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Agriculture contributes substantially to global greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts. Current agricultural policies tolerate these impacts and sometimes even aggravate them through subsidies for unsustainable production systems and products. Against this background, we explore the resulting transfers to agriculture and food associated with different dietary styles. Using data from Switzerland, we consider both direct transfers through government subsidies and indirect transfers through toleration of environmental impacts and costs. Gross transfers were quantified based on existing studies that (i) define eight dietary styles in terms of the quantity of the different product groups, (ii) allocate subsidies for agriculture to product groups, (iii) allocate environmental impacts to product groups using life cycle assessment (LCA) methods, and (iv) estimate external costs of agriculture using politically endorsed expenditures for damage avoidance. To quantify net transfers associated with the dietary styles, we subtracted individual tax contributions from the subsidies received and average external costs individually suffered from external costs caused. We found that the gross transfers from government to agriculture range from about CHF 500 to about CHF 2000 annually per taxpayer/consumer depending on dietary styles. Net transfers per taxpayer/consumer range from about CHF −1000 to about CHF 1000 depending on dietary style and income. The estimates highlight that current policies strongly privilege and thereby also endorse environmentally problematic dietary styles over more environmentally friendly ones, contradicting official strategies and targets in the domains of environment and public health.

La publication met en évidence le niveau des coûts de l’agriculture en Suisse, leur ventilation et leur prise en charge.

Erläutert, wie die Statistik «Kosten und Finanzierung der Landwirtschaft» konzipiert istund beschreibt die Methoden und die verwendeten Daten.

Surveys of stated willingness to pay (WTP) are increasingly used to assess the value of public goods and ecosystem services. However, the currently dominant survey protocols and practices are inadequate. This is most evident from robust findings that the valuations are heavily influenced by the response options or response scales used in the valuation questions. The widely accepted survey guidelines do not require the validity tests and reporting standards that would be needed to make the uncertainty of the results transparent. The increasing use of inadequate survey results by policymakers threatens to undermine trust in environmental valuation, environmental policies, and political institutions. The objective of this paper is to explain the relevant issues and the available alternatives in survey-based valuation to a wider audience of non-specialized economists, environmental scientists, and policymakers.

Der Bericht erläutert, wie die Statistik «Kosten und Finanzierung der Landwirtschaft» konzipiert ist und beschreibt die Methoden und die verwendeten Daten.

We present a novel approach for estimating the demand value of public safety and apply it to road safety improvements in Switzerland. Survey responses by more than 1,000 eligible voters to questions about how much public spending on road safety should increase are combined with observations of their income tax and road usage to derive the value of a statistical accident avoided. A risk-risk tradeoff elicitation allows decomposing this value into willingness-to-pay values for various degrees of accident severity. Our most comprehensive estimate of the value per statistical life is CHF 4.2 million (corresponding to $4.5 million or €3.5 million). We explore the sensitivity of the elicitation approach to anchoring and other framing effects and find that our approach is as least as scope sensitive as other stated preference approaches.

Evaluations of agri-environment support at the European level are still rare. We used an expert survey to examine agricultural support schemes in the EU, Norway and Switzerland in terms of the shares of the payments that compensate farmers and other recipients for the costs of providing services. Furthermore, we explored to which categories of ecosystem services the funding for agri-environment measures contributed according to the experts. For the agri-environment payments in the EU we found a mean estimate of ‘percent payment for services’ (PPS) of 72.3%. Expert age, type of organisation and disciplinary background systematically affected the individual estimates. Controlling the individual-level variation, the estimates differed significantly by measure objectives. Particularly high PPS estimates were found for organic farming and conservation related measures, while integrated production and more generic extensive management options were perceived to perform less well. The mean PPS estimate for the rural development programmes was 59.6% and that for single payments 16.8%. The results suggest that expert estimates of PPS may complement the evaluation of schemes at the national or regional level in cases where complex policy objectives prevent a comprehensive evaluation based on objective measures.

