Short Run Constraints and the Increasing Marginal Value of Time in Recreation

Leisure activities such as local recreation trips usually take place in discrete blocks of time that are surrounded by time devoted to other commitments. It can be costly to transfer time between blocks to allow for longer outings. These observations affect the value of time within those blocks and suggest that traditional methods for valuing time using labor markets miss important considerations. This paper presents a new model for time valuation that uses non-employment time commitments to infer the shadow value of time spent in recreation. A unique survey that elicited revealed and stated preference data on household time allocation is used to implement the model. The results support the conclusion that there is an increasing marginal value of time for recreation as the trip length increases.     

冠顶式步道景观环境感知评价研究 ——以福州“福道”为例

冠顶式步道是新兴的城市步道类型，因其独特的架空结构，给使用者带来与众不同的观景游憩体验。因此从人体感知的角度切入，依托韦伯-费希纳定律的函数框架及理论内涵，对中国首条冠顶式步道——福州“福道”及其所属环境对民众的心理所产生的刺激和感知强度进行量化，获取目前民众对于该步道的各种感知反馈，分析其景观环境现状。通过研究发现，公众对于步道设计建造品质的感知、游憩健身体验、观景体验以及整体景观营造的感知突出且良好，最后针对架空行走过程中存在的一系列问题，提出相应的优化建议。     

中国当前农村公共文化设施供给:问题识别及原因分析——基于河南嵩县的实证调查

城乡统筹战略的提出标志着我国农村公共物品供给发展进入了一个新的阶段。作为公共物品的一部分,农村文化供给也明显增加。但是总量的增加并不意味着结构的改善和效率的提升。本文利用河南省嵩县调查数据,重点对我国新形势下的农村公共文化设施供需结构和供给效率进行了研究。结果表明,目前农村公共文化供给存在较为明显的供需结构失衡和供给无效等问题。造成结构失衡的主要原因在于供给的自上而下,供给无效则与干群关系恶化、农民需求表达、农民自身特点存在着密切相关的关系。     

What Are the Benefits of the Water Framework Directive? Lessons Learned for Policy Design from Preference Revelation

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) seeks to achieve good ecological status of surface waters across the European Union by 2027. The WFD guidelines explicitly recognize the economics of water management by providing exceptions to water areas with disproportionately high restoration costs. This calls indirectly for estimations of benefits lost due to non-attainment. We employ a hedonic property pricing approach on waterfront recreational properties to estimate the welfare impacts of attaining the good ecological status described by the WFD. The empirical challenge is that the quality measure proposed by the WFD specifically denotes ecological quality, whereas economically measurable water quality values are heavily dependent on recreation impacts. Intuitively, the choice of water quality measure should have an effect on estimating the value of water quality. Our data provide a unique chance to compare three alternative indicators of water quality: (1) a usability-based index, (2) subjectively reported measure and (3) the ecological status determined by the WFD. We find that an improvement in water quality is associated with a statistically significant, non-linear change in recreational property values. We show how the ecological status compares with the other two indicators, and discuss the justifiability of using revealed preference methods when the valued good is defined purely on the basis of ecological criteria.     

The Representative Consumer Approximation Bias in Discrete Choice Welfare Analysis

Discrete choice welfare analysis is essential in non-market valuation to accompany studies using choice experiments and recreation choice models. McFadden (in: Melvin, Moore, Riezman (eds) Trade, theory and econometrics: essays in honor of John S. Chipman, Routledge, London, 1999) shows that discrete choice welfare measures derived by the common representative consumer approach can be biased under nonlinear income effects, and the percentage bias increases monotonically with the size of quality improvement. We present contrary results that percentage measurement errors in such welfare measures can go either direction and provide conditions under which the direction of bias can be identified. We also show that price and non-price variables play different roles in discrete choice welfare analysis.     

