Jürgen Meyerhoff

Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Recht Berlin (HWR) · Department of Business and Economics

Efficient experimental designs aim to maximise the information obtained from stated choice data to estimate discrete choice models' parameters statistically efficiently. Almost without exception efficient experimental designs assume that decision-makers use a Random Utility Maximisation (RUM) decision rule. When using such designs, researchers (imp...

Adapting to changes in water availability is becoming an increasingly important environmental management objective in many regions around the world. One way for cities to conserve water is to enhance drought-resistant vegetation cover. This revegetation practice can take place on many types of land, including road-side verges (also known as nature...

We propose a simple diagnostic check for face validity assessment of willingness to pay (WTP) estimates derived from choice experiments (CEs). The check is based on a threshold value for WTP that is related to the highest cost attribute level, which can be used to assess plausibility of estimated WTP. If the threshold value is exceeded, WTP estimat...

Carbon capture and storage is crucial to achieve net-zero targets and cross-border CO2 transport is essential for cost-efficiency of a carbon capture and storage strategy but how the public views this is unclear. Here, using multifactorial vignette experiments in four European countries and Canada, we show that cross-border transport hinders public...

The magnitude and range of the cost attribute levels in stated choice experiments have been found to affect willingness to pay (WTP) estimates. Such cost vector effects are of concern for the validity of derived welfare estimates. This paper employs a treatment design to investigate whether using a cheap talk and opt-out reminder device, which has...

Distributive justice is an important but often overlooked factor in policy evaluation. We thus examine how people's attitudes towards distributive justice affect their preferences for programmes aimed at reducing ambient air pollution resulting from the combustion of fossil fuels for residential heating. To do so, we carried out two multifactorial...

This study examines the use of hybrid choice models (HCM), also referred to as integrated choice and latent variable (ICLV) models, within environmental valuation studies. The investigation is motivated by the fact that stated preference surveys in this field increasingly incorporate additional data into their modelling, particularly respondents' a...

Forests are vital for outdoor recreation, benefiting mental, physical, and social well-being. While the importance of forest structure in supporting biodiversity and material ecosystem functions is well-documented, research on its relationship with non-material contributions to people remains limited, and there is a lack of robust indicators for th...

Defense spending accounts for a large share of the budget in many countries, but the value of the resulting public good - national defense - has so far escaped assessment. Much of the literature has instead considered indirect benefits of defense spending in terms of greater economic growth or technological spillovers. In this paper, we assess the...

This paper connects the concept of involvement with recreational fishing and decision rules, namely regret-minimizing vs. utility-maximizing when making choices related to the activity. We hypothesized that people who are more involved show regret-minimizing rather than utility-maximizing behavior. In support, we found that behavioral commitment, m...

Defense spending accounts for a large share of the budget in many countries, but the value of the resulting public good - national defense – has so far escaped assessment. Much of the literature has instead considered indirect benefits of defense spending in terms of greater economic growth or technological spillovers. In this paper, we assess the...

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) of CO 2 has become indispensable to reach net-zero targets. Investments into cross-border CO 2 transport infrastructure are considered essential to the cost-efficiency of a CCS strategy. We conduct multifactorial vignette experiments in four European countries and Canada to disentangle the impact of cross-border CO...

Increasing native vegetation cover on verges, which are underutilized urban lands, can help build resilient cities under urban densification and climate change. As these areas are sizeable, many cities have programs aimed at encouraging ecologically beneficial landscape designs on verges, which are publicly owned but privately managed lands located...

This paper uses a discrete choice experiment to elicit winemakers' preferences towards climate change adaptation options in the Spanish Rioja region. The experiment includes different potential adaptation strategies such as relocation, the use of various grape clones, the installation of an irrigation system, the construction of vegetative or artif...

Um Präferenzen für Maßnahmen zur Stärkung von Sicherheit und Verteidigung als öffentlichem Gut zu bestimmen, bieten sich repräsentativ durchgeführte diskrete Entscheidungsexperimente an. Ein solches umfragegestütztes Experiment offenbart für Deutschland eine große Wertschätzung für die Installation eines europäischen Schutzschirms gegen Luftangriff...

