Stated Preference Approach Research Articles

Nudging Air Travellers towards Carbon Offsetting: the Impact of an Opt-Out Default on the Offsetting Rate

Voluntary carbon offsetting is a short-term solution to compensate for the environmental harms of flying. Still, despite its benefits, the number of air travellers who use this option is low. Previous studies found evidence of the power of default settings on individuals-decision-making. Based on a survey and using the stated preferences approach, the researchers take the first step to increase the voluntary carbon offsetting uptake by introducing an opt-out default in the flight booking process scenario. The theoretical background of the idea is based on behavioural economics, especially nudging, for which 2017 Richard Thaler got the Nobel Price.

Democracy, Culture and Cancer Patients' Willingness to Pay for Healthcare Services: A Meta-analysis.

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death globally and expenditure associated with cancer is quite high. Efficient resource allocation needs information on economic evaluations of healthcare interventions. The purposes of the study are to provide a comprehensive overview of cancer patients’ willingness to pay (WTP) for healthcare services and to investigate the influence of democracies, culture dimensions, and other factors on WTP. A meta-analysis was conducted using PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar to identify all studies of stated preference approach to estimate cancer patients’ WTP healthcare services. A set of criteria was constructed for selecting relevant studies. A total of 79 studies were related to selection criteria and held sufficient information for the purposes of meta-analysis. A total of 393 estimates of WTP from 79 healthcare valuation studies were pooled to identify the links between WTP and influential factors. The findings suggest that values of benefits in healthcare services are higher in more democratic nations, but they are lower in cultural traits that are stronger indulgence and uncertainty avoidance. Further, the types of cancer matter. Compared to breast cancer, WTP is higher for skin cancer, yet lower for liver cancer and lymphoma. A higher national income and public health expenditure increase WTP for healthcare services, while a higher death rate by cancer leads to lower values of healthcare benefits.

Consumers’ Willingness to Choose a National Payment Card: A Stated Preference Approach

Consumers’ Willingness to Choose a National Payment Card: A Stated Preference Approach

Acceptance Tendency of High-Level Taxis: From the Passengers’ Perspective

In the present study, we used the stated preference approach to design different situations, including appearance, different services, and different times to further explore passengers’ acceptance of and expected price to be paid for taxi service levels. In addition to using general ordered models, the results of this study were also compared with the multinomial logit model and the partial proportional odds (PPO) model. The results of comparison between the models ultimately revealed that the PPO model statistically had a better explanatory power. In the model estimation results, the key explanatory variables included the ability to recognize the appearance, seating space, honorable service, the development of user payment concepts, and demographic grouping, all of which could increase acceptance. The results obtained in this study could provide a key reference for the classification of taxis in the Taiwan region and serve as a basis for the development of strategies by operators in the future.

ANALISIS KINERJA DAN TINGKAT PELAYANAN FASILITAS PEJALAN KAKI DI KAWASAN STASIUN KARET

Karet Station has an average number of passengers at 12,594 people per day in 2018, has a large potential of pedestrian trip generation. The basic problem experienced by pedestrians at Karet Station is when they (KRL passengers) leave the station, they cannot find a clear pedestrian path to accommodate their movement towards other public transport facilities. As the result, the pedestrians scattered and even crossed the road and stopped the public transportation arbitrarily. This activity causes a high risk of accidents and traffic flow constraints caused by reduced capacity of road section due to public transport activities while waiting, lowering, and raising passengers. The purpose of this research was to analyze the pedestrian lane characteristics, and service level based on technical guidelines and stated preferences of passangers. In this research, the primary data were collected by conducting direct surveys in study area to get characteristics of pedestrian, traffic flow, and passanger perception about pedestrian facilities performance. Analytical results from this study conclude that from technical guidelines approach, there are two sidewalk segments in the Karet Station area which require special attention with the level of service categori at C and E level, and also requires improved pedestrian crossing facilities from zebra cross type to be underpass or pedestrian bridge. Based on stated preferences approach, from the assessment of 24 service attributes, there are 6 attributes of lowest performance services included in quadrant I of Importance Performance Analysis (IPA) matrix which are the main priority that must be resolved immediately.

Recreational boaters’ preferences for boating trips associated with offshore wind farms in US waters

This study used a stated preference approach to assess potential impacts of offshore wind farms on recreational boaters in and around Rhode Island (US) waters. To develop the stated preference survey, seven focus groups were conducted with recreational boaters in Rhode Island (RI) in 2017. A combined mail and on-line choice experiment survey was administered in the spring and summer 2018 to 2500 owners of US Coast Guard-documented recreational vessels with a hailing port in Rhode Island. The survey instrument elicited recreational boaters’ preferences for particular attributes of a recreational boating trip (location, proximity to a wind farm, amount of nearby boating activity, main activity during trip, trip costs). Data were analyzed using the mixed logit model to understand how changes in individual attributes affect the acceptability of a boating trip. Findings indicate that the value of a recreational boating experience is considerably reduced in areas with offshore wind farms. Findings from this study provide valuable insights into the potential impacts of the growing offshore wind industry on one group of marine resource users and potential management strategies for addressing these impacts in the US.