A Latent Class Nested Logit Model for Rank-Ordered Data with Application to Cork Oak Reforestation

We analyze stated ranking data collected from recreational visitors to the Alcornocales Natural Park (ANP) in Spain. The ANP is a large protected area which comprises mainly cork oak woodlands. The visitors ranked cork oak reforestation programs delivering different sets of environmental (reforestation technique, biodiversity, forest surface) and social (jobs and recreation sites created) outcomes. We specify a novel latent class nested logit model for rank-ordered data to estimate the distribution of willingness-to-pay for each outcome. Our modeling approach jointly exploits recent advances in discrete choice methods. The results suggest that prioritizing biodiversity would increase certainty over public support for a reforestation program. In addition, a substantial fraction of the visitor population are willing to pay more for the social outcomes than the environmental outcomes, whereas the existing reforestation subsidies are often justified by the environmental outcomes alone.     

Willingness to Pay and the Cost of Commitment: An Empirical Specification and Test

In a static setting, willingness to pay for an environmental improvement is equal to compensating variation. In a dynamic setting, however, willingness to pay may also contain a commitment cost. In this paper we incorporate the dynamic nature of the value formation process into a stated preference study designed to test whether there is an important dynamic component (commitment cost) in stated preference values. The results clearly indicate that stated preference values can contain commitment costs and that these can be quite large: respondents offered the opportunity to delay their purchasing decisions until more information became available were willing to pay significantly less for improved water quality than those facing a now-or-never decision. These results have important consequences for the design and interpretation of stated preference data.     

旅游开发背景下城市传统文化公园景观改造探析——以南京市白鹭洲公园改造为例

在旅游经济发展热潮影响下,白鹭洲公园为配合景区旅游开发的提档升级和公园自身建设需要,近期在总体功能布局、水系与道路结构、文化娱乐设施与商业服务建筑配置、旅游项目开发等方面进行了较大规模的调整、改造和扩建。在旅游项目开发等方面取得了一定的成功,但也存在商业气氛过浓、群众性游憩功能和水环境景观质量下降等新的问题。建议在明确选择旅游文化景点或综合公园一种主体功能定位后加以相应改进。     

Convergent Validity of Contingent Behavior Responses in Models of Recreation Demand

Recreation demand modeling efforts are often limited by the range of variation in observed environmental quality. To address this limitation, the practitioners increasingly make use of contingent behavior (CB) data; i.e., asking survey respondents to forecast their trip patterns under hypothetical quality conditions. However, relatively little is known as to whether these stated responses are consistent with how households response to actual quality variation. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the convergent validity of CB data with observed trip patterns. Toward this end, we jointly model recreational lake usage in Iowa using observed and CB trip data collected from the 2004 Iowa Lake Survey. The Iowa lakes Survey collected three sets of trip data for 131 lakes in the state: (a) actual trips in 2004, (b) anticipated trips in 2005 to the same lakes given current lake conditions and (c) anticipated trips in 2005 given hypothetical improvements to a subset of the lakes. The three types of recreation demand data provide a unique opportunity to investigate the convergent validity of individual responses to actual versus hypothetical environmental conditions.     

Endogenously chosen travel costs and the travel cost model: an application to mountain biking at Moab,Utah

The travel cost model is frequently used to estimate net willingness to pay for recreation at remote sites by using the visitor's travel costs as a proxy for the price of recreation. However, some concern has been raised over the validity of using the visitor's stated travel costs as a proxy for price. This paper addresses some of these concerns, by examining the possible over-estimation of consumer surplus due to endogenously chosen travel costs. This paper extends past theoretical work for the linear model by developing a correction for endogenously chosen travel costs in more commonly used nonlinear models such as the Poisson or count data model. Also provided is the first empirical test of the presence of endogeneity and an estimate of the magnitude of the error from ignoring endogeneity in travel costs. After applying this test and the correction to data that was gathered for mountain biking at Moab, Utah the estimate of consumer surplus falls from US $153 to US $135, which is a 12% reduction.     