Discrete choice experiments are an important method to derive willingness-to-pay estimates for non-market goods. Several studies have shown that willingness-to-pay estimates derived from discrete choice experiments can be sensitive to the order of the presented choice tasks or the size of the presented costs, which raises concerns about the validit...

Efficient and sustainable solutions for offsetting residual emissions via carbon dioxide removal are a major challenge. Proposed removal methods result in trade-offs with other Sustainable Development Goals, and the removal needs of many countries exceed their domestic potentials. Here, we examine the public acceptability of conducting afforestatio...

Small lakes provide substantial ecosystem services to society, particularly recreational services. These ecosystem services are rarely quantified. It is also unclear whether expectations about desired lake attributes by various user groups and the public at large align. In many landscapes most small lakes artificially originate from sand and gravel...

In this paper, we investigate the effect of respondents' attitudes concerning distributive justice in payments on their stated preferences for programs decreasing ambient air pollution in four cities in Poland. We propose a novel approach to considering justice attitudes in non-market valuation by combining two multi-factorial survey experiments. T...

We define a simple criterion for assessing the plausibility of Willingness to Pay (WTP) estimates obtained from discrete choice experiments. The criterion compares WTP for the bundle of attributes yielding the highest utility with a threshold value related to the highest level of the cost attribute. Estimated WTP that exceeds the threshold is consi...

In the brackish lagoons located in coastal inshore areas around the German island of Rügen, pike Esox lucius is a highly sought after target species for recreational fishers. Yet, the pike stock is currently in decline, and conflicts with other user groups (specifically commercial fishers) have emerged. To inform future fisheries management, an imp...

An issue constantly raising concerns is the complexity of choice sets in stated choice experiments. Generally, designing choice sets requires trade-offs between the amount of information the researcher can derive, primarily through the number of attributes, and the measurement error caused by increased complexity. However, leaving specific attribut...

This study uses data from a vignette experiment (n = 401) of large-scale agricultural landowners in western Canada to quantify attributes that enhance acceptance of wind farms on their land or in their municipality. The analysis addresses the role of community relationships and procedural fairness in the development of wind power. Random effects mo...

Many wild bee species are threatened across Europe, and with them the pollination function they provide. While numerous studies have assessed the value of bees as pollinators of crops, little is known about the non-marked value of bees. Using a choice modelling experiment, we examine these non-market values in Germany by identifying citizens’ willi...

Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) is one of the most important target species of marine recreational anglers in the western Baltic Sea, but the stock is collapsed, and regulations of both commercial and recreational fisheries have recently tightened. To analyze the preferences of anglers for harvest regulations and catch outcomes in the western Baltic re...

Der Coastline Reports 28 wurde im Rahmen des Projekts GoCoase (Governing climate change adaptation at the Baltic Sea Coast) erstellt und durch das Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF, Förderkennzeichen 01LA1812D) finanziert.

Soils deliver multiple ecosystem services (ES) that are essential for life on Earth, such as – among others - water and climate regulation, nutrient cycling, and biomass production. Understanding society's perception of the benefits provided by soils can provide valuable insights regarding the human-nature relation. However, despite soil's many con...

Omission of substitute sites in travel cost analysis can cause an overestimation of recreational benefits. Only few analyses have included substitutes, partly because of the difficulty in defining an appropriate set of substitutes. We examine factors affecting the existence of substitutes and their impact on the demand and value of coastal recreati...

Air pollution is one of the most pressing problems in India, taking millions of lives annually. Despite unprecedented air quality deterioration, little is known about individuals’ preferences for air quality improvement in India. As a first step, this study presents results from a discrete choice experiment eliciting the preferences for air quality...

The level of biodiversity is in decline, also in forests. As more natural structures are known to safeguard biodiversity, changes in forest management, including higher amounts of deadwood, may help reverse the decline. However, this could lead to trade-offs between forest ecosystem services, and forest recreation might be negatively affected by th...

