Narrow Results

Global biodiversity loss and its consequences for human welfare and sustainable development have become major concerns. Economists have, therefore, given increasing attention to the policy issues involved in the management of genetic resources. To do so, they often apply empirical methods developed in behavioral and experimental economics to estimate economic values placed on genetic resources. This trend away from almost exclusive dependence on axiomatic methods is welcomed. However, major valuation methods used in behavioral economics raise new scientific challenges. Possibly the most important of these include deficiencies in the knowledge of the public (and researchers) about genetic resources, implications for the formation of values of supplying information to focal individuals, and limits to rationality.

These issues are explored for stated-preference techniques of valuation (e.g., contingent valuation) as well as revealed preference techniques, especially the travel cost method. They are illustrated by Australian and Asian examples. Taking into account behavioral and psychological models and empirical evidence, particular attention is given to how elicitation of preferences, and supply of information to individuals, influences their preferences about biodiversity. Policy consequences are outlined.

Rivers provide us with general life support, water supply, transportation, waste assimilation, and a wide array of recreation and tourism activities. However, due to undervaluation of the functions of rivers and river ecosystems, rivers of the world have been overexploited or degraded. To tackle the problem of undervaluation, this study measures the benefits of Ping River quality improvement using the contingent valuation method (CVM). The study estimates the lower-bound and higher-bound annual benefits gained by the residents of Chiang Mai District from the river quality improvement as 42,453,000 THB (1.25 million USD) and 102,835,317 THB (3 million USD), respectively. Moreover, in an attempt to explain the determinants of willingness to pay (WTP) statements, it was found that both behavioural and attitudinal factors affect WTP positively. The study also found distance decay, where WTP statements decreased with increased distance. And rather interestingly, male respondents tend to pay more than their female counterparts. Two other socioeconomic factors which affected WTP positively and significantly are education, partly because it can lead to a well paying and stable job, and normally raises the awareness of citizens towards environmental conservation, as well as income.

This research study investigates the market and non-market benefits and costs of adopting a forest resources policy aimed at environmentally responsible purchasing at a large university. I use benefit-cost analysis and contingent valuation methods to determine the population's willingness-to-pay (WTP) for environmentally responsible forest products. Econometric analysis reveals that past WTP and belief that the forest resources policy will improve the environment positively affect WTP, while position as a staff member decreases WTP. This methodology can be used for other products that have non-market values like cafeteria compost and by other large purchasing entities such as corporations and government agencies.

Following the UK’s hosting of the United Nations Convention of the Parties Climate Summit in 2021, political targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions — “Net-Zero” — have gained momentum. We address the gap in how public preferences are accounted for in climate decision-making by applying Contingent-Valuation techniques which ask people to state their Willingness-to-Pay (WTP) for the UK’s 2050 Net-Zero target. Mean WTP is £37.57/household to support Net-Zero (median £11.25), with a present-value of £2.3 billion across UK households. While younger people are more likely to experience the long-term impacts of climate change, older generations are willing to pay more to support it, suggesting that public support for Net-Zero is largely based on “nonuse” benefits, rather than direct “use” benefits to oneself. The COVID-19 epidemic affected WTP bids in a quarter of respondents. Finally, we explore how choice of positive or normative discount rate affects policy conclusions when monetizing consumer preferences.