Bartkowski and Lienhoop (2017) comment on the DV approach which I proposed in an earlier issue. They conclude that DMV overcomes some flaws of conventional stated preference (SP) methods, addresses many of my concerns and at the same time avoids some of the problems generated by DV. Several of their comments are debatable. A closer look at DMV in comparison with DV and conventional SP methods shows that Bartkowski and Lienhoop's DMV approach addresses only one out of six major issues with conventional SP methods – the lack of opportunities for group discussion. My conclusion therefore remains unaffected: Due to the many technical issues with measuring individual willingness to pay (WTP), valuations based on majority voting principles are not only more transparent and more democratically legitimate than conventional SP or DMV. They may also produce superior proxies for aggregated individual WTP.

Insights from behavioral economics have proven to be relevant for designing and analyzing stated preference (SP) studies. In this paper, we propose an empirical strategy in SP research that (1) evaluates what are arguably the key behavioral assumptions, (2) interprets the responses strictly in light of the outcomes of that evaluation, and (3) reports a broader set of potentially relevant results. The approach relies on specific elements of survey design and analysis not required by current guidelines for SP studies. We illustrate its application with data from a SP study on future management schemes for the Austrian federal forests. In the evaluation of assumptions we find that the response scale, the provision of third-party information, the combination of valuation scenarios, and loss aversion all have an effect on stated WTP. We report tests of behavioral assumptions, estimates from several treatment conditions and complementary preference information, including median values and approval rates in referendum questions involving true cost information. The results demonstrate the feasibility of systematic behavioral approaches in applied SP work. Future research should further explore how the key behavioral assumptions are most usefully tested, and which treatment conditions may produce the most relevant and transparent information for decision-makers.

The costs of unintended side effects of agriculture such as water pollution cannot be directly observed in markets. However, the values society places on healthy agricultural environments are increasingly reflected in payments to farmers for measures to avoid or reduce environmental damage. This paper presents a framework for estimating external costs of agriculture from payment rates of agri-environment measures addressing specific externality issues. The framework is applied to the broad range of agri-environment measures implemented in Swiss agricultural policy. Estimates of external costs are derived for emissions of greenhouse gases, ammonia, nitrate and pesticides, soil erosion, habitat deficits, and animal suffering. The total external costs of Swiss agriculture are estimated at CHF 3.651 billion (CHF 3494 per hectare) when the calculations are based on the agri-environment measures&rsquo, average avoidance costs and of CHF 5.560 billion (CHF 5321 per hectare) when the calculations are based on highest observed avoidance costs. Potential applications include internalization policies, evaluations of agri-environment support, and integrated environmental and economic accounting.

The Austrian Federal Forests (&Ouml, Bf), the Republic of Austria&rsquo, s state-owned company, manages 15% of the Austrian forests, about 50% of the land is devoted to nature conservation. This paper presents the results of a representative survey of Austrian households ascertaining the acceptance of, preferences regarding, and willingness to pay for three different management scenarios. One program would increase commercial forestry, while two other programs would significantly enhance biodiversity conservation. The majority of respondents considers it an important task of state-owned forests to enhance biodiversity conservation. The study reveals that the preferences of the respondents are very heterogeneous. For instance, in addition to socio-economic characteristics, the willingness to pay for nature conservation depends on personal experiences and perceptions (e.g., whether respondents feel anxious in forests), political views (e.g., the acceptance of strict legal protection of natural resources), and opinions on forest policy issues (e.g., preferences regarding privatization of public land). The study places special emphasis on the thorough description and presentation of the scenarios to the respondents and is one of the first European studies to elicit opinions on forest policies regarding public land in an environmental valuation framework.

The now dominant survey approaches to value public services remain contentious. A common explanation is that stated preferences are generally difficult to measure. I argue that the key problems of the dominant survey approaches can be explained more specifically by their ambition to measure individuals' (maximum) willingness to pay (WTP). To estimate WTP researchers need to ask questions involving counterfactual prices, to specify doubtful implementation rules, and to aggregate preferences in a way that is inconsistent with political rights. The procedures engender problems with scenario credibility, incentive compatibility, adequate information provision, and democratic legitimacy. As an alternative to the standard stated preference paradigm I propose a democratic valuation approach (DV). DV measures the exchange value of public services in the political domain in terms of the aggregate valuation implied by the median preferred expenditure level for public services. The blueprint for survey design is the public finance referendum with multiple proposals. I suggest that empirically straightforward and democratically legitimate exchange values may be a more powerful input to public policy decisions than theoretically correct but empirically problematic estimates of mean willingness to pay.

