced by the local population while the general benefits accrue to all we apply the contingent valuation method to a sample of local residents close to three selected photovoltaic farms in portugal also we design a discrete choice experiment to elicit the valuation of specific adverse impacts of electricity generation through photovoltaic energy by national residents our results show that the value elicited in the vicinity of the photovoltaic farms is non negligible on the other hand national residents ponder the trade offs implied by the choice sets and value positively the different adverse local impacts both of these estimates in conjunction or independently can be used to fully account for this often neglected cost of solar energy furthermore we argue that when studying the public acceptance of renewables using stated preference methods explicitly presents the trade offs between negative impacts and costs contributing to more realistic portrayal of public opinion

are citizens willing to pay for agricultural multifunctionality agricultural multifunctionality is the recognition of the joint exercise of economic environmental and social functions by the agricultural sector in order to make the concept operative for the design of public policies it is necessary to estimate the social demand for such functions the main objective of this article is to present an empirical application in this sense for this purpose we have adopted the agricultural system of cereal steppes in tierra de campos in spain as a case study the economic valuation technique used is the choice experiment the results suggest the existence of a significant demand for the different functions although the demand is heterogeneous depending on the socioeconomic characteristics of the individuals surveyed

the korean public s willingness to pay for expanding the use of solid refuse fuel abstract solid refuse fuel srf a solid fuel that is produced from non hazardous combustible waste can mitigate greenhouse gas emissions compared with fossil fuels the korean government plans to enhance the ratio of combustible waste converted into srf from 16 in 2014 to 100 in 2020 by increasing the number of facilities that make and use srf this paper attempts to investigate empirically the korean public s willingness to pay wtp for expanding the use of srf the wtp data were obtained from a one and one half bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation survey of 1000 households because a considerable number of respondents 62 6 gave a zero wtp response we applied a spike model to treat the wtp data with zero observations the spike model fitted the data well considering that all the coefficient estimates are statistically significant at the 1 level the yearly mean wtp was computed as krw 2479 usd 2 17 per household for the next 10 years which is also statistically meaningful at the 1 level expanding the value to the national population gives us krw 46 4 billion usd 40 5 million per year the present value of the total public wtp amounts to krw 369 0 billion usd 322 3 million using a social discount rate of 5 5 we can conclude that korean households are ready to shoulder some of the financial burden to expand the use of srf

tourism demand modelling and forecasting a review of recent research abstract this paper reviews the published studies on tourism demand modelling and forecasting since 2000 one of the key findings of this review is that the methods used in analysing and forecasting the demand for tourism have been more diverse than those identified by other review articles in addition to the most popular time series and econometric models a number of new techniques have emerged in the literature however as far as the forecasting accuracy is concerned the study shows that there is no single model that consistently outperforms other models in all situations furthermore this study identifies some new research directions which include improving the forecasting accuracy through forecast combination integrating both qualitative and quantitative forecasting approaches tourism cycles and seasonality analysis events impact assessment and risk forecasting

using a choice experiment to estimate the benefits of a reduction of externalities in urban areas with special focus on electrosmog traffic noise air pollution and electromagnetic pollution i e nonionizing radiation also called electrosmog are typical negative local externalities in urban areas they are side effects of human and economic activities e g road transport telecommunication and they affect individuals well being negatively without compensation in recent years the increased number of mobile phone antennas in residential areas and thus the increased intensity of radiated power has aroused public concern discussions and protests the view of an antenna is annoying an increasing number of inhabitants in this article the stated choice experiment ce is used to estimate the willingness to pay wtp residents in the cities of zurich and lugano place on the reduction of these three environmental loads estimation results reveal that there is a positive and significant wtp for a reduction of air pollution and traffic noise levels to those limit values fixed by the government respondents also show wtp for reducing

an application of a stated preference method to value urban amenities this is a case study analysis of how residents value the amenities of a small us city missoula montana a measure of a community s amenity values is needed in city planning so as to protect those