Reducing wildfire risk through forest restoration is vital for the sustainability of watersheds and the human systems that depend upon them. However, identifying public support and securing necessary funding to cover restoration costs is an important implementation challenge. Payment for ecosystem services models may help meet restoration objectives. While examples exist that show how funds can be generated from the public living near forestlands, an unresolved issue is whether households in a relatively distant municipal area would significantly support wildfire risk reduction efforts. This is an important issue as distant households often receive benefits from wildfire risk reductions, such as water source protection for municipal drinking water supply. The objective of this paper is to analyze survey-based contingent valuation data to investigate public support among urban Albuquerque, New Mexico (NM) households for restoration of a watershed that impacts the urban water supply security, but is spatially removed from the urban area. Econometric results show evidence of both significant public support for forest restoration-linking forests to faucets- and the importance of accounting for respondent uncertainty. The latter involves both: (i) uncertainty in the preferences for water security as an important collectively provided good (“preference uncertainty”); and (ii) uncertainty in the possibility that restoration activities across a forested landscape or watershed might actually deliver improved water security (“delivery uncertainty”). Econometric estimation results from a Double Hurdle model indicate a mean annual household willingness to pay (WTP) of US$64.44 (with a 95% of confidence interval of US$61.57–US$67.31), and corresponding median WTP of US$37.76 (US$36.16–US$39.37), for forest restoration that reduces wildfire risk and provides water source protection.

Smallholder farmers in Africa rely heavily on rainfed agriculture. Those who have access to irrigation often receive it at no charge, but quantity, frequency and reliability may be limited without adequate revenue for maintenance and operation. Moreover, the absence of fees means that there are no pricing signals to encourage conservation of this scarce resource. In a situation where farmers do not pay for irrigation water use, this study investigates demand-side issues by eliciting farmers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for access to irrigation water. This study employs choice experiment (CE) and contingent valuation methods (CVMs) to value access to irrigation water, taking Ethiopia as a case in point. Unlike previous studies, this study covers current users and non-users of irrigation water using the same baseline (status quo) conditions — no irrigation — and compares the preferences of these two groups. The four attributes identified in the CE are number of crop seasons, frequency of watering in a season, crop type, and payment level. Results show that marginal WTP was Birr 17.7 (US$ 0.98), 261.8 (US$ 14.54) and 87.6 (US$ 4.87) for number of crop seasons, watering frequency in a season and crop type, respectively. Our estimates of farmers’ WTP for operation and maintenance of irrigation schemes per hectare of irrigated land range from Birr 738 (US$ 41.00) (from the CE) to Birr 784 (US$ 43.56) (from the CVM). We also find that, compared to current users, non-users were willing to pay more in general, as well as for the number of crop seasons specifically.

Though water scarcity threats are increasing in severity across many regions of the world, allocation often remains inefficient — as in Jordan, the site of this study. One commonly discussed solution for increasing resource availability in water-scarce regions is the use of recycled wastewater for irrigation. Yet, despite significant potential benefits, an oft-cited concern with wastewater reuse is its potential impact on water quality. This paper examines the impact of this solution by exploiting a natural experiment arising from complementary infrastructure investments that introduced recycled wastewater to a new region of the Jordan Valley. We study farmer preferences for wastewater reuse, as well as farm adaptation and profitability. We find no evidence of negative impacts on farm revenues or costs over the short term, and observe signs of adaptation via the shifting of production toward less-salinity sensitive crops. Contingent valuation measures of the willingness to pay for reliable recycled water supply across newly treated and comparison areas indicate resistance to the expanded reuse of wastewater, however, which suggests that farmers may believe that this shift will entail more substantial long-term costs. Furthermore, the stated willingness to pay and short-term marginal productivity of water estimates appear unrelated. These results suggest the need for caution in interpreting short-term adaptation and preference responses to policies that substantially alter irrigation choices and behaviors, and point to the need for longer-term studies of wastewater reuse.

In developing countries, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) set by the United Nations and the expectations expressed by modern local populations call for universal water access through individual connections (IC), to be achieved by 2030. An ambitious target such as this presents the challenge of how best to achieve the goal of funding high-quality but expensive water supply systems, to serve populations with low incomes. This raises the question of the assessment of the relevant households’ willingness to pay (WTP) for improved water service in rural areas, in particular in the context of developing countries. This paper examines this issue using a case study in Tunisia. As with other developing countries, Tunisia faces difficult challenges: the increasing demand for water and the inherent cost that is involved must be met whilst climate change is likely to increase the pressure on already stressed resources.