Mitigating hypothetical bias by defaulting to opt-out in an online choice

ABSTRACT Hypothetical Bias (HB) is an ongoing concern for welfare estimates generated from stated preference approaches. Employing a default option has been shown to affect decision-making and outcomes in a variety of settings. We implement a split-sample design to study the effect of setting the opt-out alternative as a default choice in a Choice Experiment. Our results show that making the opt-out a default significantly decreases the willingness to pay for attributes, indicative of the presence and mitigation of potential HB. Defaulting to the opt-out alternative also causes considerable shifts in the rank of value among the attributes. This study is conducted in the context of proactive protection against bed bugs, an understudied but vexing issue to resource and recreation management as well as to the broader hospitality industry.

‘Warehouse’ or research centre? Analyzing public preferences for conservation, pre-breeding and characterization activities at the Czech genebank

Genebanks are places where crop varieties are stored, catalogued, and made available for redistribution so that their genetic diversity is not lost. Besides conserving cultivated crop diversity, some genebanks also conserve the wild relatives of crops, which can contain useful traits not present in the domesticated genepool, and can undertake other activities to make genetic diversity more usable in breeding, such as characterization and evaluation efforts and pre-breeding. We present here the results of a stated preference survey that elicits the preferences of the general Czech public for the conservation of additional wheat and wild wheat varieties, characterization and evaluation activities, and pre-breeding efforts. Czech citizens were asked whether they would be willing to make a one-time voluntary payment to finance specific, 10-year conservation programmes at the Czech genebank. Using a sequence of single-bounded dichotomous choice questions, we estimate a random effects probit model to analyze preferences for such conservation programmes. We find that Czech respondents had a strong preference for characterization and evaluation, and while they do not value pre-breeding, they are willing to pay for the conservation of additional wild wheat accessions (though not for cultivated wheat varieties). In aggregate, the estimated benefits are substantial compared to the current costs of conservation. The stated preference approach of this paper permits the estimation of the social value of crop diversity conservation and associated investments in research, including non-market values. Our results provide information of potential use for policymakers in relation to setting priorities for the funding of agricultural research.

Estimations of utility function and values of sustainable mining via the choice experiment method

Mining projects almost certainly influence the economy, society, and the environment. Accordingly, sustainable mining has economic, social and environmental attributes. Based on economic theories, researchers can obtain the value of mining based on the value of its attributes. The market may sometimes fail to evaluate some attributes, and thus researchers are increasingly using the “stated preference approach”. The present paper uses the “choice experiment” method, which is a subset of the stated preference approach for estimating the utility function and the value of effects caused by mining. A relevant questionnaire was handed out to individuals for this purpose. The conditional logit model and the calculated coefficients about the attributes of mining were shown to be capable of yielding relevant results for the utility function of sustainable mining. Furthermore, the value of sustainable mining in a mine as a case study was estimated equal to $ 11.3 per ton by calculating the willingness to pay for each of the attributes. This paper is quite new in terms of using the choice experiment technique for mine valuation as well as calculating this according to the sustainable development criteria. Estimating the preferences stated by individuals concerning the mining attributes can better assist in managing the effects. It is possible to design the mine to have the highest sustainable value and it can be the basis for comparing the mining projects.

Increasing the credibility and salience of valuation through deliberation: Lessons from the Global South

Valuation can be used for a wide range of purposes, including informing environmental decision-making, designing and evaluating policies, and acknowledging and raising awareness of the importance of the environment. A promising development in the field of environmental valuation that is receiving increasing attention is the hybridization of stated preference methods and deliberative approaches. Proponents claim that deliberative monetary valuation (DMV) can successfully address many of the limitations ascribed to more conventional monetary valuation approaches. However, DMV has scarcely been tested in contexts of the Global South thus far, where arguably, the benefits it offers may be most relevant. In this paper we study the applicability DMV on preference elicitation in a rural Indigenous community in Colombia. We find that DMV is superior to conventional stated preference approaches in terms of its capacity to elicit more considered, informed, and diverse values. Our results suggest that DMV offers learning opportunities for participants, the benefits of which are greater for those for whom conventional valuation exercises may seem too cognitively complex. We find that by the end of the deliberative workshop, participants were considering a wider range of preferences. We control for one of the main risks of DMV, which is the possibility of participants with a higher social status exercising a dominant role during the deliberative process, and do not find evidence of this being the case. Our results suggest that one of the main advantages of DMV is its capacity to capture a much broader set of values than conventional valuation approaches, including instrumental, relational and intrinsic values.