The wider range of stated preference approaches to value public goods has not been systematically reviewed in recent years. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of this literature and to evaluate the strengths and limitations of alternative approaches. Since the public referendum has served as a ‘blueprint’ for survey design, two key dimensions by which many surveys differ from the public referendum are used for a simple classification of approaches. This yields eleven approaches, including different variants of micro‐based demand surveys, referendum surveys, budget allocation surveys and contingent valuation surveys. Their evaluation in terms of the preference information they produce and the assumptions they require suggests there is no single preferred approach. Instead, each approach has its characteristic profile of strengths and limitations which follow from how it strikes the balance between the conflicting goals of measuring entire willingness‐to‐pay distributions and presenting manageable, credible and incentive compatible questions. Ultimately, judgments about the suitability of alternative approaches for specific objectives should rely on empirical evidence. Progress in the field could greatly benefit from a routine implementation of powerful experimental validity tests in applied work.

The hedonic pricing approach has been successfully applied to estimate the economic value of environmental amenities in urban settings, but the results for landscape variables remain relatively inconsistent across studies. Here, we use national-level data and an existing typology of communities to examine how land use and environmental amenities and disamenities affect rental prices across urban, suburban, periurban, and affluent communities in Switzerland. To make the analysis and the results as transparent as possible we examine largely a priori model specifications, and we systematically report and discuss the patterns of correlation among explanatory variables. Two-level models show that about 70 percent of the price variation is found at the apartment level and about 30 percent at the community level. Models for the different community types suggest that, although we include a sophisticated variable for central services, the centrality of location is not fully controlled in our models and thus picked up by correlated peripheral and central amenities such as open space, forest or urban parks. Analysis of these correlations allows us to qualify our results and present a revised set of relatively reliable estimates. Positive effects on rental prices are identified for views, various types of recreational infrastructure and vicinity of lakes, wetlands, undisturbed areas, nationally significant landscapes and cultural sites. Negative effects are found for several disamenities including road noise, railway noise, industries and power lines. We suggest that systematic hypothesis testing and reporting of correlations may contribute to consistent explanatory patterns in hedonic pricing estimates for landscape amenities.

We estimate the demand value of road safety improvements in Switzerland from survey data using a novel elicitation approach. Individuals’ responses to questions about how much public spending on road safety should be increased are combined with observations of income, tax rate, and road usage to estimate the economic value of a statistical accident avoided. Information obtained from a risk-risk tradeoff elicitation allows us to distinguish willingness-to-pay values for various degrees of accident severity. Our most comprehensive estimate of the value of a statistical accident avoided amounts to CHF 11.0 million ($11.6 million); the corresponding value per statistical life is close to CHF 4.2 million ($4.5 million). We explore the sensitivity of these estimates to anchoring and other framing effects and find that the popularity of specific road safety programs is influenced by both the availability of different choice options and the provision of partisan cues expressing political endorsement or opposition.

Traditional stated preference theory does not provide useful guidance on hypothetical bias because the bias lies outside the theory. Not surprisingly, meta-analyses using variables from the theory have not revealed consistent patterns of bias. We find that these models are substantially improved by including two additional variables drawn from positive research on choice behavior. These results lead us to recommend survey procedures that address these concerns.

Sustainability transitions involve a dynamic interaction of regulation, innovation, and preferences for new products. In this study we examine consumer preferences as a potential driver of supply side innovations in the winter tourism industry. We use a novel survey approach that allows for heuristic decision-making based on information from third parties. Specifically, we investigate consumer preferences when (i) only factual information and (ii) factual information and environmental NGO or consumer recommendations are available. The third-party information significantly affected the destination choices in about one third of the examined choice sets. The results indicate a willingness to pay for some of the examined sustainability attributes, and they point to specific differences among different tourist groups. Regarding methodology we suggest that survey experiments involving third-party information are useful for the study of choices about product or policy innovations in dynamic markets where standard assumptions on preferences and rationality may not apply.

