Dealing with uncertainty in public preferences for rural development policies A contingent valuation survey

Domínguez-Torreiro M.;Soliño M. Dealing with uncertainty in public preferences for rural development policies a contingent valuation survey, Regional Studies. Rural development programmes are currently envisaged as a means to foster the provision of a broad range of non-commodity outputs emanating from multifunctional rural environments. This paper presents a contingent valuation survey that analyses individuals' perceptions of and willingness to pay for the implementation of a rural development programme in Cantabria, Spain. Uncertainty in individuals' preferences is explicitly acknowledged and introduced into the analytical framework. For that purpose, a comparison is made between the open-ended and the multiple-bounded uncertainty elicitation formats. The expectation of a positive welfare change constitutes a sound argument in favour of regional rural development policies. © 2013, © 2013 Regional Studies Association

Pricing a rural development program uncertainty, indifference, and protest behaviors

This article presents an econometric approach to modeling uncertainty, unwillingness to pay, and protest behavior in contingent valuation studies. For that purpose, a mixture model with sample selection is developed for a multiple-bounded uncertainty elicitation format. The proposed theoretical framework is applied to evaluate the social welfare impact of implementing a sustainable rural development program. Results show that a “naive” analytical approach that excludes protesters from the analysis would result in significantly higher willingness to pay estimates for those individuals who favor the implementation of the program and agree to reveal their true reservation prices

Measuring social preferences for rural development in Southern Europe

It is a well-known result in both environmental economics and natural resources management that you will not be able to manage what you are not able to measure. This paper presents a dichotomous-choice contingent valuation survey that analyses individuals’ preferences for the implementation of a rural development program (RDP) that fosters the provision of non-commodity outputs in rural areas in Southern Europe. In order to account for the fact that some of the respondents show unwillingness to pay for the program, out-of-the-market individuals have been identified. According to the results of our behavioral models, prospective positive welfare changes due to policy implementation constitute a sound argument in favor of regional RDPs. Finally, higher levels of social legitimacy and social support towards RDPs will be inextricably related to the issue of being able to communicate to the wider public what the potential outcomes and expected potential benefits of RDPs will be. © 2015, University of Tehran. All rights reserved

Provided and perceived status quo in choice experiments Implications for valuing the outputs of multifunctional rural areas

This article presents a choice experiment analyzing multifunctional rural development policies targeting conservation and recovery of environmental, social and cultural assets. In choice experiments a base alternative is usually included in order to estimate the welfare change associated to policy proposals. This study is concerned with the much neglected issue of the impact on policy analysis of the definition of a 'status quo' alternative either as an objective assessment by experts, or as a self-reported perception by respondents. Convergent validity analysis and prospective policy scenarios show a significant impact of different status quo specifications on individuals' preferences and related welfare measures when complex and unfamiliar biophysical systems are involved in policy analysis and evaluation. © 2011 Elsevier B.V

Social legitimacy issues in the provision of non-commodity outputs from Rural Development Programs

This article deals with the issues of welfare measurement and preference heterogeneity for Rural Development Programs (RDPs) in Cantabria, Spain. People from urban and rural localities would benefit from improvements in the provision of public goods and externalities promoted by RDPs, but their preferences may be quite different. Heterogeneous preferences between urban and rural dwellers would hinder the proper estimation and aggregation of social welfare. Results show significant differences between rural and urban residents. However, the social legitimacy of RDPs, in terms of positive welfare changes, would prevail in both rural and urban settings. The article concludes that accurately measuring social welfare values and explaining preference patterns is a key issue for developing effective multifunctional policies. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd

Looking for a needle in a haystack : how to search for bottom‐up social innovations that solve complex humanitarian problems

The worldwide increase in societal challenges is putting pressure on humanitarian organizations to develop sophisticated approaches to leverage social innovations in the humanitarian sector. Since humanitarian problems are complex problems, with the relevant knowledge being hidden, organizational search theory advocates the application of bottom‐up and theory‐guided search processes to identify the social innovations that solve these. Unfortunately, there has been no theoretical attention to understanding which approaches apply in this context. Further, established theory‐guided bottom‐up search processes, such as the lead user method, are unsuitable to the humanitarian sector, and we lack practice examples of adequate search processes. To start addressing this gap in theory and practice, procedural action research was done with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to develop a theory‐guided bottom‐up innovation search process for the real‐life humanitarian problem of recurring floods in Indonesia. It revealed that an innovation search process for this context must differ significantly concerning its objectives and the steps to be taken from the lead user method, which was used as a starting point. Further, a comparison of the technical quality and the social impacts of the identified social innovations with social innovations identified through a non‐theory‐guided bottom‐up search process (i.e., an innovation contest) suggests the superiority of this theory‐guided search process. With this conclusion and the insights derived throughout the development of the search process, this study makes important contributions to theory development in the social and open innovation literatures and delivers important recommendations for social innovation practice in the humanitarian sector