Convergent Validity of Revealed and Stated Recreation Behavior with Quality Change: A Comparison of Multiple and Single Site Demands

We consider the convergent validity of several demand models using beach recreation data. Two models employ multiple site data: a count data demand system model and the Kuhn–Tucker demand system model. We explore the role of existing variation in beach width in explaining trip choices, and analyze a hypothetical 100 foot increase in beach width. We compare these models to a single equation model where we jointly estimate revealed and stated preference trip data, and focus on a hypothetical scenario considering a 100 foot increase in beach width. In each case we develop estimates of the change in beach visits and the welfare impacts from the increase in width. The trip change estimates from two of the three models are similar and convergent valid, though the willingness to pay estimates differ in magnitude.     

基于客体感知的人工生态游憩地评价及开发策略——以成都市浣花溪为例

人工生态游憩地建设的成功与否基于其对游憩者吸引力大小,吸引力大小取决于游憩地本身的品质和能否符合游憩者需求。选择成都市的浣花溪作为人工生态游憩地样本,采用问卷调查分析方法,进行基于客体感知的人工生态游憩者评价。结果表明:游憩动机体现游憩者效益最大化原则;活动感知表明主体与客体具有相对一致性;吸引力因素中感知偏好最强烈是环境品质;满意度感知影响购买意愿;重游率是感知评价的结果。以此为依据,提出了了解游憩者动机,重视环境质量、稳定客源市场、克服游憩障碍、重视游憩者满意度评价等人工生态游憩地可持续发展的开发策略。     

Modelling the Effect of Chronic Wasting Disease on Recreational Hunting Site Choice Preferences and Choice Set Formation over Time

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a prion disease that affects deer, elk and other cervid wildlife species. Although there is no known link between the consumption of CWD affected meat and human health, hunters are advised to have animals from CWD affected areas tested and are advised against consuming meat from CWD infected animals (Government of Alberta 2010). We model hunter response to the knowledge that deer in a wildlife management unit have been found to have CWD in Alberta, Canada. We examine hunter site choice over two hunting seasons using revealed and stated preference data in models that incorporate preferences, choice set formation, and scale. We compare a fully endogenous choice set model using the independent availability logit model (Swait in Probabilistic choice set formation in transportation demand models. Dissertation, MIT, 1984) with the availability function approach (Cascetta and Papola in Transp Res C 9(4):249–263, 2001) that approximates choice set formation. We find that CWD incidence affects choice set formation and preferences and that ignoring choice set formation would result in biased estimates of impact and welfare measures. This study contributes to the broader recreation demand literature by incorporating choice set formation, scale and temporal impacts into a random utility model of recreation demand.     

优质猪肉供应链中超市良好质量安全行为的形成机制

超市是优质猪肉供应链的主流销售终端,其质量安全行为直接影响猪肉质量安全水平的维护和改善。超市质量安全行为是一个由供应链物流行为、环境卫生管理行为、质量追溯行为和辅助管理行为构成的复杂系统工程,其形成过程受自身因素、供应链组织因素和环境因素的影响。三种影响因素在一定的作用方式下转化形成了动力机制、促进机制、保障机制和演进机制。研究表明,超市良好质量安全行为的形成是一个在驱动力、促进力、保障力和演进力共同作用下由低级向高级循序演进的过程。     

Spring cleaning: rural water impacts, valuation, and property rights institutions

Using a randomized evaluation in Kenya, we measure health impacts of spring protection, an investment that improves source water quality. We also estimate households' valuation of spring protection and simulate the welfare impacts of alternatives to the current system of common property rights in water, which limits incentives for private investment. Spring infrastructure investments reduce fecal contamination by 66%, but household water quality improves less, due to recontamination. Child diarrhea falls by one quarter. Travel-cost based revealed preference estimates of households' valuations are much smaller than both stated preference valuations and health planners' valuations, and are consistent with models in which the demand for health is highly income elastic. We estimate that private property norms would generate little additional investment while imposing large static costs due to above-marginal-cost pricing, private property would function better at higher income levels or under water scarcity, and alternative institutions could yield Pareto improvements.     