Several recent regional and migration studies have identified landscape amenities as potentially important drivers of migration and local economic change in the United States. To date, these empirical approaches have rarely been applied to European data in spite of an impressive European cultural landscape heritage. Here, we apply a regional adjustment model to data from 2467 municipalities in Switzerland to examine how landscape amenities and related policies affected regional development along with fiscal, demographic and infrastructure variables in the period from 1995 to 2005. In the population equation, the coefficients of the standard variables show a consistent pattern that parallels the findings of earlier work. Moreover, we find that population was positively affected by closeness to major lakes and by abundance of open space. However evidence on positive effects of traditional landscape elements such as extensive orchards and vineyards is limited. Furthermore, municipalities with national heritage townscapes grew less than those without, while the density of hiking trails had no significant effect. In the employment equation, employment was consistently affected by demographic factors and accessibility but not by the landscape amenity variables, except that employment grew less in municipalities that are part of an inventory of nationally significant landscapes. The lack of measurable local benefits from nationally significant landscapes and townscapes suggests that policies to preserve these amenities should be implemented and financed by the national government.

Surveys are sometimes used to assess preferences towards policy issues that are remote from experience and that have never been publicly discussed. How do these preferences of isolated survey respondents compare with preferences expressed by voters who have access to advice from competing political parties? I address this question by conducting a field experiment with a sample of the general public in which I experimentally control the subjects’ access to the actual positions of competing parties and interest groups on specific novel policy propositions. Access to party positions decreased approval of the proposed environmental policy among right-wing voters by over fifty percent, and this effect was similar for different educational groups. When voters had access to party positions, their policy preferences were more consistent with their general political orientation. I conclude by discussing implications of these results for the debate about voter competence and for preference elicitation using surveys. Verfugbarkeit von Parteiparolen und Praferenzbildung: ein Feldexperiment Befragungen werden manchmal verwendet, um Aufschluss uber individuelle Praferenzen fur Politikvorschlage zu erhalten, die ausserhalb des Erfahrungsbereichs der Befragten liegen und auch nie offentlich diskutiert wurden. Wie unterscheiden sich die Praferenzausserungen in solchen Befragungen von den Praferenzausserungen in Abstimmungen, in denen die Wahler neben sachlicher Information auch Information uber die Positionen der Parteien haben? Diese Frage wird in einem Feldexperiment untersucht, in dem die Verfugbarkeit von Abstimmungsempfehlungen bekannter Parteien und Verbande zu einem spezifischen Politikvorschlag experimentell kontrolliert wird. Verfugbarkeit von Parteiparolen reduzierte die Zustimmung zum Politikvorschlag unter politisch rechts stehenden Wahlern um uber 50 Prozent, wobei dieser Effekt fur unterschiedliche Bildungsniveaus ahnlich war. Wenn Parteiparolen zur Verfugung standen, stimmten die Politik-Praferenzen besser mit der generellen politischen Ausrichtung der Befragten uberein. Abschliessend wird die Bedeutung der Resultate fur die Debatte uber die Kompetenz von Stimmburgern und fur die Praferenzerfassung anhand von Befragungen diskutiert. L’acces aux positions des partis et la formation des preferences : une experience de terrain Des enquetes sont parfois employees pour evaluer les preferences envers des enjeux politiques qui sont eloignes de l’experience et qui n’ont jamais ete discutes publiquement. Comment ces preferences de participants isoles a des enquetes se comparent-elles avec les preferences exprimees par les electeurs qui ont acces au conseil des partis politiques en concurrence ? J’aborde cette question en conduisant une experience de terrain avec un echantillon du grand public dans lequel je controle de facon experimentale l’acces des sujets aux positions reelles des partis et groupes d’interet en concurrence sur des propositions politiques specifiques originales. L’acces aux positions des partis reduit l’approbation de la politique environnementale proposee de plus de cinquante pour cent parmi les electeurs de droite, un effet qui est le meme pour les differents niveaux de formation. Quand les electeurs ont eu acces aux positions des partis, leurs preferences par rapport aux politiques etaient plus compatibles avec leur orientation politique generale. Je conclus en discutant les implications de ces resultats pour le debat sur la competence des electeurs et pour l’inference de preferences a partir d’enquetes.