The impact of customer ratings on consumer choice of fresh produce: A stated preference experiment approach

AbstractThe importance of customer ratings or reviews in online shopping has been recognized in the previous literature; however, few have studied how online customer rating scores affect consumers’ fresh produce purchases and its importance relative to other fresh produce attributes. The quality of fresh produce demonstrates high uncertainty and variation; therefore, the impact of user‐generated content such as customer rating scores on the choice of fresh produce may be more complex than on other product categories. Moreover, previous studies on customer ratings have not examined the price premium that retailers can obtain based on better ratings of fresh produce. Using a stated preference approach (i.e., choice experiment), this study measures the willingness to pay for a higher customer rating score and explores its relative importance to other popular fresh produce attributes (i.e., organic, place of origin, and shelf life). The results show that customer rating is the second most important attribute after the place of origin and is more important than production methods (e.g., organic and naturally grown) for fresh strawberry purchases. Also, rating scores demonstrate a diminishing marginal impact on consumer willingness to pay. Younger consumers and households with children are willing to pay more for fresh produce with high ratings than those with low ratings.

Earthquake Evacuation Choice Models Based on the Stated Preference Approach for Residents in Surigao City, Philippines

Earthquake Evacuation Choice Models Based on the Stated Preference Approach for Residents in Surigao City, Philippines

Willingness to pay for long-term home care services: Evidence from a stated preferences analysis

Population aging is expected to result in an increased demand for long-term home care services world-wide. In Denmark, long-term home care is predominately provided by local municipalities and is publicly financed. This paper uses a stated preferences approach to study the willingness to pay (WTP) for various components of long-term home care services, using household taxes as the payment vehicle. In our discrete choice experiment, we ask respondents to consider a hypothetical individual – an 83-year-old woman with physical limitations who lives alone – and to choose among various service packages for her. We find that respondents, on average, have strong preferences for improving long-term home care services. However, these average results are strongly driven by positive WTP among respondents with left-wing political views. Furthermore, WTP is positively associated with age, which implies an increasing demand for improved services as longevity increases. We conclude that WTP for tax-financed, long-term home care services is closely linked to respondent characteristics.

The Economic Value of Kimhy Reserve in Backan, Vietnam

This study conducted to examine the total economic value (TEV) of Kimhy Reserve by using a combination of Stated Preference approach and Market-based approach such as market price method, replacement cost, avoidable cost. The results indicated that Kimhy Reserve has use value and non-use value. The TEV of Kimhy Reserve for adjacent community was about 3.3 billion VND per year, equivalent to USD 364.83 per household. The economic value generated from direct use value accounted for about 67%. The result also pointed out that the indirect use value was about 23%. It was clear seen that almost livelihood of the adjacent community was relative to Kimky Reserve. Given the high level of illegal natural resource extraction and wildlife trade, the livelihood of community around is affected seriously. The results of study recommend that the economic and environmental value of Kimhy Reserve should be recognized by local community. The policies should be implemented better to protect Kimhy Reserve.

Investigating college students’ choice of train trips for homecoming during the Spring Festival travel rush in China: results from a stated preference approach

ABSTRACT This study is to investigate college students’ choice of train trips for homecoming during the Spring Festival travel rush, which is triggered by two facts in China that the annual Spring Festival travel rush has been challenging the national transportation system and that the high-speed railway in China has made a great progress in the latest years. To this end, a stated choice experiment was designed, where four hypothetical train trips (two conventional and two high-speed train trips) consisted of a choice set. A survey based on this design was carried out, where 2768 valid observations were collected. Given the potential correlations within alternatives and the heterogeneity of respondents’ preferences, a latent class nested logit model was established and estimated, in which two classes were identified that one payed more attention to economy while the other cared more about services. The estimation results answered the questions that which determinants and to what extent of these determinants have influence on college students’ choice of homecoming train trips and who are more likely to choose high-speed train trips. In addition, this study also provides analysis of willingness to pay and market share changes.

