Choice modeling at the “market stall”: Individual versus collective interest in environmental valuation

The market stall, or valuation workshop, has recently been proposed as a way of addressing some of the limitations of conventional stated preference analysis. In this paper, we attempt to combine a participatory technique similar to the “citizens' jury” with choice modelling, a stated preference technique increasingly being applied in environmental economics. Our focus is on how changes in the context of decision-making (between choices made in isolation and those made in a group setting, and between choices made on individual well being versus collective criteria) produce differences in estimated welfare measures. The empirical context used is that of water quality improvements under the Water Framework Directive, the most significant reform in water legislation in the European Union for many years. We find that the choice experiment format can be successfully implemented in a valuation workshop and that moving from individual to collective choice produces, in this instance, a rather interesting change in both values and preferences which depends on the respondent's interests.