Abstract
Subjective well-being valuation has recently grown in use with applications in the fields of environment, health, and cultural heritage. With this methodology values are based on how non-market goods impact on self-reported measures of well-being such as life satisfaction. Despite the differences in theoretical foundations of subjective well-being and preference-based valuation methods, recent applications have attempted to integrate both approaches without the complete understanding of the effects of subjective well-being on stated preference elicitation. The present study investigates the extent to which subjective well-being impacts the responses to a choice experiment in Norway. The results indicate that momentary subjective well-being does not induce a higher level of randomness in the stated choices but rather affects the preferences for attribute. We also find that self-reported well-being measures respond differently to the cost attribute in the choice experiment. Furthermore, we compute marginal willingness-to-pays for various subjective well-being categories and discuss the implications of these results for an integrated modelling of subjective well-being and preference-based valuation methods.
Highlights
Non-market valuation methods are applied to provide estimates of ecosystem service values not found in markets, and the outputs from such studies are incorporated in environmental and health policies and programmes
Since there were too few data points for the ‘very unhappy’ subjective well-being (SWB) category, it was combined with the category ‘somewhat unhappy’ to form the new SWB category of ‘not happy’
Prior to the analysis of SWB on stated choice behaviour, the factors that determine the choice of different SWB categories was assessed
Summary
Non-market valuation methods are applied to provide estimates of ecosystem service values not found in markets, and the outputs from such studies are incorporated in environmental and health policies and programmes (see e.g. Navrud and Pruckner, 1997; Hanley and Barbier, 2009). Whereas stated preference methods (i.e. contingent valuation and choice experiments) rely on constructed hy pothetical scenarios to elicit respondent preferences, revealed prefer ences (i.e. travel cost method, hedonic pricing) use observations from actual human behavior to infer preferences for non-market goods and services. An alternative to these preference-based valuation methods is the life satisfaction approach which was first introduced in the 2000s (OECD, 2018). The implication is that studies which integrate sub jective well-being frameworks with preference-based valuation methods may have to consider the differences in WTP values of different SWB categories.
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