Despite unprecedented progress in developing COVID-19 vaccines, global vaccination levels needed to reach herd immunity remain a distant target, while new variants keep emerging. Obtaining near universal vaccine uptake relies on understanding and addressing vaccine resistance. Simple questions about vaccine acceptance however ignore that the vaccin...

Although soil degradation has become a global phenomenon that might severely threaten the provision of a large range of ecosystem services, not much is known about the economic value of soil functions such as carbon sequestration and rainfall water infiltration. Knowing these values would be an important input into the recently developed concept of...

In environmental valuation, the issue of the temporal stability of stated preferences to changes in environmental (dis)amenities is important because their results can be employed to inform decision-making. This includes cost–benefit analysis for large infrastructure projects such as coastal protection. A couple of studies have investigated stabili...

Abstract: The value of the German marine environment Europe's coasts and marine waters, including the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, are among the most intensively exploited marine areas in the world. Common uses of the two seas include fishing, shipping and tourism, which are important economic activities, but also put pressure on the marine enviro...

A brief map-based presentation of the spatial distribution of the monetary value of various nature conservation and landscape protection services provided by forests in Germany (species diversity; tree species distribution and its repercussion on timber production and climate protection).

Forests play a fundamental role in the economy, in climate change mitigation and in halting the loss of biodiversity. The economic value of goods and services provided to the societies by forests, including forest-based recreation, is highly dependent on the way in which forests are managed. On a European scale, forests are diverse and managed in m...

Soil ecosystem services (ES) provide multiple benefits to human well-being, but the failure to appreciate them has led to soil degradation issues across the globe. Despite an increasing interest in the threats to soil resources, economic valuation in this context is limited. Importantly, most of the existing valuation studies do not account for the...

A brief map-based presentation of the spatial distribution of the monetary value of various nature conservation and landscape protection services provided by forests in Germany (species diversity; tree species distribution and its repercussion on timber production and climate protection).

The files contain the original raw data of a biodiversity valuation survey used to analyse the economic benefits of several fundamental forest ecosystem services (FES) for the population in Germany at national level in monetary terms, and to estimate the spatial distribution of these benefits at district level (including codebook and the wording of...

A short maps-oriented presentation of the regional distribution of the monetary value of carbon sequestration by forests in Germany

A short maps-oriented presentation of the regional distribution of raw wood production as an ecosystem service in Germany

A short maps-oriented presentation of the regional distribution of the monetary value of forest recreation in Germany

A short maps-oriented presentation of the regional distribution of the monetary value of forest recreation in Germany

Climate change adaptation is essential for coastal areas. This paper adds to the limited evidence on the trade-offs people are willing to make concerning coastal adaptation strategies along an entire coast of a state (Baltic Sea coast of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania). The trade-offs are conceptualised in a choice experiment in terms of six attribu...

Renewable energy is worldwide seen as a key element necessary to address climate change. However, finding socially acceptable locations for renewable energy facilities and the accompanying infrastructure increasingly often faces fierce opposition. This paper quantifies the landscape externalities of renewable energies employing a choice experiment....

The majority of choice sets in stated preference studies so far uses a text-based matrix format to present choice alternatives in columns and describing both the attributes and their levels with words and figures. Visualisations are meant to help respondents to understand better and evaluate the changes in the provision of the good in question. Whi...

Discrete choice experiments can be used to inform policy makers on people’s preferences for landscapes and cultural ecosystem services. Recent studies have shown that the spatial context influences preferences and related willingness to pay values. In this paper we investigate the effect of the landscape surrounding people’s places of residence on...

We investigate the economic benefits of fundamental forest ecosystem services (FES) for the population in Germany at national level in monetary terms and estimate the spatial distribution of these benefits at county level. Specifically, we consider the benefits of timber production, of global climate protection due to carbon sequestration, of recre...

A short maps-oriented presentation of the regional distribution of the monetary value of carbon sequestration by forests in Germany

This paper argues that choice modelling is a gainful approach for all social sciences, while at the same time disciplines such as sociology and political science can contribute significantly to the future development of choice modelling. So far choice modelling has mainly been applied in disciplines that investigate types of consumption choices, be...