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

how reliable is duality theory in empirical work the neoclassical theory of production establishes a dual relationship between the profit value function of a competitive firm and its underlying production technology this relationship commonly referred to as duality theory has been widely used in empirical work to estimate production parameters such as elasticities and returns to scale we generate a pseudo dataset by monte carlo simulations which starting from known production parameters yield a dataset with the main characteristics of u s agriculture in terms of unobserved firm heterogeneity decisions under uncertainty unexpected production and price shocks endogenous prices output and input aggregation measurement error in variables and omitted variables production parameters are not precisely recovered when performing econometric estimation based on the duality approach and the elasticity estimates are inaccurate deviations of own and cross price elasticities from initial median values given our parameter calibration range between 6 and 690 with an average of 90 also own price elasticities are as imprecisely recovered as cross price elasticities sensitivity analysis shows that results still hold for different sources and levels of noise and sample size used in estimation

transferring economic values on the basis of an ecological classification of nature abstract in order to save research costs economists often try to transfer the economic value of existing nature areas to other planned areas because the existing area and the plan area are not similar such benefit transfers are generally not considered valid although some economists have paid attention to the ecological characteristics of sites in relation to transfers they do not seem to have decomposed ecosystems into spatially homogeneous units which are similar at different locations since ecologists have developed classifications of homogeneous units it is investigated whether it is possible to determine economic values for the elements of an ecological classification of nature which can be transferred from one location to another this investigation is conducted on the basis empirical data collected by means of a cvm survey at different nature reserves on the dutch coast the results indicate that the use of an ecological classification may offer economists new opportunities for transferring economic benefits within a limited geographical area

duality theory for variable costs in joint production duality methods for incomplete systems of consumer demand equations are adapted to the dual structure of variable cost functions in joint production this allows identification of necessary and sufficient restrictions on technology and cost so that con ditional factor demands can be written as functions of input prices fixed inputs and cost these are observable when variable inputs are chosen and committed to production hence the identified restrictions allow ex ante conditional demands to be studied using observable data this class of production technologies is consistent with all von neu mann morgenstern utility functions when ex post production and or output prices are un certain

heteroscedasticity or production risk a synthetic view two veins of literature namely production risk literature and stochastic frontier analysis are examined both fields are concerned of output variation the former due to exogenous shocks the latter due inefficiency by covering the literature from both the fields this review suggests that the concept of heteroscedasticity can be utilized to build a synthesis between these mainly separate branches of literature however the synthetic approach brings a challenge how to differentiate between different sources of output variation this challenge is identified as the main obstacle to meaningfully combine the two approaches

the implications of model specification for welfare estimation in nested logit models nested logit models are increasingly being used to value environmental amenities the implications of nesting structure choice of estimator fiml or sequential and restrictions on parameters across nested groups on welfare estimates are examined these issues have received little previous attention model selection criteria that can be used to distinguish among the models are extended and applied additionally a simulation procedure is implemented to construct standard errors for the welfare measures

reconsidering heterogeneity and aggregation issues in environmental valuation a multi attribute approach the economic valuation of complex environmental goods composed of multiple attributes is an expanding field of research in ecological and environmental economics however several issues are still subjects of debate this paper focuses on three of them the linearity of the valuation function in the attributes aggregation criteria for obtaining social values and the heterogeneity of individuals utility functions a methodological approach based on multi attribute utility theory which enables us to contrast the impact of these concerns on the valuation of environmental goods is proposed we employ the methodology to value a protected natural area and from the results obtained we can conclude that the non linearity and the heterogeneity of the individual utility function are relevant aspects of environmental valuation that need to be taken into account when valuing environmental goods

choice modeling and tests of benefit transfer choice modelling cm is a stated preference technique that is increasingly being used to generate estimates of non market values in cm applications respondents to a survey are presented with several sets of options which contain common attributes but at varying levels and are asked to select their preferred alternative from each set the information provided by respondents choices is used to estimate marginal rates of substitution and hence estimates of value in this paper the results from three separate cm applications are presented estimates are made of the value of improving the quality of wetlands the first two applications focused on the gwydir wetlands in new south wales australia one survey was conducted in sydney a major urban centre and the second was conducted in moree a rural centre close to the gwydir wetlands the third survey which was also conducted in sydney focused on the macquarie marshes another wetland in new south wales an objective of the study was to test the suitability of using cm derived estimates for benefit transfer both across different populations and across different wetlands cm is potentially suited to benefit transfer because it is possible to allow for differences in environmental improvements between sites as well as differences in socio economic characteristics between respondent populations several tests aimed at determining the validity of transfers using cm across sites and populations are presented these include tests of the equality of models implicit prices and estimates of compensating surplus