政府行为如何促进创业活动

党的十七大报告中提出要以创业带动就业,要落实这一惠民方略,促进创业活动,改善创业环境是关键。结合我国现阶段实际情况来看,政府在改善创业环境应发挥积极作用。本文基于政府行为-创业环境-创业绩效的研究模型进行了实证性的研究。     

Economic downturns,inequality, and democratic improvements

This paper explores the extent to which discrete improvements in the democratic quality of political institutions can be explained by income inequality. Empirical tests of this relationship have generally yielded null results, though typically test an unconditional relationship. Guided by a theoretical nuance of the “new economic view” of democratization and using an instrumental variable strategy, we re-examine the relationship conditional on the state of the macroeconomy. We demonstrate that the more unequal are societies, the higher the probability of experiencing democratic improvements following economic downturns. Following growth periods, higher income inequality has a slight negative or null effect on the likelihood of democratic improvement. The conditional result provides a simple explanation for why previous literature has found largely null results concerning inequality and democratization and offers additional evidence in support of the new economic view.     

基于消费者娱乐休闲行为的RBD建设方向探讨——以长沙市为例

RBD建设是城市发展的重要研究课题,而分析城市的娱乐休闲消费行为,是合理规划建设RBD的重要途径。采用理论演绎法和现象归纳法得出生活形态、娱乐休闲态度、娱乐休闲行为、娱乐休闲场所选择的影响因素等变量体系,以长沙市RBD区域为调查对象,用大样本随机抽样调查方式获得基础数据,对生活形态和娱乐休闲态度进行聚类回归分析得到消费者类群,结合娱乐休闲消费行为进行类群命名;对娱乐休闲场所选择影响因素进行因子分析得到主要因子,与消费者类群进行对应分析揭示对应关系,基于研究结果提出RBD建设方向。     

Bank ownership structure,lending corruption and the regulatory environment

We empirically examine whether bank lending corruption is influenced by the ownership structure of banks, a country’s regulatory environment and its level of economic development. We find that corruption in lending is higher when state-owned banks or family-owned banks provide a higher proportion of credit to the economy, in both developed and developing countries. A stronger regulatory environment, either through a stronger supervisory regime or a higher quality of external audits, helps to curtail bank lending corruption if induced by family-controlled ownership, but not if induced by state-controlled ownership. We further find that controlled-ownership of banks by other banks contributes to reduce corruption in lending; the same applies to widely-held ownership of banks, but only for developed countries.     

Using Choice Experiments to Investigate the Policy Relevance of Heterogeneity in Farmer Agri-Environmental Contract Preferences

Agri-environmental contracts are used to provide incentives for nature management on private land in, e.g. the European Union. The aim of this article is to investigate preference heterogeneity for agri-environmental contracts among farmers in order to discuss potential policy improvements utilising heterogeneity. We used a choice experiment to elicit farmers’ stated preferences for afforestation contracts. Four attributes are investigated: purpose of afforestation, option of cancelling the contract, monitoring, and compensation level. All attributes present a potential conflict between farmers’ and authorities’ interests, which emphasises the importance of knowing how to handle these interests. A random parameter logit model shows that having the option to cancel the contract decreases farmers’ required compensation level and monitoring increases it. Furthermore, farmers are willing to accept a lower compensation when the aim is to protect biodiversity and ground water relative to recreation. Latent class models with class probability variables reveal discrete heterogeneity and support a division into four groups with divergent preferences. For example, a group of farmers who already have forest areas does not find the option of cancelling the contract important, whereas another group relying on the farm for income requires higher compensation. The findings indicate potential for efficiency gains from targeting the contracts.