Developing the Questionnaire

AbstractThis chapter outlines the essential topics for developing and testing a questionnaire for a discrete choice experiment survey. It addresses issues such as the description of the environmental good, pretesting of the survey, incentive compatibility, consequentiality or mitigation of hypothetical bias. For the latter, cheap talk scripts, opt-out reminders or an oath script are discussed. Moreover, the use of instructional choice sets, the identification of protest responses and strategic bidders are considered. Finally, issues related to the payment vehicle and the cost vector design are the subject of this section

Econometric Modelling: Basics

AbstractThis chapter addresses basic topics related to choice data analysis. It starts by describing the coding of attribute levels and choosing the functional form of the attributes in the utility function. Next, it focuses on econometric models with special attention devoted to the random parameter mixed logit model. In this context, the chapter compares different coefficient distributions to be used, addresses specifics of the cost attribute coefficient and it pays attention to potential correlations between random coefficients. Finally, topics related to the estimation procedure such as assuring its convergence or random draws are discussed

Ekonomiczna wycena usług ekosystemowych świadczonych przez park w Wilanowie. Badanie metodą transferu korzyści

King Jan III Sobieski (1629–1696), known as an excellent military commander who defeated the Turkish army near Vienna in 1683, was a profound nature lover. Unhappy with living in a castle in the capital city, he bought Wilanów near Warsaw, where he established his suburban residence with a beautiful baroque palace and gardens. After the World War II, the estate was nationalised, restored and turned into a museum. There are probably no trees planted by king Jan III Sobieski himself, but the Park is remarkable. It comprises gardens in various styles (baroque, neo-Renaissance, English and English-Chinese) and a nature reserve Morysin with valuable habitats of meadows and forests. Woodlands, grasslands and ponds constitute three main ecosystems in the Park. Tourists and Warsaw inhabitants appreciate the nature of the gardens and of the Morysin reserve. In addition to their unquestioned historical and cultural value, the Park ecosystems provide multiple environmental benefits. In this paper, we estimate the economic value of these benefits.Rezydencja królewska w Wilanowie to unikalne połączenie zdumiewającej architektury, historii i przyrody. Park w Wilanowie dostarcza wielu korzyści zarówno odwiedzającym go turystom, jak i mieszkańcom Warszawy. W niniejszym badaniu podjęto się oszacowania wartości ekonomicznej tych z korzyści, które mają związek z przyrodą, to jest wartości usług ekosystemowych świadczonych przez park. W oparciu o metodę transferu korzyści wartość usług ekosystemowych dostarczanych przez park w Wilanowie oszacowano na 500 tys. euro rocznie. Choć liczba wydaje się duża, jest znacznie niższa niż wartość innych świadczeń dostarczanych przez zasoby rezydencji

Benefit transfer of environmental and resource values: Progress, prospects and challenges

This article summarizes the current state and future prospects for benefit transfer of environmental and resource values. Benefit transfer is the use of pre-existing empirical estimates from primary studies at one or more sites or contexts where research has been conducted to predict welfare estimates such as willingness to pay at other, typically unstudied sites or contexts. We orient the discussion around theory, methods and practice, focusing on progress, challenges and frontiers in the literature since the review of Johnston and Rosenberger (2010, Journal of Economic Surveys). The article begins with a brief history of benefit transfer and a summary of areas in which there is methodological consensus. It then presents questions regarding the approaches most likely to promote valid and reliable transfers, and recent research to address these questions. We conclude with an examination of the gap between research and practice, and a discussion of future prospects and research needs. © 2018 Now Publishers Inc.All Rights Reserved

Mitigating strategic misrepresentation of values in open-ended stated preference surveys by using negative reinforcement

Open-ended questions are used in stated preference surveys to elicit values that individuals assign to goods and services. In some settings, the open-ended format can incite respondents to strategically misrepresent these values and, hence, it may lead to biased welfare measures. Literature has developed several methods, such as an oath or a cheap talk, to encourage truthful disclosure of preferences. These methods rely primarily on positive reinforcement by invoking positive associations of trust, honour and honesty, among others. In this paper, we propose a new approach that seeks to mitigate strategic misrepresentation of preferences by means of negative reinforcement, which arouses negative associations of, for example, mistrust and insincerity. The proposed negative reinforcement approach involves punishment for dishonesty in the form of unfavourable recoding of stated values if those are suspected of being untruthful. The approach is examined in a field survey concerning valuation of an entertainment event in the Plant Garden in Nantes, France. The survey makes value overstatement potentially attractive to respondents. We find that respondents who are aware of subsequent unfavourable recoding of insincere (i.e., overstated) values to zeros state significantly lower willingness-to-pay values than respondents who are not faced with the possible recoding of their answers. The effectiveness of the proposed negative reinforcement approach in reducing value overstatement is assessed against an existing positive reinforcement approach, namely against using the oath. Both approaches are observed to generate statistically equivalent value estimates, pointing to their similar effectiveness in mitigating incentives to overstate values