perceptions versus objective measures of environmental quality in combined revealed and stated preference models of environmental valuation abstract this study examines perceptions and objective attribute measures in discrete choice models of recreation site choice behavior these forms of attribute measurement are examined in individual and combined revealed preference stated preference models our results suggest that the model based on perceptions slightly outperforms the models based on objective attribute measures however issues such as the definition of the choice set and the measurement of welfare present significant challenges when using perceptions data

willingness to accept compensation for the environmental risks of oil transport on the amazon a choice modeling experiment abstract this paper looks at the question of whether subsistence level indigenous people place a value on the preservation of ecosystems independent of direct impacts of environmental change such as impacts on their production activities the economics literature generally suggests that non use values don t exist among the poor and in the informal sector of the economy we examine this issue through a choice modeling experiment a survey was conducted of rainforest communities who live on the banks of the amazon river rio solimoes in the vicinity of proposed oil and gas pipelines the data were analyzed in the choice modeling framework revealing relatively high amounts of compensation that were necessary in order to accept the potential ecosystem damages associated with oil transport even if the people were completely compensated for direct damages such as loss of access to productive resources these results suggest that environmental quality is important for its own sake a result that is very different from the implicit assumption among many economists

a cost approach to economic analysis under state contingent production uncertainty this article explores the economics of input decision under production uncertainty the article develops a methodology to specify and estimate cost minimizing input decisions under a state contingent technology the analysis is applied to time series data on u s agriculture it finds strong empirical evidence that expected output alone does not provide an appropriate representation of production uncertainty the results provide empirical support for an output cubical technology this indicates that an ex post analysis of stochastic technology appears appropriate the analysis also provides evidence that the cost of facing production risk has declined in u s agriculture over the last few decades copyright 2008 oxford university press

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

the public value of improving a weather forecasting system in korea a choice experiment study abstractthe korean government plans to improve the quality of its weather forecasting system in order to increase its public utility the benefits arising from the implementation of this plan shoul

low energy efficiency in rental properties asymmetric information or low willingness to pay abstract asymmetric information may explain low energy efficiency in rented properties energy ratings while a solution to the information problem will only lead to higher efficiency levels if renter s willingness to pay wtp exceeds landlord s investment costs using a sample of renters from one university this paper estimates this wtp using a discrete choice experiment where respondents choose from a hypothetical set of single bedroom apartments that differ according to a number of attributes including the energy rating results show that there is a strong disutility associated with the least efficient properties and that renters will pay significantly more for efficiency improvements at the lower end of the efficiency scale importantly our wtp estimates are calculated in a setting where respondents were informed about the energy rating system prior to choosing and where the rating was shown for every property therefore in order to maximise the impact of energy rating systems policymakers are encouraged to ensure that both these informational characteristics are in place

random preferences towards bioenergy environmental externalities a case study of woody biomass based electricity in the southern united states article i nfo this paper contrasts alternate methodological approaches of investigating public preferences the random parameter logit rpl where tastes and preferences of respondents are assumed to be heterogeneous and the conditional logit cl approach where tastes and preferences remain fixed for individuals we conducted a choice experiment to assess preferences for woody biomass based electricity in arkansas florida and virginia reduction of co2 emissions and improvement of forest habitat by decreasing risk of wildfires and pest outbreaks were presented to respondents as attributes of using green electricity the results indicate that heterogeneous preferences might be a better fit for assessing preferences for green electricity all levels of both attributes were positive contributors to welfare but they were no statistically significant respondents expressed a positive mean marginal willingness to pay wtp for each attribute level the total wtp for green electricity per kilowatt hour was 0 049 kwh or 40 5 per capita year 1 when converted into future total annual expenditures

economic evaluation of environmental externalities in china s coal fired power generation abstract serious environmental externalities exist in china s power industry environmental economics theory suggests that the evaluation of environmental externality is the basis of designing an efficient regulation the purposes of this study are 1 to identify chinese respondents preferences for green development of electric power industry and the socio economic characteristics behind them 2 to investigate the different attitudes of the respondents towards pollution and co2 reduction 3 to quantitatively evaluate the environmental cost of china s coal fired power generation based on the method of choice experiments ce and the 411 questionnaires with 2466 data points we found that chinese respondents prefer pm2 5 so2 and nox reduction to co2 reduction and that the environment cost of coal fired power plants in china is 0 30 yuan per kwh in addition we found that the socio economic characteristics of income education gender and environmental awareness have significant impacts on respondents choices these findings indicate that the environmental cost of coal fired power generation is a significant factor that requires great consideration in the formulation of electric power development policies in addition importance should also be attached to the implementation of green power price policy and enhancement of environmental protection awareness