With rapid urban expansion and loss of open space, attractive local landscapes will continue to gain importance in location decisions and on political agendas. The present study reviews the evidence on the local economic role of landscape amenities from two major strands of empirical research, migration and regional economic models, and hedonic pricing models. Following common amenity definitions we identify 71 relevant peer-reviewed studies and systematically assess the reported effects of the landscape amenity variables. The migration and regional economic studies suggest that migrants are attracted by amenities nearly as often as by low taxes. Reported effects of amenities on income and employment are less consistent. The hedonic studies suggest that nature reserves and land cover diversity have mostly, open space and forest often, and agricultural land rarely positive effects on housing prices. Studies at larger geographic scales and studies involving urban areas were more likely to identify significant amenity effects. Some limitations of the evidence may be overcome with better datasets and modeling approaches. However, in line with other recent work, the limitations also highlight the need for complementary information from the analysis of political preferences for land-use management.

Research output in economics is commonly measured based on the reputation of the journals in which an author has published. Using data from the 2010 Handelsblatt ranking of economists in German speaking countries and citation data from the Web of Science, we examine the relationship between reputation and citation frequency at the level of individual researchers. We find that the variation (variance) in individual researcher citations explains only a small fraction of the scores based on traditional measures of reputation. Our findings suggest that individual citation data are indispensable for a relevant measurement of individual research output and for providing more productive incentives in academic research.

Unlike in other disciplines, research output in economics is commonly measured based on the disciplinary reputation of the journals in which an author has published. Here, I examine how much output measures based on journal reputation tell us about the academic interest and relevance of economic papers as measured by frequency of citation. Using data from the 2008 Handelsblatt ranking of economists in German speaking countries and interdisciplinary citation data from the Web of Science, I find that researcher scores based on journal reputation explain only about 30 percent of the variation (variance) in article citations. When the top 10 (20) percent of the researchers according to journal reputation scores are excluded, the percentage of explained variation in citation frequency drops to 8 (3) percent. Furthermore, using environmental economics journals as an example, I show that the traditional output measures strongly discourage applied and interdisciplinary economic research. The findings confirm that the traditional output measures provide incentives for narrow economic work even if that work is of interest to only few other researchers. Responsible hiring committees and funding institutions should take these problems seriously and re-consider existing standards in the evaluation of economic research.

Billions of dollars are now spent annually in the United States and Europe for spatially delineated environmental services such as agricultural landscape management and river restoration programs, yet little is known about the spatial distribution of the benefits from these policies. This paper develops a framework for recovering information on this question from the spatial pattern of votes cast for referenda on the provision of spatially delineated public goods. We specify a model linking voter support for environmental improvement to the distance at which such improvements are expected to occur. The empirical application is to a river restoration referendum in the Swiss canton of Bern. Our results indicate that the benefits from river restoration have a strong local component, sufficiently strong that voter approval would not occur if only canton-wide benefits were at stake. Surprisingly, support for river restoration is no greater, and in some specifications is actually lower, in locations where rivers are a prominent feature in the environment.

The primary evidence about the factors determining successful self-governance of common-pool resources (CPR) has come from case studies. More recently, this observational evidence has been complemented by insights from economic experiments. Here we advance a third approach in which the role of local deliberation about the management of a fishery resource is investigated in a field experiment. Using three control and three treatment communities in a freshwater fishery, we tested whether participation in developing specific measures for community-based sustainable CPR management increased the willingness to contribute to the implementation of these measures. Each community was also exposed to information about their community leaders' advice about the proposed measures. Both participation and leader advice affected the willingness of participants to contribute in one of three proposed measures. However, the strongest influence on individual willingness to contribute was exerted by the individual beliefs about the cooperation of others in CPR management.

Green et al. (1998) [Green, D., Jacowitz, K.E., Kahneman, D., McFadden, D., 1998. Referendum contigent valuation, anchoring, and willingness to pay for public goods. Resource and Energy Economics 20 (2), 85−116] show theoretically that stated preference questions about public services can be framed in such ways that if the subjects accept the frame the payoff­maximizing behavior will be to answer truthfully. One key element of such a theoretically incentive­compatible framing is that the (hypothetical) decision rule specified in the survey instrument is understood to be a majority rule rather than the efficiency rule typically used in cost­benefit analysis. We conducted field experiments in Germany and Switzerland to test if a referendum framing as suggested by Green et al. is effective in reducing strategic misrepresentation in a contingent valuation setting. We did not find the expected effects of the framing treatments on stated willingness to pay or on individuals' (stated) beliefs about the social choice context. The results do not support hopes that a theoretically incentive compatible framing could be purposefully used to invoke the specific beliefs about the linkage between responses and policy implementation that would make stated preference questions incentive compatible.

