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Do Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) bureaucrats represent the general public or are they more in line with an interest group? We study preferences for environmental policy using a choice experiment (CE) on three populations; the general public, Swedish EPA bureaucrats, and recreational anglers. We also test for existence of multiple preference orderings: Half of the respondents were asked to choose the alternatives that best corresponded with their opinion, and the other half was asked to take the role of a policy-maker and make recommendations for environmental policy. The SEPA bureaucrats have the highest marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) to improve environmental quality. Differences in MWTP are robust and not due to differences in socio-economic characteristics across the populations. We only found weak evidence of multiple preference orderings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How much are consumers willing to pay to signal their environmental consciousness? We identify the signaling value of an environmental public good by focusing on hybrid cars and exploiting the physical uniqueness of the Toyota Prius relative to hybrids that look identical to their non-hybrid counterparts. We deploy a quasi-experimental hedonic model to estimate this willingness to pay. We find that, controlling for observable and unobservable factors, the Prius commands an environmental signaling value of $587 or 4.5% of its value. Our research provides lessons for economists and policymakers, and contributes to the literature on identifying signaling values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Residential buildings strongly contribute to global CO2 emissions due to the high energy demand for electricity and heating, particularly in industrialised countries. Within the EU, decentralised heat generation is of particular relevance for future climate policy, as its emissions are not covered by the EU ETS. We conducted a choice experiment concerning energy retrofits for existing houses in Germany. In the experiment, the approximately 400 sampled house owners could either choose a modern heating system or an improved thermal insulation for their home. We used standard and mixed logit specifications to analyse the choice data. We found environmental benefits to have a significant impact on choices of heating systems. However, they played no role in terms of insulation choices. Based on the estimated mixed logit model, we further obtained willingness-to-pay (WTP) measures for CO2 savings. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

: Internet is an increasingly popular data collection mode for stated preference research in environmental economics. However, little is known about how this survey mode may influence data quality and welfare estimates. As part of a national contingent valuation (CV) survey estimating willingness to pay (WTP) for biodiversity protection plans, we assign two groups of respondents either to an Internet or face-to-face (in-home) interview mode. Our design aims to better isolate measurement effects from sample composition effects by drawing both samples from the same sample frame. We find little evidence of social desirability bias in the interview setting or satisficing (shortcutting the response process) in the Internet survey. The share of “don''t knows”, zeros and protest responses to the WTP question with a payment card is very similar between modes and equality of mean WTP cannot be rejected. Results are fairly encouraging for the use of Internet in CV as stated preferences do not seem to be significantly different or biased compared to face-to-face interviews. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]