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Numerous studies showed that people respond more generously to individual identified victims than to equivalent statistical victims, which is referred to as the “identifiable victim effect” (IVE). While the previous literature examined the IVE for human and animal victims, we focus on vegetal entities that can be threatened. Thanks to a between design allowing to increase the degree of plants' identifiability, we test whether IVE is likely to enhance farmers' participation in a conservation program, using mail survey data among a sample of French farmers located in the Vaucluse area. Unlike humans and animals, we found that IVE does not matter regarding plants, as farmer willingness to participate in the compensation measures was found to decrease as the (plant) victim(s) become more identifiable. Moreover, this figure is even stronger with respect to organic farmers compared to their conventional counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Understanding what influences the value of nature is crucial for informing environmental policy. From a sustainability perspective, economic valuation should not only seek to determine a society's willingness to pay for environmental goods to devise an efficient allocation of scarce resources, but should also account for distributional effects to ensure justice. Yet, how economic inequality affects the value of non-market environmental goods remains understudied. Combining recently developed theoretical results with empirical evidence, this Commentary shows that more equal societies have a higher valuation for environmental public goods and that non-market benefits of environmental policy accrue over-proportionally to poorer households. On this ground, we discuss implications for environmental valuation, management and policy-making and identify a number of fruitful areas for future research. We conclude that environmental valuation should explicitly account for economic inequality, and that encompassing assessments of the distributional effects of environmental policies must consider the distribution of non-market environmental benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coordination of conservation policies and conservation actions between countries is expected to reduce overall costs and increase effectiveness. It rests on the assumption that, as a global public good, the provision of biodiversity conservation is independent of geographical and political jurisdictions. However, from a welfare economic perspective this assumption requires testing and justification. Indeed, distance may matter, as may the country of provision. This study applies a choice experiment to estimate individuals' marginal willingness to pay for comparable biodiversity conservation measures and outcomes across country borders, and with different distances from their place of residence to conservation locations in Denmark and in Southern Sweden. The case is designed to distinguish the effect of distance from the effect of country of residence versus country of provision. We find a clear and distinguishable effect of both location and country of provision. We find distance-related attributes to reflect bridge tolls and per-kilometre transport costs, and Swedes and Danes to prefer provision in their own country, over provision in the neighbouring country. The results of this study may be useful in discussing cooperation on regional and even global biodiversity conservation efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forest ecosystems play a critical role in protecting water resources; yet the neoclassical stated preference assumption is that willingness-to-pay (WTP) for forest conservation is solely a function of the ecosystem services provided by these lands. Thus, little attention has been paid to the importance of policy processes as potentially influential drivers of WTP. Using a statewide web-based survey in Florida US and a relatively novel valuation approach (i.e., Best-Worst Choice), we examine public preferences for clean water benefits (e.g., recreation, drinking water resources) as well as common conservation policy processes, such as land acquisition and financial assistance for landowners. We found forest/water protection programs provide an annual average of $154–230 million in clean water benefits, and a significant portion of that value was associated with the policy process. Attitudes and beliefs about whom forests should be managed for, and who should manage forests, were also found to influence WTP behaviors. We conclude that including policy process information in the valuation survey allows respondents to better determine changes in utility among realistic policy alternatives. Our findings have important implications for WTP estimation techniques and public participation in environmental policy design. [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]

This paper shows how anticipated impacts of environmental projects and policies can be valued in terms of money as a common denominator, and costs and benefits assigned in an acceptable distribution. To that effect, a new mechanism design of situational contracting is introduced that generates information on willingness and ability to pay or to cooperate, in a realization-focused capability approach to fairness. The situational contract reveals preferences and merit considerations of the relevant stakeholders and deals with market failure in a structured combination of political guidance, expert opinions and co-production. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Although monitoring is crucial for environmental science and policy, few studies have assessed its value for the public. To value the public preferences for environmental monitoring related to hydropower, we designed a discrete choice experiment, used the Q-methodology to select attributes and assessed preferences for monitoring with a split-sample design. While both samples faced decisions about hydropower management, one sample was informed that an environmental measure's efficacy was unknown due to a lack of monitoring. We found that uncertainty significantly reduced utility levels and willingness to pay, which indicates that the public positively values monitoring. By accounting for heterogeneous preferences using both the mixed logit and latent class approach, our results were confirmed irrespective of the socio-demographic profile. In our application to environmental hydropower, we find strong support for fish protection and opposition to foreign ownership. In light of the growing number of environmental policies (e.g., Water Framework Directive) that mandate monitoring, these findings highlight the need to account for its positive externalities. Thus, we recommend that decision makers include the public value of monitoring in environmental cost-benefit analyses. • Monitoring can be a costly component of environmental projects. • The public's value of information from environmental monitoring is unknown. • A split-sample choice experiment shows that the public positively values monitoring. • Decision-makers should ensure that monitoring is more consistent and transparent. • Cost benefit analyses should include benefits of monitoring (i.e. public value). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The situation regarding the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services is now critical. Consequently, environmental targets have been determined and environmental legislations at every level tend to be more demanding. The result at local scale is that land planners have to take more rigorous account of the environmental damage stemming from their infrastructure development plans. Several economic valuation methods can be used to perform a monetary valuation of losses of natural areas. However, existing valuation methods have reached their limits when dealing with land planning in complex natural areas (i.e. unfamiliar goods). We propose to use a method based on the American Habitat Evaluation Procedure (HEP) to assess the environmental cost of infrastructure development plans. The “adapted” HEP is an equivalence-based valuation method that bases the valuation of environmental cost on the environmental damage itself rather than willingness to pay. We find that compared to more conventional methods, the “adapted” HEP gives a higher value to lost environmental assets, which is rather promising. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

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]

The prerequisite for a sustainable and equitable use of common resources (the so-called Commons) must be the proper evaluation of their role within the complex network of relationships that ensure ecosystems functioning, resilience, and evolutionary dynamics. It is crucial to ascertain to what extent the common wealth is used for the common benefit. Money-based schemes for valuing the Commons, such as the so-called “willingness-to-pay”, provide a user-side evaluation perspective based on the idea that value only stems from utilization by humans. As a complement to such a point of view, we present and discuss in this paper a donor-side evaluation method (Emergy Synthesis) based on the idea that a proper measure of value can be achieved by also accounting for the work done by the biosphere in generating services and resources. It should not be disregarded that such resources and services also provide support to other species in the web of life. Emergy, a scientific measure of such environmental support, is suggested as a tool capable to assess quantity and quality of shared resources, thus providing a basis for their environmentally sound management. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Policies in the context of global change involve a high degree of uncertainty, as knowledge about future changes and the effectiveness of potential measures is insufficient. Our study set out to investigate how members of the public evaluate policy options that aim at adaptation to climate change, and more specifically, to reduce the risk from flooding and low flows. We explored how hierarchically structured networks of values and beliefs shape public preferences and attitudes towards two different policies, insurance and a sustainable flood management scheme. In particular, we assessed the role of governance-related values such as efficiency, solidarity and sustainability that allow individuals to evaluate a policy option even if its outcomes are highly uncertain. To this end, we conducted a survey among members of the Scottish public (n=1033). Findings from spike models and structural equation modelling suggested that there was general support for both policy measures, with a preference for the sustainable flood management approach. In particular, we found perceived severity of change, trust in government, governance-related values and fundamental values to inform attitudes and willingness to pay (WTP) for policy measures. More specific constructs, such as attitudes, were embedded in contexts of more abstract and situation-transcendent values. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Most ecosystem services (ES) are neither priced nor marketed. Resource managers may fail to take into account degradation of unpriced services in their resource management decisions. Being able to estimate values for ES is fundamental to designing policies to induce resource users to provide (or improve) ES at levels that are acceptable to society. Conducting ecosystem valuation via non-market methods is costly and time consuming. Benefit transfer (BT) using choice experiment (CE) is a potentially cost-effective method for valuing ES by transferring information from existing valuation studies (and study sites) to a target area of interest (policy sites). The prime objective of this paper is to examine the validity of BT and hence whether it is feasible to conduct the transfer process and assist policy making. The paper focuses on the environmental impact of winegrowing practices in two New Zealand winegrowing regions. The two sites, Hawke''s Bay and Marlborough, have similar environmental issues and attributes but are geographically separated. The study estimates Willingness to Pay (WTP) and Compensating Surplus (CS) for ES applying CE and, subsequently, given the preferences of respondents across sites and populations, tests the transferability of unadjusted value transfer (WTP) and benefits function (CS) assessing four different types of BT. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A survey was designed to elicit donations for delaying inevitable aquatic invasions of inland water bodies within a respondent's region. Surveys were distributed throughout the United States. Assuming all aquatic species groups invade simultaneously, our results suggest that the average person was willing to make a one-time payment of $48 to delay low to high impacts one year (aggregates to nearly $4billion for all U.S. households). By comparison, the federal government currently (2006) invests $394million annually for all invasive species (aquatic and terrestrial) prevention and early detection/rapid response. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The contingent valuation method is a widely used, yet controversial approach for valuating unpriced public goods in environmental and ecological economics. There is ongoing debate about the validity of the willingness-to-pay statements this method elicits particularly then when ethically or morally 'charged' public goods are assessed. It has been assumed that a considerable portion of the public holds deontological stances toward and applies analytical moral reasoning to such goods, which distort willingness-to-pay statements and subsequent cost-benefit analyses based on stated economic values. Results from studies in developmental and moral psychology, however, indicate that the majority of people base moral choice, and subsequently trade-offs, on social norms, affective reactions, and moral intuition rather than on analytical moral reasoning. This article presents a small focus-group study of people in the UK (n =18), exploring whether their responses supports the idea that a considerable percentage of the public holds deontological stances towards the environment that influence their willingness to pay for environmental goods. The article contributes to the discourse on the validity of willingness-to-pay statements. From a broader perspective, it scrutinizes the importance of analytical moral reasoning and suggests that affective judgments and intuition are relevant to environmental valuation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Survey based valuation techniques like the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) rely particularly on the premise of respondents'' rationality when answering willingness to pay (WTP) questions. Results of CVM surveys have repeatedly put this fundamental assumption into question. This study adopts a more realistic view of rationality accounting for respondents'' limited capacities to process information. Based on cognitive psychology a technique to detect and analyze the bounds of rationality inherent in WTP statements is developed. Using an empirical example, the influence of bounded rationality on the validity of CVM results is analyzed. It is shown that individual differences in information processing play a major role for the validity of CVM responses. The results allow new insights into response behavior in dichotomous-choice versus payment card elicitation formats. From the results of this study recommendations for future survey designs taking into account respondents'' different information processing modes are developed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper examines empirically the relative influence of the degree of endangerment of wildlife species and their stated likeability on individuals'' allocation of funds for their conservation. To do this, it utilises data obtained from the IUCN Red List, and likeability and fund allocation data obtained from two serial surveys of a sample of the Australian public who were requested to assess 24 Australian wildlife species from three animal classes: mammals, birds and reptiles. Between the first and second survey, respondents were provided with extra information about the focal species. This information resulted in the dominance of endangerment as the major influence on the allocation of funding of respondents for the conservation of the focal wildlife species. Our results throw doubts on the proposition in the literature that the likeability of species is the dominant influence on willingness to pay for conservation of wildlife species. Furthermore, because the public''s allocation of fund for conserving wildlife species seems to be more sensitive to information about the conservation status of species than to factors influencing their likeability, greater attention to providing accurate information about the former than the latter seems justified. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Forests play a significant role for human''s well being. Economists'' attention is mostly drawn on the market value of (certain) forest products. The trend, however, is changing as non-market values of forests are increasingly appreciated and measured. Recently, the ecosystem value of natural resources has been studied by natural resource economists and its role on human welfare is ensured. These studies had made a considerable progress in valuation of environmental and ecological services, which was offered by ecosystems. There are different methods assessing environmental economy based on revealed and stated preference for measure of environmental values. The subjects of this research are the determination of existence value of north forests of Iran (NFI), adjacent to Caspian Sea, and measure of individual''s willingness to pay (WTP) based on contingent valuation (CV) and dichotomous choice (DC). The logit model was used for measuring individuals WTP. Estimation parameters of the model are based on the method of maximum likelihood (ML). Results showed that 65.8% individuals are willing to pay for the existence of NFI, while about 20% of these individuals have not yet visited, and 41% of them only visited the NFI once or twice. The mean of WTP for existence value of these forests is US$2.51 household/month or annual value of US$30.12 for a household. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The 1.5 million residents of the city of Manaus form the epicenter for economic activity and development in the Amazon Basin. The current water treatment facilities were built when there were a mere 100,000 people living here. The fifteen-fold increase in population has made access to water a major public health concern. Families that can afford to buy bottled water do and those that can not are susceptible to water-borne disease and illness at an ever-increasing rate. In order to determine how much citizens are willing to pay for universal access to water service in the home, the University of Amazonas, Center for Environmental Sciences has conducted a survey of over 1600 residents, collecting information on current water needs, health concerns, household socioeconomic characteristics, and, from a contingent valuation (CV) experiment, how much they would pay for access to improve water service in the home. This paper makes use of the 1479 observations from four elicitation formats; (1) open-ended, (2) open-ended with a “pre-qualifying” statement, (3) descending bid dichotomous choice, and (4) ascending bid dichotomous choice. Results suggest that residents are willing to pay (WTP) more than R$12 (US$6.12) per month. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In an original extension of contingent valuation methodology (CVM), support for a proposed environmental regulation is examined under three alternative polluter-pay specifications. Using a statewide random telephone sample of Washington State''s electorate, one scenario asks respondents for their support absent any CV price and absent any information regarding what producers will pay. A second scenario asks willingness to pay (WTP) providing only a CV price but no polluter-pay information. A third scenario asks respondents for their support giving both a CV price and a percentage of total costs producers will pay. Extending the CV methodology, this percentage varies randomly between respondents. Absent any price or firm cost sharing information, some respondents assume producers are absorbing the costs. Providing a CV price reverses this assumption, and reduces support even after controlling for price. When the CV price is given along with the percentage, WTP increases the larger the percentage. Within each scenario support also varies according to whether the type of industry being regulated is small and competitive, or monopolistic. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Participants in contingent valuation studies may be uncertain about a number of aspects of the policy and survey context. The uncertainty management model of fairness judgments states that individuals will evaluate a policy in terms of its fairness when they do not know whether they can trust the relevant managing authority or experience uncertainty due to insufficient knowledge of the general issues surrounding the environmental policy. Similarly, some researchers have suggested that, not knowing how to answer WTP questions, participants convey their general attitudes toward the public good rather than report well-defined economic preferences. These contentions were investigated in a sample of 840 residents in four urban catchments across Australia who were interviewed about their WTP for stormwater pollution abatement. Four sources of uncertainty were measured: amount of prior issue-related thought, trustworthiness of the water authority, insufficient scenario information, and WTP response uncertainty. A logistic regression model was estimated in each subsample to test the main effects of the uncertainty sources on WTP as well as their interaction with fairness and proenvironmental attitudes. Results indicated support for the uncertainty management model in only one of the four samples. Similarly, proenvironmental attitudes interacted rarely with uncertainty to a significant level, and in ways that were more complex than hypothesised. It was concluded that uncertain individuals were generally not more likely than other participants to draw on either fairness evaluations or proenvironmental attitudes when making decisions about paying for stormwater pollution abatement. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Contingent Valuation panel recommended that a response category be included along with the vote in favor and vote against options associated with a referendum contingent valuation question that allows individuals to express lack of a well defined opinion. However, the recommendation did not include guidance on how to analyze such responses. In this article, we describe the results of a carefully designed split sample experiment that allowed for comparison of a standard dichotomous-choice referendum treatment to a treatment that included the option of responding unsure to the contingent valuation question in addition to the standard vote in favor and vote against response categories. We are able to examine several options for dealing with the unsure responses and conclude that the unsure responses should be included in the value estimation as the respondents who choose this response category are distinct from respondents who choose the vote in favor and vote against response categories. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Faced with a growing sense of urgency to combat climate change, environmental policy is increasingly turning to alternative policy instruments. One method for boosting green behaviour among individuals rooted in applied behavioural economics is loss framing - transforming existing messages so that they emphasise the potential negative consequences of an action or inaction on the environment. This paper provides a systematic review of the existing body of evidence on framing effects in pro-environmental decisions. Based on an analysis of 61 studies captured in 47 distinct papers we find that real behaviour has been largely neglected as an outcome variable, with preference in the literature given to the measurement of self-reporting constructs such as attitudes, willingness to pay and behavioural intentions. In support of the loss aversion hypothesis, loss framing was found to be more or equally effective in all studies examining behaviour and intentions, though gain framing was more successful where the choices taken required lower commitment, namely attitudes. We provide an analysis of other loss framing success factors and draw policy- and research implications. • Loss framing as a green nudge gaining increased traction in policy and research. • Empirical studies on gain- and loss framed environmental messages are reviewed. • Most studies focus on stated preferences at the expense of behaviour. • Loss framing found to be more effective in improving green intentions and behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trade-offs involving land use change, cultural values, water resources and jobs are critically important to understand the opportunity cost of resource extraction. Stated preference techniques can be particularly useful in eliciting the non-market values expressed as trade-offs. This study assesses preferences over the management of groundwater released from deep mining operations in Western Australia. A discrete choice experiment is used to investigate the trade-offs Australians are prepared to make for remote economic, ecological and cultural goods against costs. The results suggest that there is heterogeneity of preferences as indicated by a three-class structure of a latent class model. One class supports the use of released groundwater across a range of economic, ecological and cultural uses modelled: extending town water supply, restoring rangeland habitat, creating jobs for Aboriginal Australians and preserving cultural waterholes. The smallest class supports all these uses except job creation and the final class only supports preserving cultural waterholes. These results illustrate public attitudes towards cultural values as well as wider environmental policy tensions between instrumental and intrinsic values. • We find three distinct classes of preferences for released groundwater from mining. • Only one class supports a broad range of ecological and cultural uses. • Two classes do not support the creation of Aboriginal employment opportunities. • These same two classes support extending town water supplies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]