Valuing high-seas ecosystem conservation

The high seas provide a variety of ecosystem services that benefit society. There have, however, been few attempts to quantify the human welfare impacts of changes to the delivery of these benefits. We assessed the values of several key ecosystem service benefits derived from protecting ecosystems in the high seas of the Flemish Cap through choice experiments conducted in Canada, Norway, and Scotland. Rather than solely eliciting public willingness to pay, we also explored the determinants of variance in the estimates of willingness to pay. We aimed to determine how much respondents were willing to pay for high-seas ecosystems conservation, which factors influence individuals’ willingness to pay, and whether individuals in Canada had a higher willingness to pay relative to those living in Norway and Scotland. This latter point captures distance-decay effects. On average, the public placed positive value on conserving high-seas ecosystems and on developing economic activities related to the exploitation and exploration of marine resources, despite a lack of awareness and familiarity with these environments. Distance-decay effects on willingness to pay were not clear. Scots had the highest willingness to pay and the Norwegians the lowest willingness to pay for all attributes, with the only exception being willingness to pay for a large increase in new jobs, in which case Canadians’ willingness to pay was higher than Scots’. The public's willingness to pay was influenced by sociodemographic characteristics and their perceptions of high-seas ecosystems. Our results provide evidence of the impacts of high-seas governance on human welfare and that improved governance could increase the value people place on high-seas ecosystems and the services they produce.     

ToSIA—A tool for sustainability impact assessment of forest-wood-chains

Within the forest sector, the sustainability concept has evolved from a narrow focus on sustainable wood production to a much broader evaluation of environmental, social, and economic sustainability for whole value chains. A new software tool - ToSIA - has been developed for assessing sustainability impacts of Forest-Wood-Chains (FWCs). In the approach, FWCs are defined as chains of production processes (e.g. harvesting-transport-industrial processing), which are linked with products (e.g. a timber frame house). Sustainability is determined by analysing environmental, economic, and social sustainability indicators for all the production processes along the FWC. The tool calculates sustainability values as products of the relative indicator values (i.e. indicator value expressed per unit of material flow) multiplied with the material flow entering the process. Calculated sustainability values are then aggregated for the segments of the FWC or for the complete chain. The sustainability impact assessment requires carefully specified system boundaries. ToSIA uses a data-oriented approach that is very flexible in the focus of the analysis and the selection of indicators of sustainability. An example of alternative Norway spruce management systems in Southern Germany and their effects on six sustainability indicators is presented. The less intensive management system with natural regeneration and motor-manual harvesting shows higher carbon storage and slightly less energy use. It creates more employment and higher labour costs, but the average rate of accidents is also higher. ToSIA offers a transparent and consistent methodological framework to assess sustainability impacts in the forest-based sector as affected, e.g. by changes in policies, market conditions, or technology. The paper discusses strengths and limitations of the approach and provides an outlook on further development perspectives of the methodology.     

Income inequality and willingness to pay for environmental public goods

We study how the distribution of income among members of society, and income inequality in particular, affects social willingness to pay (WTP) for environmental public goods. We find that social WTP for environmental goods decreases (increases) with income inequality if and only if environmental goods and manufactured goods are substitutes (complements). We derive adjustment factors for benefit transfer to control for differences in income distributions between a study site and a policy site. For illustration, we quantify how social WTP for environmental public goods depends on the respective income distributions for empirical case studies in Sweden and the World at large. We find that the adjustment for income inequality can be substantial.     

绿色消费认知和意愿的行为学调查与分析

绿色消费是解决当前中国环境污染的重要战略组成部分,本文研究了对上海市开展的关于绿色消费1200余份调查问卷。研究结果显示:1)人们环境意识和绿色消费意愿普遍提高,98%的受访者愿意为保护环境做出自身行为的改变。2)绿色消费认知参差不齐。对绿色产品的认知渠道不多,绿色产品的标签知晓率低于30%。3)绿色消费意愿强烈但支付能力还有限,82%的消费者愿意购买绿色产品,但支付不能超过同类普通商品10%的额外费用。研究结果还表明:绿色消费与性别、年龄、职业以及学历等具有相关关系。     

