Measuring marginal values of noise disturbance from air traffic: Does the time of the day matter?

This paper analyzes the marginal willingness to pay for changes in noise levels related to changes in the volume of flight movements at a city airport in Stockholm, Sweden,by using a choice experiment. When estimating marginal willingness to pay for different times of the day and days of the week, we find that these vary with the temporal dimensions: mornings and evenings have higher marginal values. Interestingly, a substantial proportion of the respondents prefer no changes in the current noise level. The paper concludes with a policy discussion related to incentivebased pricing.Choice experiment; discrete choice; noise; airport

Dealing with ignored attributes in choice experiments on valuation of Sweden's environmental quality objectives

Using a choice experiment, this paper investigates how Swedish citizens value three environmental quality objectives. In addition, a follow-up question is used to investigate whether respondents ignored any attributes when responding. The resulting information is used in the model estimation by restricting the individual parameters for the ignored attributes to zero. When taking the shares of respondents who considered both the environmental and the cost attributes (52-69 percent of the respondents) into account, then the WTPs for each attribute change if the respondents who ignored the attributes have a zero WTP. At the same time, we find evidence that not all respondents who claimed to have ignored an attribute really did. However, the most commonly ignored non-monetary attributes always have the lowest rankings in terms of WTP across all three environmental objectives. Thus, our results show that instead of ignoring, respondents seem to put less weight on the attributes they claimed to have ignored.Choice experiment, environmental quality objectives, follow-up question,

Doing good with other people's money: A charitable giving experiment with students in environmental sciences and economics

We augment a standard dictator game to investigate how preferences for an environmental project relate to willingness to limit others' choices. We explore this issue by distinguishing three student groups: economists, environmental economists, and environmental social scientists. We find that people are generally disposed to grant freedom of choice, but only within certain limits. In addition, our results are in line with the widely held belief that economists are more selfish than other people. Yet, against the notion of consumer sovereignty, economists are not less likely to restrict others' choices and impose restrictions closer to their own preferences than the other student groups.dictator game, charitable giving, social preferences, paternalism

Is Fairness Blind? - The effect of framing on preferences for effort-sharing rules

By using a choice experiment, this paper focuses on citizens' preferences for effort-sharing rules of how carbon abatement should be shared among countries. We find that Swedes do not rank the rule favoring their own country highest. Instead, they prefer the rule where all countries are allowed to emit an equal amount per person, a rule that favors Africa at the expense of high emitters such as the U.S. The least preferred rule is reduction proportional to historical emissions. Using two different treatments, one where the respondents were informed about the country names and one where the country names were replaced with anonymous labels A-D, we also test whether people's preferences for effort-sharing rules depend on the framing of the problem. We find that while the ranking of the principles is the same in both treatments, the strength of the preferences is significantly increased when the actual names of the countries are used.climate change, fairness, framing, ethics, effort-sharing rules

The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth a multiple country test of an oath script

Hypothetical bias is one of the main issues bedeviling the field of nonmarket valuation. The general criticism is that survey responses reflect how people would like to behave, rather than how they actually behave. In our study of climate change and emissions reductions, we took advantage of the increasing bulk of evidence from psychology and economics that addresses the effects of making promises, in order to investigate the effect of an oath script in a contingent valuation survey. The survey was conducted in Sweden and China, and its results indicate that an oath script has significant effects on respondent behavior in answering willingness-to-pay (WTP) questions, some of which vary by country. In both countries, the share of zero WTP responses and extremely high WTP responses decreases when an oath script is used, which also results in lower variance. In China, the oath script also reduces the average WTP, cutting it by half in certain instances. We also found that the oath script has different impacts on various respondent groups. For example, without the oath script, Communist party members in China are more likely than others to have a positive WTP for emissions reductions, but with the oath script, there is no longer any difference between the groups

Paying for Mitigation: A Multiple Country Study

Unique survey data from a contingent valuation study conducted in three different countries (China, Sweden, and the United States) were used to investigate the ordinary citizen’s willingness to pay (WTP) for reducing CO2 emissions. We found that a large majority of the respondents in all three countries believe that the mean global temperature has increased over the last 100 years and that humans are responsible for the increase. A smaller share of Americans, however, believes these statements, when compared to the Chinese and Swedes. A larger share of Americans is also pessimistic and believes that nothing can be done to stop climate change. We also found that Sweden has the highest WTP for reductions of CO2, while China has the lowest. Thus, even though the Swedes and Chinese are similar to each other in their attitudes toward climate change, they differ considerably in their WTP. When WTP is measured as a share of household income, the willingness to pay is the same for Americans and Chinese, while again higher for the Swedes.climate change, willingness to pay, multi-country, China, United States, Sweden

