Unraveling determinants of inferred and stated attribute nonattendance: Effects on farmers’ willingness to accept to join agri-environmental schemes

Attribute nonattendance (ANA) has received very little attention in the context of willingness to accept (WTA), although an increasing number of studies analyze the preferences of ecosystem service providers toward incentive-based schemes. We add to the understanding of ANA behavior by analyzing stated and inferred ANA in a choice experiment investigating farmers’ WTA for participating in agri-environmental schemes (AES) in southern Spain. We use mixed logit models, following Hess and Hensher for the inferred ANA approach. Evidence is found of ANA behavior for both stated and inferred approaches, with models accounting for ANA clearly outperforming those that do not account for it; however, we produce no conclusive results as to which ANA approach is best. WTA estimates are only moderately affected, which to some extent is consistent with the low level of non-attendance found for the monetary attribute. Stated and inferred approaches show very similar WTA estimates. Additionally, we investigate sources of observed heterogeneity related to ANA behavior by using a sequence of bivariate probit models for each attribute. Overall, our results hint at a positive relationship between ease of scheme adoption and nonattendance to attributes. However, further research is still needed in this field.     

My favourite is not on the shelf: effects of the revealed-preference bundle on consumers' stated choice

Based on a conjoint choice experiment relating to canola oilin Japan, this article establishes and tests the impacts ofvarious measures of reference dependence on choice. Resultsshow that although reference dependence may be defined withinchoice tasks as a type of choice complexity, a broader and morelogical definition should be based on respondents' revealed-preferencebundle. This broader definition allows for a richer representationand interpretation of behaviour. It is found that referencesmay affect choices through different channels and that manyof these effects are non-linear.     

Choice Modeling and Tests of Benefit Transfer

Benefit transfer is increasingly being used by decision makers as a way of estimating environmental values suitable for use in benefit cost analysis. However, recent studies examining the validity of benefit transfer of passive use values estimated using contingent valuation have rejected the hypothesis of convergent validity. In this article, we demonstrate the usage of a form of conjoint analysis known as choice modeling for benefit transfer. Choice modeling has been touted as being particularly suitable for benefit transfer because it is possible to allow for differences in environmental quality and socioeconomic characteristics when transferring benefit estimates. We demonstrate that choice modeling is suitable for benefit transfer, particularly when the transfers involve implicit prices. Second, we examine the circumstances in which benefit transfer of choice modeling derived value estimates is likely to be most valid. Two split sample tests were undertaken to achieve this objective. The evidence from these tests indicates that transfers across different case study sites are likely to be subject to less error than those across different populations.     

Books Reviewed

Books reviewed:
Singer, S. Fred. Hot Talk Cold Science: Global Warming's Unfinished Debate
Hogg, Dominic, ed. Technological Change in Agriculture: Locking in to Genetic Uniformity
Ingersent, Ken A., and A. J. Rayner. Agricultural Policy in Western Europe and the United States
Smil, Vaclav. Feeding the World: A Challenge for the Twenty-First Century
Yang, Yongzheng and Tian, Weiming, eds. China's Agriculture at the Crossroad
Lal, Deepak. Unintended Consequences: The Impact of Factor Endowments, Culture, and Politics on Long-Run Economic Performance
Opschoor, J(Hans). B., Kenneth Button, and Peter Nijkamp, eds. Environmental Economics and Development
Hamilton, James T., and W. Kip Viscusi. Calculating Risks? The Spatial and Political Dimensions of Hazardous Waste Policy     

Modeling Recreation Site Choice: Do Hypothetical Choices Reflect Actual Behavior?

We examine the ability of revealed preference (RP), site-specific stated preference (SP), transferred SP, and joint RP–SP models to predict aggregate and individual recreation site choice in a holdout sample. For two statistical comparisons, the RP model provided the most accurate predictions of individual choices. However, the transferred SP model, applied directly or estimated jointly with the RP data, performed best in three aggregate and one individual prediction test. These findings suggest that data from well-designed and conducted SP surveys from one site can be combined with site-specific RP data from another site to generate improved models of recreation site choice.     

A Cautionary Note on Designing Discrete Choice Experiments: A Comment on Lusk and Norwood's Effect of Experiment Design on Choice-Based Conjoint Valuation Estimates

Recent Monte Carlo work on choosing experimental designs for discrete choice experiments seemed to greatly simplify this choice for applied researchers. It suggested that ( a ) commonly used designs can generate unbiased estimates for indirect utility function specifications with main effects only and main effects plus higher order terms, and ( b ) random designs are more efficient than main effects designs. We show that these results are very specific to the particular indirect utility specifications studied and do not generalize well. We further show that conclusions drawn concerning random designs are problematic and potentially dangerous for applied researchers.     

Consumer willingness to pay for farm animal welfare: mobile abattoirs versus transportation to slaughter

Consumer preferences and willingness-to-pay (WTP) for certainnon-market food process attributes were investigated using achoice experiment. Swedish consumers were found to be willingto pay a price premium for the use of mobile abattoirs for cattlebut not for broilers. We used two different survey versions,with and without an opt-out alternative. There is no evidencethat omission of the opt-out alternative leads to biased choices.In addition, respondents who chose to opt-out were no differentfrom those making trade-offs between attributes. The inclusionof an opt-out alternative has no significant effect on the marginalWTP. Based on estimated distributions of WTP and available costestimates, the market share for mobile abattoirs is predicted.Here we do find differences between the two survey versions:the version with an opt-out alternative revealed greater unobservedheterogeneity.