Abstract
This study offers a Choice Experiment (CE) analysis of geographical scope effects. About 500 stated preference surveys were conducted to estimate willingness-to-pay (WTP) for nature protection in the Netherlands and the Caribbean Netherlands which became part of the Netherlands’ constitution just before the survey, providing a unique policy setting. Two version of the CE were implemented with a narrow or a broader geographical scope. Estimation of error correction mixed logit models resulted in the following main insights. First, the hypothesis of scope invariance is rejected since expanding the geographical scope influenced WTP values for nature protection. As an illustration, policies of preventing a degradation of nature have an average WTP of about €20 in the experiment with the smaller geographical scope, while this WTP is not significantly different from zero in the experiment with the more extensive scope. Second, evidence of scope sensitivity of WTP to the levels of nature protection is mixed, and depends on the geographical scope of the CE. We find a sizable WTP for protection of nature in Caribbean Netherlands among citizens of the mainland of the Netherlands, which supports the observed sizable funding of the Dutch government for nature management in the Caribbean Netherlands.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 41-58 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| Journal | Journal of Integrative Environmental Sciences |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 1 Mar 2018 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2018 |
Funding
This work was supported by World Wildlife Fund of the Netherlands; Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture, and Innovation (EL&I). We thank Brigitte Bendermacher of Multiscope for the online research facilitation. Next, we are very grateful to Hayo Haanstra, Guus Schutjes and Astrid Hilgers of the Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture, and Innovation (EL&I) and to Carel Drijver of the World Wildlife Fund of the Netherlands (WWF-NL) for their financial support of this study. We want to express our appreciation to Luke Brander, Roy Brouwer, Jeroen van den Bergh, Frans Oosterhuis, Paul Hoetjes, Bram Tijdhof and Esther Wolfs for providing invaluable feedback in the design phase of the survey.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture, and Innovation | |
| WWF-NL | |
| World Wildlife Fund |
Keywords
- Choice experiment
- environmental valuation
- error correction mixed logit model
- scoping
- willingness-to-pay