Public Willingness to Pay for Recovering and Downlisting Threatened and Endangered Marine Species

Abstract: Nonmarket valuation research has produced economic value estimates for a variety of threatened, endangered, and rare species around the world. Although over 40 value estimates exist, it is often difficult to compare values from different studies due to variations in study design, implementation, and modeling specifications. We conducted a stated‐preference choice experiment to estimate the value of recovering or downlisting 8 threatened and endangered marine species in the United States: loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta), leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea), North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis), North Pacific right whale (Eubalaena japonica), upper Willamette River Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), Puget Sound Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), Hawaiian monk seals (Monachus schauinslandi), and smalltooth sawfish (Pristis pectinata). In May 2009, we surveyed a random sample of U.S. households. We collected data from 8476 households and estimated willingness to pay for recovering and downlisting the 8 species from these data. Respondents were willing to pay for recovering and downlisting threatened and endangered marine taxa. Willingness‐to‐pay values ranged from $40/household for recovering Puget Sound Chinook salmon to $73/household for recovering the North Pacific right whale. Statistical comparisons among willingness‐to‐pay values suggest that some taxa are more economically valuable than others, which suggests that the U.S. public's willingness to pay for recovery may vary by species.     

Can Eco-Labels Tune a Market? Evidence from Dolphin-Safe Labeling

In this paper we test whether the dolphin-safe labels altered consumer purchases of tuna. We also provide a partial measure of the total welfare effects of the dolphin-safe labeling policy. The results confirm our hypothesis that the dolphin–tuna controversy and the subsequent implementation of dolphin-safe labeling affected consumer behavior. Further, the paper provides market-based evidence that consumers can respond to eco-labels; the dolphin-safe label increased the market share of canned tuna. The welfare analysis provides a partial measure of society's willingness to pay to avoid personally contributing to dolphin mortality as a result of tuna fishing.     

Public perception of river fish biodiversity in four European countries

Public support for biodiversity conservation is shaped by people's values and their knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes toward the environment. We conducted the first multinational representative survey of the general public's perceptions of river fish biodiversity in France, Germany, Norway, and Sweden. For the online survey, 1000 respondents per country were randomly selected from large panels following country-specific quotas set on age, gender, and educational level. Questions covered people's level of knowledge, beliefs, values, and attitudes toward river fish, environmental threats, and conservation measures. We found that the public had limited knowledge of freshwater fishes. Two non-native species, rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis), were widely perceived as native, whereas native Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) was mostly classified as native in Scandinavia and largely as non-native in central Europe. These results suggest an extinction of experience paralleling the extirpation or decline of salmon stocks in countries such as Germany and France. Respondents thought pollution was the dominant threat to riverine fish biodiversity. In reality, habitat loss, dams, and the spread of non-native fishes are equally important. Despite limited biological knowledge, respondents from all countries held an overwhelmingly proecological worldview, supported conservation stocking, and appreciated native fishes, although only a minority interacted with them directly. Differences among the 4 countries related to several conservation issues. For example, threats to biodiversity stemming from aquaculture were perceived as more prevalent in Norway compared with the other 3 countries. Promoting fish conservation based on charismatic species and use values of fishes may work well in countries with a strong economic and cultural link to the freshwater environment, such as Norway. In countries where people rather abstractly care for nature, focusing conservation messaging on broader ecosystem traits and non-use values of fishes is likely to win more support.     

Valuing non-market benefits derived from allotments in southeast England: A contingent valuation study

The English derive a wide range of values from allotments, but nearly 35% of allotments have disappeared in the last 20 years. The real value of allotments has probably been underestimated. The contingent valuation method (CVM) was used to give a monetary value to benefits derived from allotments by allotment holders and local residents. The study was conducted in southeast England (Wye and Ashford, Kent and Greater London). A postal survey with open-ended questions was filled in by 124 allotment holders and 74 residents. Respondents were asked to express their maximum willingness to pay for allotments (WTP) and the minimum willingness to accept (WTA) compensation for loss of allotments. The mean annual WTP for keeping allotments of allotment holders were £78.93, £35.64 and £79.43, and for local residents were £41.66, £46.14 and £283.57, in Wye, Ashford and London, respectively. The allotment holders' WTP was strategically more than WTA compensation and they were only willing to pay rent for using allotments, not for retaining them.     