A Fair Share - Burden-Sharing Preferences in the United States and China

Using a choice experiment, we investigated preferences for distributing the economic burden of decreasing CO2 emissions in the two largest CO2-emitting countries: the United States and China. We asked respondents about their preferences for four burden-sharing rules to reduce CO2 emissions according to their country's 1) historical emissions, 2) income level, 3) equal right to emit per person, and 4) current emissions. We found that U.S. respondents preferred the rule based on current emissions, while the equal right to emit rule was clearly least preferred. The Chinese respondents, on the other hand, preferred the historical rule, while the current emissions rule was the least preferred. Respondents overall favored the rule that was least costly for their country. These marked differences may explain the difficulties countries face in agreeing how to share costs, presenting a tough hurdle to overcome in future negotiations. We also found that the strength of the preferences was much stronger in China, suggesting that how mitigation costs are shared across countries is more important there.Climate, burden-sharing, fairness, China, United States

The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth A Multiple Country Test of an Oath Script

Hypothetical bias is one of the main issues bedeviling the field of nonmarket valuation. The general criticism is that survey responses reflect how people would like to behave, rather than how they actually behave. In our study of climate change and emissions reductions, we took advantage of the increasing bulk of evidence from psychology and economics that addresses the effects of making promises, in order to investigate the effect of an oath script in a contingent valuation survey. The survey was conducted in Sweden and China, and its results indicate that an oath script has significant effects on respondent behavior in answering willingness-to-pay (WTP) questions, some of which vary by country. In both countries, the share of zero WTP responses and extremely high WTP responses decreases when an oath script is used, which also results in lower variance. In China, the oath script also reduces the average WTP, cutting it by half in certain instances. We also found that the oath script has different impacts on various respondent groups. For example, without the oath script, Communist party members in China are more likely than others to have a positive WTP for emissions reductions, but with the oath script, there is no longer any difference between the groups.Oath script, hypothetical bias, willingness to pay

In Cod We Trust: Who Are Qualified to Decide Regarding Fisheries Management?

Trust is a key aspect in managing fisheries. Individuals with low levels of political trust are more likely to accept illegal behavior. Institutional trust depends on beliefs about institutional behavior and on how competent an institution appears to be. The success of fisheries management depends on how fishermen perceive it. Fishers can even discourage the implementation of the regulations if refusing support. Fishers respect and follow their own self-imposed operational rules to much a greater extent than rules coming from authorities. Trust within the fishing communities can make more fishers to comply with regulations which reduce the cost to monitor the individual fisher. While trust is necessary it is not alone sufficient to make fishermen comply with government regulations. In this study we analyze levels of trust between various stakeholders in fisheries. Specifically, we are interested in whether different stakeholders in fisheries consider others and themselves to have sufficient knowledge to decide regarding fisheries management. We address these questions using data from a regional survey in Sweden sent to the general public, recreational and commercial fishermen, and desk officers at three different agencies responsible for environmental, water and fisheries management, respectively. The general public and recreational fishers trust the authorities to have sufficient knowledge to manage the fisheries. However, commercial fishers do mistrust the authorities. We note that authorities mistrust the general public to have sufficient knowledge. Further, we find that all respondents are more likely to believe that they themselves have sufficient knowledge than people in general.Proceedings of the Eighteenth Biennial Conference of the International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade, held July 11-15, 2016 at Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Center (AECC), Aberdeen, Scotland, UK

Risk-taking middle-borns: A study on birth- order and risk preferences

We analyze the impacts of birth order and presence/absence of siblings on risk preferences with respect to economic, health/safety, and sport/lifestyle related risks. We study both the answer to a hypothetical lottery question and stated risky behavior and find that middle-borns are consistently less risk averse than others irrespective of the type of risk. Moreover, the answer to the lottery question is strongly correlated with economic and sport/lifestyle related risky behavior