SUMMARY Contingent valuation (CV) is a widely used but controversial survey-based technique for estimating the nonmarket benefits of environmental goods and services. This study is the first to compare the outcome of a self-contained CV survey with the outcome of a collective decision, by contrasting hypothetical willingness to pay with willingness to pay inferred from aggregate voting returns and tax liability distributions. The empirical dataset is from a CV survey and a referendum on a proposition to increase financing for landscape and heritage protection in the canton of Zurich, Switzerland. Voting-based willingness to pay was only a small fraction of stated willingness to pay, indicating an inflation in values due to the hypothetical context.

There is an important class of public goods for which preferences leave no observable ‘trace’ in individual behaviour. Such goods include, for example, the preservation of wilderness areas from which individuals may benefit merely by knowing of their existence. The values of such goods have been termed ‘passive-use’, ‘existence’, or ‘non-use’ values (Krutilla 1967). The increasing importance of these values for public decision making and the difficulty of their measurement gained much attention in the process of damage assessment following the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. According to the current textbook wisdom, the only economic valuation methods that are potentially able to estimate these values are stated preferences techniques, such as the contingent valuation (CV) method. These methods use surveys in which respondents are asked about their willingness to pay for a proposed project concerned with a change in the provision of a public good, or about their decision in a hypothetical referendum or other choice situation (e.g., Pommerehne 1987, Mitchell and Carson 1989, Kopp et al. 1997). While stated preferences for many public goods can be compared with values derived from observed choices, there is little opportunity to externally test the validity of stated preferences for public goods with passive-use values. This is a significant problem since for a variety of reasons surveys of hypothetical choices may not always provide respondents with the necessary incentives to think hard and answer truthfully. Researchers have thus examined potential bias of hypothetical values in situations involving private commodities where

One of the main problems in using environmental cost-benefit analysis is deciding on the relevant population: whose benefits should we count? This is important since aggregate benefits depend on both per-person benefit and the number of beneficiaries. Yet this latter term is often hard to evaluate. Distance-decay functions are one way of addressing this problem. In this paper, we present estimates of distance-decay functions for a particular environmental improvement, namely a reduction in low flow problems on the River Mimram in Southern England. We do this both for users and non-users, in the context of a contingent valuation study of the benefits of improving low flow conditions. We test whether distance-decay effects for mean Willingness to Pay are stronger for a single environmental good (the River Mimram, in this case) than for a more inclusive set (here, all rivers in Thames region which suffer from low flow problems). Finally, we explore the impact on part-whole bias, in terms of the relationship between WTP for an individual site and WTP for a more inclusive group of sites, of allowing for distance-decay effects.

Agricultural support is increasingly flowing into the maintenance and improvement of landscape quality. While variations in the demand for landscape protection have been successfully attributed to variations in socio-economic characteristics, the effect of the local landscape setting as a potential determinant of environmental preferences has received less attention. A framework is formulated that describes public support for regional landscape protection as a function of socio-economic variables and land use patterns. Models are then estimated using detailed local land use statistics and voting records from a referendum on increasing public funding for local landscape amenities protection in the Swiss canton of Zurich. The land use variables represent proportions of open landscape and landscape features that are viewed as particularly valuable for aesthetic and other reasons. Cross-sectional estimation results suggest that attitudes towards public landscape protection are indeed strongly associated with the local landscape. Approval for protection programmes increased with local scarcity of open space and with the presence of high-amenity landscape features. Comparison with referendum outcomes on a national-level environmental issue suggests that the positive association with high-amenity landscape features may be partly attributable to individuals' self-selection of residency.

Recent ecological experiments suggest that theinterannual stability of ecosystem productivitymay be determined by the diversity of organismspresent in the system. We investigate whethersuch effects of biotic diversity on ecosystemstability may translate into economic valuesand possibly into an economic argument for themaintenance of biodiversity in managedhabitats. Applying a stochastic model fromfinancial economics to long-term harvest datafrom a grassland ecosystem we examine thepotential “insurance” value of plant diversityon the stability of yields and economic returnsin a drought-sensitive agricultural setting.Putative insurance premiums priced as putoptions on revenues from hay yield were higherfor fertilized low-diversity grassland than forunfertilized species-rich glassland. From thisperspective the annual “insurance value”(differential insurance premiums required tolock in specific rates of returns) of diverseplant communities may amount to $3.50 to$6.00 per acre. The results suggest thatincreased costs of risk in species-poorfertilized grassland may affect the optimumlevel of fertilization making lower fertilizerinput and concomitantly higher plant communitydiversity more desirable.