Characterizing Spatial Uncertainty when Integrating Social Data in Conservation Planning

Recent conservation planning studies have presented approaches for integrating spatially referenced social (SRS) data with a view to improving the feasibility of conservation action. We reviewed the growing conservation literature on SRS data, focusing on elicited or stated preferences derived through social survey methods such as choice experiments and public participation geographic information systems. Elicited SRS data includes the spatial distribution of willingness to sell, willingness to pay, willingness to act, and assessments of social and cultural values. We developed a typology for assessing elicited SRS data uncertainty which describes how social survey uncertainty propagates when projected spatially and the importance of accounting for spatial uncertainty such as scale effects and data quality. These uncertainties will propagate when elicited SRS data is integrated with biophysical data for conservation planning and may have important consequences for assessing the feasibility of conservation actions. To explore this issue further, we conducted a systematic review of the elicited SRS data literature. We found that social survey uncertainty was commonly tested for, but that these uncertainties were ignored when projected spatially. Based on these results we developed a framework which will help researchers and practitioners estimate social survey uncertainty and use these quantitative estimates to systematically address uncertainty within an analysis. This is important when using SRS data in conservation applications because decisions need to be made irrespective of data quality and well characterized uncertainty can be incorporated into decision theoretic approaches.     

Averting expenditure and the cost of pollution

The paper considers the relationship between the willingness to pay for environmental quality and averting expenditures—that is, the costs of measures undertaken in efforts to counteract the consequences of pollution. The models used assume perfect mobility among locations with different levels of environmental quality. The major results are: (1) Averting expenditures are not in general a good measure of willingness to pay; (2) averting expenditures are not always even a lower bound on willingness to pay; (3) even when averting expenditures are a lower bound, the difference between the level of such expenditures and willingness to pay cannot be attributed to the unavertible “aesthetic” consequences of pollution.     

Can household consumers save the wild fish? Lessons from a sustainable seafood advisory

Conservation organizations seeking to reduce over-fishing and promote better fishing practices have increasingly turned to market-based mechanisms such as environmental sustainability labels (eco-labels) in order to shift patterns of household consumption. This paper presents an analysis of consumer response to an advisory for sustainable seafood adopted by a regional supermarket in the United States. The advisory consisted of a label in which one of three traffic light colors was placed on each fresh seafood product to inform consumers about its relative environmental sustainability. Green meant “best” choice, yellow meant “proceed with caution,” and red meant “worst choice”. Using a unique product-level panel scanner data set of weekly sales and taking advantage of the random phase-in of the advisory by the retailer, we apply a difference-in-differences identification strategy to estimate the effect of the advisory on overall seafood sales as well as the heterogeneous impact of the advisory by label color and whether the seafood met additional health-related criteria. We find evidence that the advisory led to a statistically significant 15.3% decline in overall seafood sales, a statistically significant 34.9% decline in the sale of yellow labeled seafood, and a statistically significant 41.3% decline in the sale of yellow labeled seafood on a mercury safe list. We find no statistically significant difference in sales of green or red labeled seafood.     

A note on the willingness to pay approach to the valuation of longevity

A modification of Freeman's model of willingness to pay for reduction of environmental risk to life is presented. Rather than treating work-related, consumption-related, and exogenous hazards as additive components of an overall level of safety, the revised model acknowledges the interdependence of these components. The results derived from this approach imply that (a) willingness to pay for a marginal reduction in risk depends upon the individual's initial level of utility; and (b) willingness to pay for a reduction in a given component of safety is related to the level of each component risk. The results of the revised model become more dramatic at higher levels of risk.     

