Âé¶¹´«Ã½AV

Working Paper

What are the consequences of ignoring attributes in choice experiments? An application to ecosystem service values

Details

Citation

Colombo S, Hanley N & Christie M (2011) What are the consequences of ignoring attributes in choice experiments? An application to ecosystem service values. Âé¶¹´«Ã½AV Economics Discussion Paper, 2011-20.

Abstract
This paper investigates the sensitivity of choice experiment values for ecosystem services to ¡°attribute non-attendance¡±. We consider three cases of attendance, namely that people may always, sometimes or never pay attention to a given attribute in making their choices. This allows a series of models to be estimated which address the following questions: To what extent do respondents attend to attributes in choice experiments? What is the impact of alternative strategies for dealing with attribute non-attendance? Can respondents self-report non-attendance? Do respondents partially attend to attributes, and what are the implications of this for willingness to pay estimates? Our results show that allowing for the instance of ¡°sometimes attending¡± to attributes in making choices offers advantages over methods employed thus far in the literature.

Keywords
Choice experiments; attribute non-attendance; Biodiversity; ecosystem services; stated preference; Environmental economics; Public goods Cost effectiveness

JEL codes

  • Q50: Environmental Economics: General
  • Q51: Valuation of Environmental Effects
  • Q57: Ecological Economics: Ecosystem Services; Biodiversity Conservation; Bioeconomics; Industrial Ecology

Title of seriesÂé¶¹´«Ã½AV Economics Discussion Paper
Number in series2011-20
Publication date online31/12/2011
URL

Files (1)