The Benefits of Local Forest Recreation in Austria and Its Dependence on Naturalness and Quietude

The benefits of local recreation in the State-owned forests in Austria (i.e., about 15% of all Austrian forests) are ascertained in this paper. A representative survey of households dealt with their local recreation, perceptions of and disturbances in forests. Total annual benefits of local recreation activities in State-owned forests, such as walking, hiking, cycling and wildlife observation, amount to about EUR 500 per person. Based on the respondents’ valuation of the degree of naturalness and quietude, as well as the options of forest management, the current management increases recreation benefits by EUR 13 per person through increased naturalness, and EUR 1.30 per person and year through increased quietude. Emphasis was placed on the benefits of the current management regime of multifunctional forestry compared to the benefits of a baseline scenario that was drafted specifically for this study, assuming higher levels of lumbering up to the limits allowed by existing nature conservation and forestry laws. The results suggest that forest management has a higher impact on recreational benefits through the naturalness of forests than through reducing artificial noise. A more sustainable forest management could further increase the benefits people derive from both naturalness and lower levels of artificial noise

A More Flexible Model or Simply More Effort? On the Use of Correlated Random Parameters in Applied Choice Studies

The random parameter logit model has become the dominating model for analyzing stated choice data in environmental valuation. The unrestricted version of the model with correlated random parameters, however, is rarely applied. An important advantage of this specification is that the correlations between the parameters are not restricted to zero. These correlations can arise due to a behavioural phenomena or scale heterogeneity. One consequence of this might be that derived willingness-to-pay or to-accept estimates are under- or overestimated, providing decision makers with incorrect estimates. We compare both model specifications using data from a study about farmers’ willingness to accept compensation for implementing agri-environmental measures in Brandenburg, Germany. For this data both model specifications - with and without correlated random parameters - provide similar willing-to-accept estimates, but the model with correlations performs better despite the higher number of parameters. As our findings could be case study specific, we want to encourage especially applied researchers to estimate also specifications with correlated random parameters. Applying only models with uncorrelated random parameters can result in biased estimates and thus provide incorrect information to decision makers.The authors are grateful to Andreas Horbat for his contribution to the development of the survey and its implementation. We also acknowledge the financial support from the Federal German Ministry of Education and Research for the project “NITROLIMIT II - Nitrogene limitation in freshwaters: Is nitrogen reduction ecologically meaningful and economically feasible?“ (FKZ: 033W015DN). Additionally, we want to thank the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through grant ECO2017-82111-R and the Basque Government through grant IT-642- 13 (UPV/EHU Econometrics Research Group)

Comparing the performance of different approaches to deal with attribute non-attendance in discrete choice experiments: a simulation experiment

There is a growing body of literature acknowledging that respondents to DCE often use simplifying strategies, like ignoring one or several attributes to provide with their choices. Two main approaches have appeared to analyse the impact of attribute non-attendance on welfare estimates: the stated non-attendance (SNA) approach and the analytical non-attendance (ANA) approach. Using simulation experiments, this paper investigates the results and reliability of the approaches developed in the recent years in order to deal with attribute non-attendance. The simulation results indicate that the treatments so far proposed are not in all cases suitable. In the absence of correlated errors, the SNA approach seems to provide with unbiased welfare estimates but the ANA approach fails to do so. On the other hand, in the presence of correlated errors, none of the approaches seems to provide with unbiased WTP estimates in all cases.simulation, discrete choice experiments, willingness to pay, attribute non attendance

To Pay or Not to Pay: Competing Theories to Explain Individuals’ Willingness to Pay for Public Environmental Goods

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.Several theories have been proposed in an attempt to explain individuals’ willingness to pay (WTP) for public environmental goods. While most studies only take into account a single theory, this article discusses competing theories. These include, in addition to a basic economic model, the theory of public goods, Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior, and Schwartz’s norm-activation model. Empirical results are based on a contingent valuation study of biodiversity in German forests. Multivariate analyses demonstrate that studies using single theories omit crucial explanatory variables and, hence, might be misleading. Economic models of WTP have proven to be incomplete, that is, they have restricted explanatory power and need to be supplemented by psychological and sociological models. Furthermore, a general finding is that factors influencing WTP are different for “in-principle WTP” on the one hand and “amount of WTP (given in-principle WTP)” on the other. Income, for example, does not affect whether individuals are willing to pay at all, but significantly influences how much they are willing to pay