Microcredit and willingness to pay for environmental quality: Evidence from a randomized-controlled trial of finance for sanitation in rural Cambodia

Low willingness to pay (WTP) for environmental quality in developing countries is a key research question in environmental economics. One explanation is that missing credit markets may suppress WTP for environmental improvements that require large up-front investments. We test the impact of microloans on WTP for hygienic latrines via a randomized controlled trial in 30 villages in rural Cambodia. We find that microcredit dramatically raises WTP for improved latrines, with 60% of households in the Financing arm willing to purchase at an unsubsidized price, relative to 25% in the Non-financing arm. Effects on latrine installation are positive but muted by several factors, including a negative peer effect: randomly induced purchases by neighbors reduce a household's probability of installing its own latrine. On methodological grounds, this paper shows that a “decision-focused evaluation” can be integrated into academic analysis to provide insight into questions of general interest.     

Willingness to pay to protect cold water corals

There is increasing pressure to use currently untapped resources in the deep sea, raising questions regarding ecosystem service trade-offs in these often unknown areas. We assessed the trade-offs between protection of cold-water coral reefs and economic activities, such as fisheries and petroleum extraction, through a survey of a representative sample of the populations of Norway and Ireland. Choice-experiment surveys were conducted in workshop settings and through the internet. Both survey approaches provided some similar results, such as preferences for protection. Our cross-country comparison showed the general public in Norway and Ireland was willing, despite possible conflict with extractive and consumptive economic activities in the deep sea, to protect cold-water corals as habitat for fish. On average, people were willing to pay NKr 341 and NKr 424 for a small and large increase in protected areas respectively, and NKr 880 if the area is important habitat for fish, all else held equal. However, there was large variation across individuals and countries. Norwegian respondents valued pure existence of cold-water corals more than the Irish respondents, and the latter were less willing to trade off industrial activities than the former. Nonetheless, the findings support conservation of cold-water corals and more generally of ocean environments that provide habitat for fish, which the current deep sea governance systems are not adequately designed or sufficiently well-structured to secure.     

Trophy hunters’ willingness to pay for wildlife conservation and community benefits

In the face of fundamental land‐use changes, the potential for trophy hunting to contribute to conservation is increasingly recognized. Trophy hunting can, for example, provide economic incentives to protect wildlife populations and their habitat, but empirical studies on these relationships are few and tend to focus on the effects of benefit‐sharing schemes from an ex post perspective. We investigated the conditions under which trophy hunting could facilitate wildlife conservation in Ethiopia ex ante. We used a choice experiment approach to survey international trophy hunters’ (n = 224) preferences for trips to Ethiopia, here operationalized as trade‐offs between different attributes of a hunting package, as expressed through choices with an associated willingness to pay. Participants expressed strong preferences and, consequently, were willing to pay substantial premiums for hunting trips to areas with abundant nontarget wildlife where domestic livestock was absent and for arrangements that offered benefit sharing with local communities. For example, within the range of percentages considered in the survey, respondents were on average willing to pay an additional $3900 for every 10 percentage points of the revenue being given to local communities. By contrast, respondents were less supportive of hunting revenue being retained by governmental bodies: Willingness to pay decreased by $1900 for every 10 percentage points of the revenue given to government. Hunters’ preferences for such attributes of hunting trips differed depending on the degree to which they declared an interest in Ethiopian culture, nature conservation, or believed Ethiopia to be politically unstable. Overall, respondents thus expressly valued the outcomes of nature conservation activities—the presence of wildlife in hunting areas—and they were willing to pay for them. Our findings highlight the usefulness of insights from choice modeling for the design of wildlife management and conservation policies and suggest that trophy hunting in Ethiopia could generate substantially more financial support for conservation and be more in line with conservation objectives than is currently the case.     

Using a choice experiment and birder preferences to guide bird‐conservation funding

