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Abstract In recent years there has been an increased focus on including aspects such as greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity in cost-effectiveness analyses of nitrogen (N) abatement measures. Side-effects such as aesthetic and recreational benefits generated by the land use changes implied by some N abatement measures, such as afforestation and constructed wetlands, are included in ecosystem service approaches, but seldom explicitly in cost-effectiveness analyses. While several studies have estimated these values for e.g. forests and wetlands, per se , few have studied how these effects are valued by the general population when generated through the implementation of land use changes driven by measures aimed at reducing the loss of nitrogen from agriculture. The land use changes implied by the N abatement measures have different characteristics to that of the evaluations of forests for recreation or larger wetlands created or maintained for biodiversity, mainly because the area affected varies considerably in size and shape. In this paper, we estimate the welfare economic impacts of some of the potential side-effects, such as recreational and aesthetic effects, of three N abatement measures related to agricultural land use change: afforestation, constructed wetlands or energy crops. We incorporate the value of these side-effects in a standard cost-effectiveness analysis and discuss the policy implications. This allows us to evaluate to what extent the inclusion of these side-effects change the ranking of the measures and the cost levels used. We thereby provide a more holistic approach to the cost-effectiveness analysis of land use change based N abatement measures, and discuss the challenges relating to the spatial aspects that arise when accounting for the value of the analyzed side-effects. The analysis shows that public access to the area largely determine whether the selected measures are perceived as positive or negative. The impact of the analyzed side-effects on the cost-effectiveness analysis critically depends on the size of the affected population, as the value of the side-effects are measured per household. Highlights • The value of agri-environmental measures is affected by the generated side-effects. • Public access to an area largely determines whether land-use changes have positive or negative welfare side-effects. • Respondents living in the countryside assign lower values to the analyzed agri-environmental measures. • The size of the population benefitting from the side-effects significantly influences the ranking of the measures. • Spatial aspects are essential to capture the variation in the value generated by the side-effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The importance of spatial, temporal and social contexts is increasingly acknowledged in the literature of modelling environmental preferences. However, the contexts of childhood nature experiences have not yet been included in economic models of environmental choices, despite significant findings from environmental psychology. We review the existing literature on childhood nature experiences to identify three constructs of the spatial, temporal and social contexts of childhood nature experiences. Based on these constructs, we suggest a dynamic model of environmental policy over time, in which past environmental policies indirectly affect current environmental policies. Using data from a discrete choice experiment, we establish the empirical link between childhood nature experiences and the economics literature of environmental choice behaviour and adulthood environmental preferences. The empirical findings of the present study qualifies the suggested dynamic model by showing that childhood nature experiences are correlated with pro-environmental preferences in the adult population - the same population that democratically decide on the current environmental policies. This may lead to self-reinforcing policy effects over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on economic valuation of ecosystem services increasingly recognizes that the welfare generating endpoint of biophysical changes could potentially be heterogeneous across individuals in the population. This paper suggests Q-methodology as a structured and transparent approach to attribute selection in Discrete Choice Experiments that is easy to document, by combining the in-depth subjectivity of qualitative methods and the statistical rigor of factor analysis to identify groups in the population. Valid welfare estimates are dependent on the beneficiaries being presented with relevant attributes in the scenario description. This paper develops and implements a three-step procedure to: 1) identify potential groups of beneficiaries motivated by distinct ecosystem service endpoints 2) classify respondents in a Discrete Choice Experiment into groups of beneficiaries, according to their ecosystem service motivation, and 3) tailor the design of the Discrete Choice Experiment to the group-specific ecosystem service endpoints of the beneficiaries. The application explores potential heterogeneity in the ecosystem service endpoints derived from water quality improvements in Denmark. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]