What are the consequences of ignoring attributes in choice experiments? Implications for ecosystem service valuation

Sergio Colombo, Mike Christie, Nick Hanley

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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 ignore attributes in choice experiments? What is the impact of alternative strategies for dealing with attribute non-attendance? Can respondents reliably self-report non-attendance? Do respondents partially attend to attributes, and what are the implications of this? 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.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)25-35
Number of pages11
JournalEcological Economics
Volume96
Early online date11 Oct 2013
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2013

Keywords

  • Choice experiments
  • Ecosystem services
  • Valuation
  • UK Biodiversity Action Plan

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