Conservation of biodiversity, including birds, continues to challenge natural‐area managers. Stated‐preference methods (e.g., choice experiment [CE]) are increasingly used to provide data for valuation of natural ecosystems. We used a CE to calculate birders’ willingness to pay for different levels of bioecological attributes (threatened species, endemic species, and diversity) of birding sites with hypothetical entry fees. The CE was delivered at popular birding and avitourism sites in Australia and the United Kingdom. Latent‐class modeling results revealed heterogeneous preferences among birders and correspondingly variable willingness to pay. Four clear groups were apparent: quantity‐driven birders, special‐birds seekers, confused respondents, and price‐is‐no‐object birders. Quantity‐driven birders were attracted to sites that deliver high levels of diversity and endemic species for which they were willing to pay $135 and $66 to visit, respectively, above what they were willing to pay to visit a site with low levels of diversity and few endemic and threatened species . Special‐bird seekers valued threatened species and high levels of endemic species most (willingness to pay $45 and $46, respectively). Confused respondents’ preferences were difficult to determine, but they were the most sensitive to the hypothetical entry fees, unlike the price‐is‐no‐object birders, who were not at all sensitive to cost. Our findings demonstrate that birders are amenable to paying for their preferred birding experience. These payments could provide an alternative source of funding in some avitourism sites on both public and private land. Such alternative revenue streams should be explored and given full consideration in increasingly competitive conservation‐financing environments.     

Environmental values and willingness to pay for a protected area: a segmentation of Italian university students

The study investigated students’ attitudes and willingness to pay (WTP) for the protection of some environmental values. The empirical study refers to a site located in Southern Italy and inserted into the Natura 2000 European Network. Students were segmented according to their appreciation of environmental values and the WTP for them. We considered two scenarios of the study site – of use and non-use – and four values – recreational, educational, bequest and existence. Five clusters, from the ‘unconcerned’ to the ‘committed’ one, reveal a diversity of profiles across the sample. Segmentation results point out the multifunctionality of the environmental heritage and highlight the heterogeneity of students’ environmental profiles.     

A calibrated auction-conjoint valuation method: Valuing pork and eggs produced under differing animal welfare conditions

This paper develops a valuation method which generates consistent and systematic estimates of people's preferences for complex multi-attribute goods by inextricably linking auction bids with conjoint ratings. The advantage of the valuation approach is that it permits the estimation of people's values for many potential goods, allows one to decompose people's values for a good into its sub-components, and permits the study of preference heterogeneity without distributional assumptions. We apply the method to an important and increasingly controversial topic: animal welfare. The method is used to determine people's preferences for eggs and pork produced from different production systems. Data from experiments conducted in three diverse U.S. locations (Chicago, IL; Dallas, TX; and Wilmington, NC) indicates that people are, on average, willing to pay $0.95 more for a dozen eggs raised in an aviary, pasture system vs. a cage system, and are willing to pay $2.02 more for two-pounds of pork chops raised in a pasture system as opposed to a crate system.     

Determination of metals in printed wiring boards of waste mobile phones

Metal contents of waste mobile phones represent a major environmental risk, especially considering the adoption of inappropriate management options in developing countries including open burning and disposal into surface water bodies. In this study the metal contents of mobile phone printed wiring board (PWB) samples were assessed. Sixty-two waste mobile phones of 15 brands were collected, dismantled, and their PWB samples were analyzed for Cu, Pb, Ag and Cd. The metal concentrations in the samples varied widely between and within brands. Among these metals, Cu and Pb were found to be at very high concentrations. The range (mean?±?SD) of Cu and Pb concentrations were 94.1–532?g?kg^?1 (250?±?92.3?g?kg^?1) and 7.0–46.2?g?kg^?1 (20.1?±?8.4?g?kg^?1), respectively. All Cu and Pb concentrations exceeded toxicity threshold limit concentration (TTLC) regulatory limits used in characterizing wastes as hazardous in the state of California, USA. The mean Cu and Pb concentrations exceeded the corresponding TTLC limits by factors of 100 and 20, respectively. The Ag and Cd concentrations were in the range 59.4–759?mg?kg^?1 (mean 227?±?104?mg?kg^?1) and ND – 15.6?mg?kg^?1 (2.1?±?3.3?mg?kg^?1), respectively.     

A note on the use of property values in estimating marginal willingness to pay for environmental quality

The principle purpose of this paper is to discuss the theoretical background of the use of property values in estimating damage function. In the first part of the paper a general equilibrium model is constructed in which environmental quality differences are capitalized into land rents. In the second part of the paper some of the assumptions needed for this result are scrutinized, and it is found that they are hardly realistic. The main conclusion is, thus, that the study of property values cannot give viable estimates of the marginal willingness to pay for environmental quality.