The approach applied in this paper is to assess the households’ WTP using a contingent valuation (CV) method in a dedicated field household survey in Central Tunisia. The particular governorate in which the survey was conducted was facing at the time of this study high social expectations, in particular, coming under increasing demand from inhabitants of rural communities to be individually connected to water supplies in the same way as their urban counterparts who were served by SONEDE, the national utility company.

The results of the survey reveal that non-SONEDE-piped households were not willing to pay the amount required in order to have an individual connection (the average bid was USD 443 whereas the expected contribution is above USD 800). It was found that a household’s WTP for an individual connection had a direct relationship with its trust in the current water management model, alternative modes of supply, and its socio-economic characteristics. However, if already connected, households would be willing to pay more than their current water expenses, although the amount they were willing to pay was still lower than the sustainable water cost enabling long-term maintenance of the system.

SONEDE-piped households stated a clear WTP the amount required to keep water services for the future (average bid of USD 14 to add to their current quarterly water bill of USD 14). Based on these results, this paper concludes by highlighting several policy implications.

This study explores the impact of prior experiences, environmental concern and awareness levels on pro-environmental behavior in the context of mitigation of plastic pollution. Using survey and geo-location data after a tsunami and a monsoon season, this survey employs a latent class analysis through a Generalized Structural Equation Model (GSEM) to identify similarities between groups’ willingness to pay (WTP) to mitigate macroplastic pollution in riverbeds and beaches in Indonesia. Results show that more environmentally-conscious respondents were also more sensitive to the issue of pollution while having observed more plastic pollution also increases support for pollution mitigation. Proximity to polluted waterways also increased WTP, especially to urban participants. Overall, accounting for prior experiences, environmental concern and awareness levels does lead to statistical differences between classes, with those scoring higher in these categories being also more willing to monetarily contribute to mitigate that issue. The use of such an integrated latent class model (LCM) can help with disentangling drivers of preferences, especially in the context of determining levels of support for pollution abatement in a developing country.

In the last 10 years there have been big changes in the Portuguese academic libraries services as in other academic libraries over the world. These changes include the adoption of automatic catalogues and the electronic access to bibliographic data bases and scientific journals in full text. Nowadays physical and digital sources are together. Professors, students and researchers are able to access simultaneous to a great amount of quality information pay and open access. The Portuguese Government has been investing to improve the access to the production of knowledge so as to develop the country. It is important to know the return on the investments in university libraries. The purpose of this paper is to identify the impact of the electronic sources in the Portuguese academic libraries.

This paper describes an ongoing project to assess:

- The use of electronic scientific information and the correlation to the scientific production of the Portuguese academic community according to standard performance measures indicators and bibliometrics data.

- The economic value of these library services. In order to estimate in monetary terms the value of these services for end-users we use the contingent valuation method (CVM). This study reports the results of a qualitative e-survey of academic community.

In 2009, Korea has adopted London Protocol to prevent marine pollution by dumping of wastes and other matter. Therefore, dumping the organic waste such as sewage sludge and livestock manure, and food waste water into the waters has been prohibited since 2012 and Korean government planned to increase organic waste-to-energy facilities. This study attempts to measure the external benefits of expanding organic waste-to-energy facilities using the contingent valuation (CV) method. To this end, a CV survey of 1,000 randomly selected households over the whole country was rigorously designed to comply with the guidelines for best-practice CV studies using person-to-person interviews. We employed one-and-one-half-bound dichotomous choice question format to reduce the potential for response bias in multiple-bound formats while maintaining much of the efficiency when eliciting the respondents' willingness to pay responses. Moreover, we applied the mixture model to deal with zero WTP responses. The results show that the annual mean WTP was computed to be KRW 3,598 (USD 3.43) per household, which is statistically significant at the 1% level. The national value amounts to KRW 67.3 billion (USD 64.1 million). This quantitative information can be utilized as a useful data for organizing information about expanding organic waste-to-energy facilities.