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

success in maximizing profits and reasons for profit deviation on dairy farms the weak axiom of profit maximization wapm was used to test how successful each of 70 individual new york state dairy farms was in maximizing profits using nine years of data the netput vectors were corrected for technological change using nonparametric indices that do not require the assumption of profit maximization nor any functional form for the underlying technology these technology indices are consistent with the nonparametric assumptions used in the wapm tests the average negative wapm deviation over the 70 farms was 0 20 indicating that on average these farms could have selected available netput vectors that would have increased profits by 20 of total receipts a tobit regression showed that the available characteristics on these farms explained very little of the variability in their abilities to select the best netput vectors yet increased age and additional education increased the ability to select the best netput vector

domestic tourism expenditures the non linear effects of length of stay and travel party size the independent variables length of stay and travel party size are recurrent determinants of expenditures in micro level tourism studies in most of this research it has been tacitly assumed that these variables have linear effects on tourism spending this study situated in a norwegian setting questions this approach by explicitly scrutinizing the possible non linearities in the relationships between tourism expenditures on the one hand and length of stay and travel party size on the other the empirical results suggest a positive but diminishing relationship between length of stay and tourism expenditures and a convex i e u relationship between travel party size and tourism expenditures the study also considers how a number of other key independent variables affect tourism expenditures finally some managerial and scholarly implications are discussed

economics of tourist s consumption behaviour some evidence from australia abstract this study analyses the consumption behaviour of international tourists from australia s four major source markets new zealand uk usa and japan a preliminary analysis of their consumption expenditures reveals intriguing similarities as well as diversities in consumption patterns these are sought to understand in terms of the utility maximising framework in which observed differences in prices and incomes play a key role based on the neoclassical economic theory of consumer behaviour models incorporating five major components of tourist consumption accommodation food transport shopping and entertainment are estimated overall the level of tourist consumption is found to be highly sensitive to incomes but less sensitive to prices the low price sensitivity suggests tourists perceive the commodities as necessities and may also reflect their captivity at the destination masking the underlying true price sensitivities an important dimension underlying these findings is the possible lack of information about the destination leading to sub optimal consumption choices

risk aversion and yield uncertainty in duality models of production a mean variance approach a duality model of production is developed that endogenizes stochastic output decisions under risk aversion the model incorporates both yield and price uncertainty and nonlinear mean variance risk preferences this permits modeling of the firm s expected output supply and input demand decisions under risk and also in principle the firm s output variance decisions the duality model is tractable for empirical research

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

an analysis of households appraisal of their budget constraints for potential participation in tourism abstract this paper examines the importance of households budget constraints as a barrier to participation in tourism for this purpose a sample of spanish households drawn from the european community household panel was analysed this survey gathers data on the economic and socio demographic situation of all adult household members more specifically it includes a question on each household s capacity to afford a week s yearly holiday the aim of this question is to assess whether households have sufficient financial resources to participate in tourism the results of the analysis demonstrate that budget constraints on tourist travel are binding for a significant percentage of spanish households the results also show that this type of constraint is not only conditioned by the level of income but by a more complex appraisal that also includes other financial variables such as households saving capacity or the unemployment status of its members furthermore non financial variables such as the level of education age and barriers associated with poor health status all help to determine the degree of importance with which households perceive their budget constraints

external benefits of waste to energy in korea a choice experiment study abstract the korean government has planned to expand a variety of waste to energy wte facilities in order to reduce waste disposal decrease the crude oil imports and mitigate greenhouse gases ghgs emissions one response to this concern is to measure the external benefits of wte to this end this study attempts to apply a choice experiment ce to four attributes or types of benefits such as the improvement of energy security reduction of ghg emissions job creation and extension of landfill life expectancy a survey of 500 households was undertaken in seoul korea the trade offs between price and the four attributes for selecting a preferred alternative are considered in the ce survey and a marginal willingness to pay mwtp estimate for each attribute is derived a nested logit nl model is employed in this study rather than a multi nomial logit mnl model since two specification tests indicate that the nl model outperforms the mnl model the estimation results for the nl model show that the mwtps for a 1 increase in energy security a 1 reduction in ghg emissions the creation of 10 000 new jobs and the doubling of landfill life expectancy as a result of expanding wte facilities is estimated to be krw 437 usd 4 5 1763 1 5 598 0 5 and 89 0 1 per household per month respectively the findings can provide policy makers with useful information for evaluating and planning wte policies and projects