We asked whether differences in abundance and seed prodtiction of Brachypodium pinnatum after 16 yr of four different experimental land use regimes were reflected in differences in vegetative dispersal distance, clone diversity, clone area, and the proportions of sexual and vegetative recruitment. Mean vegetative dispersal distance was 5.5 mm yr‘. Electrophoresis of 5 polymorphic isozyme loci of 20 tillers sampled at defined positions in each of twelve 1 × 6 m sampling areas (3 per treatment) revealed considerable clonal diversity. Per sampling area we found on average 9.98 enzyme phenotypes (clones), mean Simpson index was 0.825. and mean Shannon index 0.801. The mean ratio of sexual vs vegetative recruitment was about 1:32000. Despite this low ratio, clonal diversity within the population of” B. pinnatum was higher than reported for other clonal plant populations, possibly because of its high ramet densities. Moan clone area was 5.73 m2-. i.e. mean clone radius was 1.35 m. None of the 10 pairwise correlations between abundance and seed production on the one hand, and number of clones per plot sample, plot Simpson index, plot Shannon index, ratio of vegetative vs sexual recruitment, and clone area on the other, was significant. Mean clone radius was 245 times larger than the mean distance of yearly vegetative dispersal which suggests old ages and low turnover rates of clones. The time scale of the inert response of clonal diversity of B. pinnatum to changes in land use appears to largely exceed the experimental period of 16 yr.

Ecological Economics, 68 (6), ISSN:0921-8009

With continuing loss of open space around growing urban centers, measures to maintain periurban landscape quality are gaining importance on political agendas. Understanding the demand for alternative approaches to landscape management is crucial for designing efficient policies and acceptable financing arrangements. Here, we analyze voter support for a proposition to create landscape reserves in the densely populated canton of Zurich, Switzerland. We then contrast the pattern of voter support for this “regulation” measure with the support among the same population for a “financing” measure that proposed to maintain landscape quality through increased public spending for the management of landscape amenities and historical heritage. The demand for both landscape regulation and financing increased with decreasing local open space. The role of income differed between the two propositions and between more urban and more rural populations. Our descriptive results should contribute to the design of widely accep...

Ecological Economics, 64 (4), ISSN:0921-8009

Die Abwägung von Kosten und Nutzen spielt bei der Bereitstellung öffentlicher Güter eine zentrale Rolle. Mithilfe welcher Methode lässt sich der Nutzen öffentlicher Güter am besten schätzen? Welche typischen konzeptionellen und empirischen Probleme treten bei den einzelnen Schätzmethoden häufig auf?

Ecological Economics, 65 (3), ISSN:0921-8009

While budgets for agri-environmental policy in OECD countries are rapidly increasing with current policy reforms, information about the locally varying demands for policies implemented at various levels of government remains scarce. In this study, a median voter framework is used to analyse the demand for landscape management services based on the expenditures of sub-federal governments for two decentralized landscape management programmes in Switzerland. Furthermore, based on the expenditures for one cantonal and one national agri-environmental scheme, it is determined whether the cantonal scheme resulted in a more demand-oriented pattern of expenditures than the national scheme. The median voter model estimates suggest a high-income elasticity and a low-price elasticity of demand for landscape management services. Contrary to expectations, both the cantonal and national expenditures significantly reflected cantonal variations in proxies of the demand for landscape management services.

This study investigates how access to political endorsements affects stated preferences for an environmental public good in Switzerland. We developed a contingent valuation survey questionnaire with two valuation questions, the first formulated as a (hypothetical) policy referendum, the second an open-ended WTP question. For the referendum question we solicited endorsements from a range of political parties and relevant interest groups. We then conducted a split-sample mail-survey experiment in which a table listing the endorsements was included with a subsample of the questionnaires. Access to the policy endorsements significantly affected the responses to the open-ended willingness-to-pay question.