Incentives to water conservation under scarcity: Comparing price and reward effects through stated preferences

Abstract Focusing on two different European institutional contexts, a stated preference approach is adopted to elicit the willingness to save water under three alternative incentive policies: a water price increase, monetary reward, and symbolic prize. In addition, two water scarcity scenarios, a ‘critical’ and a ‘regular’ scenario, are devised to analyze how information on water scarcity moderates the effect of incentives. Empirical results show that users become sensitive to monetary incentives (while they remain insensitive to non-monetary ones) when water is scarce. Batteries of pre-tests on the sample and robustness checks on the results strengthen the reliability of our findings and partially circumvent concerns related to the use of a stated preference approach. The study adds to the literature on the efficacy of economic incentives in the water sector and the role of local factors in explaining water users’ response.

Don’t judge a book by its cover: examining digital disruption in the book industry using a stated preference approach

This paper uses a market segmentation approach to examine the effects of digital disruption in the book industry. A Bayesian efficient experimental design is employed in order to develop a stated preference discrete choice experiment that incorporates an array of book formats and attributes. The experiment was conducted on a panel of Australian readers. The results were analysed using a latent class model, leading to the identification of three distinct classes of book readers. The largest class of readers is comprised of ‘technological adopters’ who demonstrate a similar willingness to read on both traditional printed book formats and newer digital ones. Members of this class rely on critical review scores to make purchasing decisions and are the youngest of the three classes. Second is a class of ‘popular readers.’ This group consists of price-sensitive readers who clearly favour reading popular fiction on traditional paper-based book formats only. The third group are ‘avid readers’ who exhibit the highest willingness to pay for books and show a desire to read books of all genres. The identification of discrete segments of readers, along with their associated price elasticities and willingness to pay figures, can assist book industry stakeholders (such as book publishers and sellers) with the development of effective strategies to guide them through the various stages of digital book formats technology adoption life cycle. Such results can also be used to help steer cultural policy makers during a period of rapid technological change and uncertainty.

An experimental approach to climate finance: the impact of auction design and policy uncertainty on renewable energy equity costs in Europe

This paper aims at shedding some lights on how policy induced uncertainty affects the cost of capital of renewable energy power plants. To this end, the paper focuses on renewable energy auctions and on the ongoing Brexit negotiations. First, the paper reviews auction frameworks across Europe and discusses the impact of the different designs on project risk. Then, a stated preference approach is leveraged to investigate how policy design and the uncertainty regarding the future arrangements between the UK and the EU contribute to determine the cost of equity for renewable energy. The results show that improved auction design can help to lower the equity cost between 0.5% and 1.5%. The evidence on Brexit is rather weak and - if anything - suggests only a higher relevance of these negotiations for English-based investors than for those based in EU27.

Disentangling public preferences for health gains at end-of-life: Further evidence of no support of an end-of-life premium

In many countries, it has been publicly debated whether health gains for patients at end-of-life (EoL) should be valued higher than health gains for other patients. This has led to a range of stated preference studies examining the justification for an EoL premium on the basis of public preferences - so far with mixed findings. In the present study, we seek to extend this literature. We apply a simple stated preference approach with illustrative binary choices to elicit both individual and social preferences for several types of health gains. More specifically, we investigate whether health gains at EoL, resulting from either an improvement in quality of life (QoL) or life expectancy (LE) are valued differently from similarly sized health gains from preventive treatment and treatment of a temporary disease. Furthermore, we examine whether social preferences are affected by the age of beneficiaries. A web-based survey was conducted in 2015 using a random sample of 1047 members of the general public in Denmark. Overall, we do not find evidence to support an EoL premium compared to other health gains, neither when preferences are elicited from a social nor an individual perspective. Furthermore, our results demonstrate that the type of the health gain received matters to preferences for treatment at EoL with more weight given to gains in QoL than gains in LE. Finally, we find heterogeneity in preferences according to respondent characteristics, perspectives and age of beneficiaries.

Physical exercise versus shorter life expectancy? An investigation into preferences for physical activity using a stated preference approach

The positive life-prolonging effect of physical activity is often used as a promotion argument to motivate people to change their behaviour. Yet the decision of investing in health by exercising depends not only on the potential health effect but also on the costs of physical activity including time costs and the individual’s (dis)utility of performing physical activity. The objective of this study was to investigate the trade-off between costs and benefits of engaging in physical activity. A web-based stated preference experiment was conducted to elicit individual preferences for physical activity among a representative sample of the Danish population, 18–60 years of age, categorised as moderately physically active or physically inactive. The results of the study suggest that perceived negative quality of life impact of physical activity is an important predictor of the choice of not attending physical activity, and hence should be acknowledged as a barrier to engaging in physical activity. Furthermore, we find time costs to have a significant impact on stated uptake. For individuals categorised as moderately active, the marginal health effect of physical activity is significant but minor. For inactive individuals, this effect is insignificant suggesting that information on long-term health effects does not work as motivation for engaging in exercise for this group. Instead, focus should be on reducing the perceived disutility of physical activity.