using choice experiments to investigate the policy relevance of heterogeneity in farmer agri environmental contract preferences agri environmental contracts are used to provide incentives for nature management on private land in e g the european union the aim of this article is to investigate preference heterogeneity for agri environmental contracts among farmers in order to discuss potential policy improvements utilising heterogeneity we used a choice experiment to elicit farmers stated preferences for afforestation contracts four attributes are investigated purpose of afforestation option of cancelling the contract monitoring and compensation level all attributes present a potential conflict between farmers and authorities interests which emphasises the importance of knowing how to handle these interests a random parameter logit model shows that having the option to cancel the contract decreases farmers required compensation level and monitoring increases it furthermore farmers are willing to accept a lower compensation when the aim is to protect biodiversity and ground water relative to recreation latent class models with class probability variables reveal discrete heterogeneity and support a division into four groups with divergent preferences for example a group of farmers who already have forest areas does not find the option of cancelling the contract important whereas another group relying on the farm for income requires higher compensation the findings indicate potential for efficiency gains from targeting the contracts

willingness to pay for renewable energy investment in korea a choice experiment study abstract renewable energy sources are considered as alternatives for coping with the high price of oil and global warming the korean government has set a target that 11 of the total primary energy supply should be obtained through renewable energy sources until 2030 in order to develop proper policies for renewable energy investment it is necessary to analyze the benefits of renewable energy investment based on households willingness to pay this study attempts to apply a choice experiment ce for assessing renewable energy investment in korea moreover we employ a multinomial probit mnp model to relax the assumption that all respondents have the same preferences for the attributes being valued which is usually required in empirical ce studies an mnp model allows the most flexible pattern of error correlation structure the results reveal that the korean public puts a value on the protection of wildlife reduction of pollution and increased employment opportunities on the other hand respondents do not derive significant values from the improvement of landscapes this study is expected to provide policy makers with useful information for evaluating and planning policies related to renewable energy investment

using conjoint analysis to derive estimates of compensating variation abstract we use several approaches to derive estimates of hicksian compensating variation from conjoint ratings data the different estimation approaches produced mixed results with respect to consistency with utility theory statistical significance of key variables magnitude of welfare estimates and confidence bounds on welfare estimates these findings suggest conjoint analyses are not a panacea for the problems being debated regarding contingent valuation and travel cost methodologies and conjoint questions appear to share many of the advantages and disadvantages associated with dichotomous choice contingent valuation questions

cost functions under production uncertainty we characterize the cost functions which would be consistent with expected utility maximization when production is uncertain it is not generally possible assuming risk aversion to use only expected output as the constraint in a cost minimization problem in some leading cases cost functions consistent with expected utility maximization are particularly useful because they are devoid of risk preferences

the examination of pecan price differences using spatial correlation estimation a spatial analysis is used to model factors that explain the price received by pecan growers besides the statistical aspect of the study focussing on spatial autoregressive residuals the economic analysis of the paper identifies linkages between the price for in shell pecans received by growers and the characteristics of the orchard production costs and resources and the orchard location

the state contingent properties of stochastic production functions this paper develops the state contingent properties of the most frequently used representations of stochastic production in the agricultural economics literature particular attention is paid to the cases of multiplicative and additive uncertainty and to the convolution of multiplicative and additive uncertainty embodied in the just pope stochastic production function state contingent technologies and their associated cost functions are reviewed and that theory is applied to the stochastic production function a generalisation of the just pope technology that has desirable state contingent characteristics is proposed cost functions based upon state contingent technologies are compared with cost functions based on a parametrised distribution representation of production uncertainty

the measurement of productive efficiency a reconsideration the purpose of this paper is to generalize the farrell indexes of productive efficiency to nonhomothetic production technologies and at the same time maintain the cost interpretation of the farrell measures since the generalized indexes rely heavily on recent developments in the estimation of frontier cost and production functions several frontier models are reviewed in addition to generalized indexes of technical allocative and overall productive efficiency a variety of single factor efficiency measures are discussed the applicability of the proposed efficiency measures is illustrated with a numerical example of electric power generation