[1] In 1997, about 140,000 citizens in 388 voting districts in the Swiss canton of Bern passed a ballot initiative to allocate about 3 million Swiss Francs annually to a canton-wide river restoration program. Using the municipal voting returns and a detailed georeferenced data set on the ecomorphological status of the rivers, we estimate models of voter support in relation to local river ecomorphology, population density, mean income, cultural background, and recent flood damage. Support of the initiative increased with increasing population density and tended to increase with increasing mean income, in spite of progressive taxation. Furthermore, we found evidence that public support increased with decreasing “naturalness” of local rivers. The model estimates may be cautiously used to predict the public acceptance of similar restoration programs in comparable regions. Moreover, the voting-based insights into the distribution of river restoration benefits provide a useful starting point for debates about appropriate financing schemes.

Income effects reported in contingent valuation (CV) studies tend to be much smaller than those found in the literature on collective choice. This disparity has received surprisingly little attention by environmental economists. The present study uses meta-analysis to explore determinants of the presence/absence of a significant income effect in a sample of CV surveys. The probability of significant income effects–controlling for the statistical power of the reported tests–was higher when ‘progressive’ payment vehicles were used and tended to be lower when cost distribution and institutions were well defined, when the choice was formulated as a policy referendum, or when ‘passive-use’ goods were involved. A simple explanation of this pattern in terms of respondent behaviour suggests that the low income effects in contingent valuation surveys may be an artefact of the survey method. Since empirical estimates of the income effect may have important policy implications, this issue deserves attention in future research.

Summary 1 Understanding ecosystem responses to plant species loss is essential for the optimal management of grasslands. Recent studies have examined the effects of simulated random species loss in experimental plant communities but not those of realistic non-random species loss resulting from transient extinction pressures in semi-natural grasslands. 2 To investigate the potential effects of non-random species loss on grassland productivity, we established mesocosms with mixed communities comprising 15 plant species, and exposed them to 2 years of high-intensity management (an extinction phase) followed by 2 years of low-intensity management (a restoration phase) allowing recolonization from differentially managed neighbouring plots. In addition, monocultures of each component species were subject to the same extinction–restoration phases. 3 During the extinction phase, species with high monoculture biomass had lower extinction probabilities in the mixed community than species with low monoculture biomass, but there was also species-specific variation. The species that were most productive or most persistent during the extinction phase were not the same as those performing best in the restoration phase. 4 No consistent effects of spontaneous recolonization from neighbouring communities on species richness or productivity of the focal communities were observed during the restoration phase. 5 We estimated that extinction of all but the species with the lowest extinction risk reduced biomass productivity by 42–49%; loss of all but the four species with the lowest extinction risk reduced it by 2–35%. Identical calculations for a random extinction scenario yielded reductions of 52% and 26–54%, respectively. 6 Synthesis and applications. Prediction of the effects of species loss on plant production and on other aspects of ecosystem functioning in semi-natural grasslands must account for both specific non-random extinction processes and post-extinction conditions. For European mesic grasslands experiencing a shift from high-intensity to low-intensity management, our results suggest that recolonization by ‘missing’ species must be actively assisted if high production is a management objective.

Attempts to assess the functional importance of biodiversity in ecosystems continue to stimulate debate on the potential impacts of biodiversity losses. However, finding experimental setups to realistically simulate current and anticipated species loss turns out to be surprisingly difficult. Uncertainties concern the relevance of the present empirical evidence for large-scale natural and agricultural situations and the relation between observed specific processes and ecosystem services that provide a basis for human life support. Since ecosystem effects of biodiversity loss may be experimentally less tractable than other global change issues we were interested in current expert opinions. The resulting survey provides what might be the best-available answers to urgent questions regarding the certainties and uncertainties of the functional role of biodiversity in ecosystems. The respondents generally expected that: (1) ecosystem process rates are strongly correlated with biological diversity, and (2) these same processes are (although to a varying extent) important for the delivery of humanly defined ecosystem services by natural systems. The survey thus suggests caution in reducing ecosystem-level biodiversity, but it also underscores the opportunities for land management that may arise from the recognition of biodiversity effects in ecosystems. A caveat regards the possible bias of participants toward scientists who are particularly concerned about environmental change.