Jahresgutachten des Wissenschaftlichen Beirates Globale Umweltfragen: Im Prinzip lösbar, aber…

Der Wissenschaftliche Beirat der Bundesregierung Globale Umweltfragen hat sein Jahresgutachten 1995 unter den Titel "Welt im Wandel. Wege zur Lösung globaler Umweltprobleme" gestellt. Neben der Umweltbildung sind die internationalen Vereinbarungen zur Lösung globaler Umweltprobleme das zentrale Thema dieses Gutachtens

Zur Umsetzung einer dauerhaft-umweltgerechten Entwicklung: Umweltgutachten 1996

Der Rat von Sachverständigen für Umweltfragen hat der Bundesregierung jüngst das regelmäßig zu erstellende Umweltgutachten und ein Sondergutachten über die dauerhaft-umweltgerechte Nutzung ländlicher Räume übergeben

Umweltreport DDR des IÖW: Ökologischer Umbau der DDR

Die Möglichkeiten und Chancen für die Umweltpolitik in der DDR unter den veränderten Bedingungen seit November letzten Jahres im Ansatz aufzuzeigen, ist die Absicht eines Gutachtens, das vom IÖW Ende Februar für den Parteivorstand Der GRÜNEN erstellt wurde. Durch die Situation des Umbruchs in der DDR bietet sich auf der einen Seite die Chance, Fehlentwicklungen der Vergangenheit zu korrigieren und Weichenstellungen für eine ökologische Erneuerung vorzunehmen. Auf der anderen Seite müssen aber auch die Risiken gesehen werden, die von der einseitigen Anlehnung an die bundesdeutschen Verhältnisse ausgehen. Risiken in dem Sinn, daß Entwicklungen der bundesdeutschen Umweltpolitik lediglich wiederholt und somit auch die Fehler dieser Politik übernommen werden. Es galt ferner aufzuzei-gen, daß die -zur Zeit von fast allen geforderte - Einführung der Marktwirtschaft insbesondere im Bereich des Umweltschutzes kein "Allheilmittel" sein kann

A modelling approach for allocating land-use in space to maximise social welfare - exemplified on the problem of wind power generation

Land-use conflicts arise if land is scarce, land-use types are mutually exclusive, and vary in their effects with regard to more than one incongruent policy objective. If these effects depend on the spatial location of the land-use measures the conflict can be mediated through an appropriate spatial allocation of land use. An example of this conflict is the welfare-optimal allocation of wind turbines (WT) in a region in order to achieve a given energy target at least social costs. The energy target is motivated by the fact that wind power production is associated with relatively low CO2 emissions and is currently the most efficient source of renewable energy supply. However, it is associated with social costs which comprise energy production costs as well as external costs caused by harmful impacts on humans and biodiversity. We present a modelling approach that combines spatially explicit ecological-economic modelling and choice experiments to determine the welfare-optimal spatial allocation of WT in Western Saxony, Germany. We show that external costs are significant. The welfare-optimal sites are therefore not those with the highest energy output (i.e., lowest production costs). However, they show lower external costs than the most productive sites. A sensitivity analysis reveals that the external costs represent about seven percent of the total costs (production costs plus external costs). Increasing the energy production target increases both production and external costs. The absolute (percentage) increase of production costs is higher (lower) than that of external costs. --choice experiment,ecological-economic modelling,externality,spatial allocation,welfare-optimal,wind power

Vernachlässigte Nachfrage aufgezeigt

Der zu erwartende Klimawandel wird manche Regionen stark betreffen. Beson­ders gefährdet ist die Nordseeinsel Sylt. Inwiefern sollte zum Beispiel das Wat­tenmeer vor den Folgen des Klimawandels geschützt werden? Um die erwarte­ten Auswirkungen auch ökonomisch zu bewerten, wurde im Rahmen eines inter­disziplinären Verbundprojektes im Frühjahr 1999 eine Zahlungsbereitschafts-analyse durchgeführt, deren Ergebnisse jetzt vorliegen (1)

Monetarisierung in der ökologischen Ökonomie!?

Folgt aus dem Ansatz der ökologischen Ökonomie eine Abkehr von der monetären Bewertung von Natur und Landschaft? Eine nähere Betrachtung der damit gewonnenen Informationen legt nahe, daß auch eine ökologische Ökonomie nicht auf diesen Bewertungsansatz verzichten kann. Aber sie kann wissenschaftlich begründete Grenzen für die Monetarisierung aufzeigen