is farming a constant cost industry measurement of cost size relationships for farming has long been an important area of research in agricultural economics much of this research has had a farm management and production economics orientation and firm industry interdependencies have often been ignored research results stemming from such an orientation should be interpreted with care when used for policy purposes pecuniary externalities may be of greater importance than indicated by research to this time a suggestion is made for treating induced technical change as comparable to a pecuniary externality questions are raised on both theoretical and empirical grounds whether farming in the united states should be considered a constant cost industry for policy purposes

valuing financial health and environmental benefits of bt cotton in pakistan data from a farm survey and choice experiment are used to value the benefits of bt cotton in pakistan unlike previous research on the economic impacts of bt which mostly concentrated on financial benefits in terms of gross margins we also quantify and monetize positive externalities associated with technology adoption due to lower chemical pesticide use on bt cotton plots there are significant health advantages in terms of reduced incidence of acute pesticide poisoning and environmental advantages in terms of higher biodiversity and lower soil and groundwater contamination these positive externalities are valued at us 79 per acre of which half is attributable to health and the other half to environmental improvements adding average gross margin gains of us 204 results in an aggregate benefit of us 283 per acre of bt or us 1 7 billion for the total bt cotton area in pakistan

systematic effects of capital service price definition on perceptions of input substitution earlier attempts at reconciling disparate substitution elasticity estimates examined differences in separability hypotheses data bases and estimation techniques as well as methods employed to construct capital service prices although these studies showed that differences in elasticity estimates between two or three studies may be attributable to the aforementioned features of the econometric models they have been unable to demonstrate this link statistically and establish the existence of systematic relationships between features of the econometric models and the perception of production technologies generated by those models using sectoral data covering the entire production side of the u s economy we estimate 34 production models for alternative definitions of the capital service price we employ substitution elasticities calculated from these models as dependent variables in the statistical search for systematic relationships between features of the econometric models and perceptions of the sec

valuing climate protection through willingness to pay for biomass ethanol abstract this study uses a multi part split sample contingent valuation method cvm and fair share fs survey to better understand the public s valuation of mitigating global climate change through its willingness to pay for biomass or cellulosic ethanol in addition to a basic cvm question a related scenario was developed that asked half of the survey respondents to state their fair share cost to lessen a potential food shortage in the next decade also through the expanded use of cellulosic ethanol three alternative biomass feedstocks were assessed farming residues forestry residues and paper mill wastes and municipal solid wastes overall a slightly larger proportion of respondents were wtp extra for cellulosic ethanol in the basic cvm scenario than in the fs scenario though no significant differences were found in the wtp for the different feedstocks bid curve lognormal regression results for the two models were similar supporting the idea that asking a fs rather than a conventional wtp question may be justifiable in some circumstances such as in cases of a national emergency

input demands and inefficiency in u s agriculture markov chain monte carlo mcmc methods are used to estimate a seemingly unrelated regression sur system of input demand functions for u s agriculture our demand functions have flexible forms and allow for nonrandom technical inefficiency concavity constraints are imposed at individual data points and the distributions of measures of relative technical efficiency are constrained to the unit interval results are evaluated in terms of characteristics of the posterior distributions of parameters measures of relative technical efficiency and other nonlinear functions of the parameters

altruism spillovers are behaviors in context free experiments predictive of altruism toward a naturally occurring public good abstract this paper addresses the external validity of experiments investigating the characteristics of altruism in the voluntary provision of public goods we conduct two related experiments that allow us to examine whether individuals who act more altruistically in the context free environment are also more likely to act altruistically toward a naturally occurring public good we find that laboratory behavior can be predictive of contributions toward naturally occurring goods but not in a uniform way in fact parametric measures of altruism do a poor job of predicting which subjects are most likely to contribute to a naturally occurring public good

a double hurdle analysis of travel expenditure baby boomer seniors versus older seniors abstract this study examined the socio demographic and economic determinants of leisure travel expenditure and compared these determinants in baby boomer senior households and older senior households in the united states unlike previous studies this study performed heckman s double hurdle analysis using the consumer expenditure survey ces to present a two step process for making travel consumption decisions the results revealed that more baby boomer senior households participated in leisure travels than older senior households however among those households that chose to travel the mean expenditure of the older senior group was higher than for baby boomers this study also showed similarities and differences in the determinants of travel consumption decisions between baby boomer seniors and older seniors this two step approach provided in depth information on the processes involved in deciding to travel and how much to spend on travel this additional information will be valuable in understanding senior consumers in the tourism industry