This chapter outlines the essential topics for developing and testing a questionnaire for a discrete choice experiment survey. It addresses issues such as the description of the environmental good, pretesting of the survey, incentive compatibility, consequentiality or mitigation of hypothetical bias. For the latter, cheap talk scripts, opt-out remi...

This chapter describes and compares suitable software for the analysis of basic and advanced discrete choice models. Software packages are classified into proprietary and non-proprietary, according to the operating system required and modelling capabilities. Abilities of both selected commercial (Stata, SAS and Latent Gold, e.g.) and open-source pa...

This chapter focuses on the calculation of marginal and non-marginal welfare measures. It outlines how the calculation of welfare measures is related to the specified model and the assumptions underlying that model. It further describes how the calculation of these measures is affected by the inclusion of preference heterogeneity, including the inc...

This chapter starts by briefly presenting the theoretical background of welfare economics and introducing key aspects such as the indirect utility function, the expenditure function, or the concepts of compensating surplus or equivalent surplus. Next, it draws attention to willingness to pay and willingness to accept, essential measures in environm...

This chapter discusses aspects related to data collection. It focuses, firstly, on sampling issues and, secondly, on the survey mode. Sampling issues include sample size and the type of sampling that enable precise estimates to be obtained. Regarding the survey mode, discrete choice experiments can be implemented by mail, telephone, face-to-face or...

This open access book (https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-62669-3) offers up-to-date advice and practical guidance on how to undertake a discrete choice experiment as a tool for environmental valuation. It discusses crucial issues in designing, implementing and analysing choice experiments. Compiled by leading experts in the field, th...

This chapter concerns different aspects of validity and reliability of a discrete choice experiment. Firstly, it focuses on three essential concepts for assessing the validity of the welfare estimates obtained in the choice experiment, namely content, construct and criterion validity. Secondly, it discusses how the reliability of the recorded choic...

This chapter addresses basic topics related to choice data analysis. It starts by describing the coding of attribute levels and choosing the functional form of the attributes in the utility function. Next, it focuses on econometric models with special attention devoted to the random parameter mixed logit model. In this context, the chapter compares...

This chapter is devoted to advanced issues of econometric modelling. The topics covered are, among others, models in willingness to pay space, the meaning of scale heterogeneity in discrete choice models and the application of various information processing rules such as random regret minimisation or attribute non-attendance. Other topics are ancho...

This chapter covers various issues related to the experimental design, a statistical technique at the core of a discrete choice experiment. Specifically, it focuses on the dimensionality of a choice experiment and the statistical techniques used to allocate attribute levels to choice tasks. Among others, the pros and cons of orthogonal designs, opt...

A short maps-oriented presentation of the regional distribution of raw wood production as an ecosystem service in Germany

The study aims at determining the economic benefits of fundamental forest ecosystem services (FES) in Germany from a demand perspective, at identifying their regional distribution, and at merging the respective benefit estimates into a consistent model which provides for scenario analyses of alternative forest utilisation options. Specifically, we...

Time-of-use (TOU) electricity tariffs represent an instrument for demand side management. By reducing energy demand during peak times, less investments in otherwise necessary, costly, and CO2 intensive redispatch would be required. We use a choice experiment (CE) to analyze private consumers' acceptance of TOU tariffs in Germany. In our CE, respond...

The benefits of local recreation in the State-owned forests in Austria (i.e., about 15% of all Austrian forests) are ascertained in this paper. A representative survey of households dealt with their local recreation, perceptions of and disturbances in forests. Total annual benefits of local recreation activities in State-owned forests, such as walk...

An expanding literature addresses spatial dimensions related to the elicitation, estimation, interpretation and aggregation of stated preference (SP) welfare measures. Recognizing the relevance of spatial dimensions for SP welfare analysis and the breadth of associated scholarly work, this article reviews the primary methods, findings, controversie...

meta-literature-database on forest ecosystem valuation in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, updated version 2.2