integrated assessment of sustainability trade offs and pathways for global bioenergy production framing a novel hybrid approach abstract current controversies and debates on bioenergy production in the areas of greenhouse gases emission reduction food and energy security social exclusion and welfare erosion and ecosystem deterioration attest to the challenges which the bioenergy sector has to overcome to achieve its global production potentials because it is yet an evolving sector the sustainability of bioenergy production in different regions is very elusive experiences show that bioenergy policies in one region can have impacts not only on its own but also on other regions social economic and ecological sustainability it is thus important to assess development pathways for bioenergy to exploit the potential benefits and forestall any unnecessary costs this paper frames a novel hybrid approach for assessing bioenergy potentials for regions with diverging economic social and ecological systems the approach is based on a conceptual framework that takes into account trade offs decisions on sustainability goals and production options in the assessment of bioenergy pathways it combines different empirical techniques for the systematic investigation of trade offs and pathways including fuzzy logic conjoint logit and path analyses to show the relevance and utility of these techniques for the integrated assessment of trade offs and pathways in bioenergy development we illustrated their application using results and data from previous related studies

dynamic hypothetical bias in discrete choice experiments evidence from measuring the impact of corporate social responsibility on consumers demand abstract this paper is aimed at studying the dynamics of consumers preferences for corporate social responsibility the data come from both a discrete choice experiment dce and a field experiment conducted in a real market setting the results show that in a static setting first month predictions of a standard dce study and real market shares are statistically similar for the various profiles of corporate social responsibility however as time evolves real market shares present some dynamic patterns that are not mirrored by the standard dce predictions the overall conclusion is that differences between real market behavior and dce data can be attributed to the lack of learning experience or adaptation in dce surveys rather than to the hypothetical nature of the experiments

estimation of australian wool and lamb production technologies under uncertainty an error components approach a model of producer behavior which explicitly accounts for both output price and production uncertainty is formulated and estimated if the production technology is multiplicatively separable in its deterministic and stochastic components then the expected utility maximization problem implies cost minimization for planned or expected output consequently our empirical model of three lamb and wool producing sectors in australia involves the estimation of a system of input cost share and cost equations whose disturbances have an error components structure the empirical results are evaluated in terms of input demand elasticities and estimates of the stochastic components of production are presented

the impact of choice inconsistencies in stated choice studies a new test procedure revealing mutuallyinconsistent choices has been developed andapplied to stated choice data our analysisshows that inconsistent choices commonly occurin several stated choice tasks an applicationof the test to the norwegian value of timestudy data shows that failing to excludeinconsistent choices resulted in asubstantially higher value of time theinconsistent choices were made by less educatedparticipants as the tasks were undertaken inthe easy context of choosing travelalternatives with three attributes practitioners of more complex and cognitivedemanding designs should be particularilyconcerned with these results

tests for the role of risk aversion on input use for risk averting agents risks alter production decisions while the existence of institutions to insure against adverse states of nature will likely restore decisions toward levels under risk neutrality in this article conditions are identified on a stochastic technology to test h that risk averters choose smaller input levels than risk neutral agents and h that an increase in risk aversion reduces input use a robust statistical method to test for dominance is adapted to stochastic production relations it is found that h is likely true for nitrogen application on iowa corn weaker evidence is found in favor of h

generating electricity with forest biomass consistency and payment timeframe effects in choice experiments abstract this paper presents a choice experiment analyzing the consumers preferences towards a policy for replacing conventional electricity with electricity generated from forest biomass the results show that consumers specially prefer the effects related to the lower risk of forest fires and to the decrease in pressure on non renewable resources the article also presents a methodological test in relation to the payment timeframe and its effect on marginal willingness to pay and consistency of responses using choice experiments the most frequent and realistic payments are associated with lower presence of inconsistent responses finally we cannot reject the null hypothesis of no effects of payment timeframe on marginal willingness to pay

incentive compatibility tests of choice experiment value elicitation questions abstract this paper uses laboratory experiments with induced values to address fundamental issues related to the incentive compatibility of choice experiment value elicitation questions in particular we compare two versus three option choice sets and the effect of using alternative provision rules including one where the outcome is influenced by both participant and regulator votes we find the overall proportion of choices that are inconsistent with induced preferences is rather low however there are more deviations from induced preferences for two option choice sets and for alternatives to a simple plurality vote implementation rule a multinomial probit analysis of choices in tandem with a mixed logit welfare analysis suggests there is a statistically significant but modest degree of bias towards selecting the status quo option

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