Katrin Rehdanz

Kiel University | CAU · Department of Economics

Rebound effects are commonly defined as the relative gap between the potential and realized savings in resource use following efficiency improvements or sufficiency changes. While a considerable number of studies quantify rebound effects, empirical estimates vary widely. Reliable information on the magnitude of rebound effects is therefore still la...

Switching to a diet lower in red meat has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Using a unique time series of daily sales data from three German university canteens from 2017 to 2019, we analyse the effects of a monthly Veggie Day in a food-away-from-home context. We find that the temporary ban on meat dishes did not lead to a widesprea...

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...

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...

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...

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...

The overproduction and consumption of plastics has led to a global challenge of plastic pollution and waste. Citizens in particular have an important role to play as they interact with plastics constantly in their daily lives as consumers, but different plastics consumer profiles are hardly understood, resulting in a lack of tailored and effective...

Plastic pollution is one of the most challenging problems affecting the marine environment of our time. Based on a unique dataset covering four European seas and eight European countries, this paper adds to the limited empirical evidence base related to the societal welfare effects of marine litter management. We use a discrete choice experiment to...

Under uncertainty about the kind, extent, or time frames of coastal threats, efficient protection requires measures that are effective in time and flexible enough to assure protection even if conditions change over time. Existing protection options are unable to offer both attributes simultaneously, creating a trade-off between short-term and long-...

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.

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...

Marine plastic litter (MPL) is a growing global problem and its prevention requires public engagement and behavioral change. Statistics of public perceptions of MPL are scarce and hardly comparable due to varying definitions and interpretations of the concept. This study identifies and classifies relevant components of public perceptions of MPL bas...

Sea-level rise (SLR) confronts coastal societies and stakeholders with increasing hazards and coastal risks with large uncertainties associated to these changes. Adaptation to SLR requires societal and policy decision-making to consider these changing risks, which are in turn defined by socio-economic development objectives and the local societal c...

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...

Beach visitors rate beach quality in large part by its appearance. Removal of natural beach litter (called beach wrack) has, therefore, high priority for beach managers in coastal areas dependent on revenues from tourism. Focusing on the German Baltic Sea coast, the amount of beach wrack has increased by a factor of approximately 3.4 between 1977 a...

Social norms, also called social comparison nudges, have been shown to be particularly effective in promoting healthy food choices and environmentally friendly behaviors. However, there is limited evidence on the effectiveness of these nudges for promoting sustainable and climate-friendly food choices and their potential to reduce greenhouse gas em...

Indirect rebound effects on the consumer level occur when potential greenhouse gas emission savings from the usage of more efficient technologies or more sufficient consumption in one consumption area are partially or fully offset through the consumers’ adverse behavioral responses in other areas. As both economic (e.g., price effects) and psycholo...

Plastic pollution is one of the most challenging problems affecting the marine environment of our time. Based on a unique dataset covering four European seas and eight European countries, this paper adds to the limited empirical evidence base related to the societal welfare effects of marine litter management. We use a discrete choice experiment to...

Nature benefits human health. To date, however, little is known whether biodiversity relates to human health. While some local and city level studies show that species diversity, as a measure of biodiversity, can have positive effects, there is a lack of studies about the relationship between different species diversity measures and human health, e...

The benefits of marine litter reduction to society, which are mostly non-market ones, need to be valued and quantified in monetary terms to be included in cost benefit analyses required by the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive. This article investigates the extent to which these benefits can be derived from existing studies. We review the avai...

This study reviews existing legal, institutional and policy tools and frameworks, relevant to the introduction and adoption of new marine litter clean-up technologies in two regional European seas, the Mediterranean and the Baltic. A combination of desk studies in six countries bordering the Baltic (Estonia, Germany, Sweden) and the Mediterranean (...

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...

Nature affects human well-being in multiple ways. However, the association between species diversity and human well-being at larger spatial scales remains largely unexplored. Here, we examine the relationship between species diversity and human well-being at the continental scale, while controlling for other known drivers of well-being. We related...

Despite the ocean’s role in regulating the climate and providing ecosystem services, the importance of the ocean has only recently gained appropriate attention in the context of international climate change policies. This concerns the impacts of climate change on ocean ecosystems and the role of the ocean in climate change mitigation. Since impacts...

Utilizing the data of a large nationwide household survey conducted in 2014, we investigate public preferences on nuclear power in Japan after the Fukushima nuclear accident and the role of four sets of factors: (1) household/individual socioeconomic characteristics, (2) psychological status, (3) geographical aspects, and (4) Fukushima accident-rel...

The Ecosystem Services Valuation Database (ESVD) is a follow-up to the “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity” (TEEB) database which contained over 1,300 data points from 267 case studies on monetary values of ecosystem services across all biomes. The TEEB database had not been updated since 2010 and naturally many gaps exist across biomes,...

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...

In this study, we augment the traditional travel cost approach with contingent behavior data for coastal recreation. The objective is to analyze the welfare implications of future changes in the conditions of the Baltic Sea due to climate change and eutrophication. Adding to the literature, we assess the symmetricity of welfare effects caused by im...

Over the past years, new options for addressing global warming and atmospheric CO 2 -concentrations ‐ such as bioenergy carbon capture and storage ‐ have been included in computer models that estimate how much more can be emitted before the global mean temperature increase surpasses 1.5°C. While the public in general remains mainly unaware of these...

The expansion of renewable energies requires infrastructure investments to at least maintain the stability of electricity grids. Using survey data from residential consumers in Germany and Great Britain, we infer in pecuniary terms the extent to which people are prepared to reward the presence of renewable resources in electricity production and ho...

This paper applies the concept of cultural ecosystem services (CES) to reveal the diverse benefits the Baltic Sea provides to human well-being. The study identifies and defines relevant CES for marine and coastal environments and applies them in a survey with 4800 respondents from Germany, Finland and Latvia. The relative importance of various CES...

The rate of TFP growth in agriculture is sometimes thought of as facilitating the wider industrial revolution. We use data on rents, prices, wages, the cost of inventories and the user-cost of man-made capital to analyse productivity change in agriculture in England between 1690 and 1914. Adopting an approach based on the profit function we find th...

The literature investigating the relationship between natural hazards and individuals’ subjective well-being has so far focused on industrialized countries. Using the life-satisfaction approach, this paper is the first to study the link between natural hazards, in particular heavy storms and droughts, and subjective well-being for a small-scale isl...

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we undertake a simultaneous assessment of the importance of factors that are individually found to be significant for the adoption of renewable energy systems by households but are not yet tested jointly. These are sociodemographic and housing characteristics, environmental concern, personality trait...

In the vast tropical Pacific Basin islands, corals reef ecosystems are one of the defining marine habitats, critical for maintaining biodiversity and supporting highly productive fisheries. These reefs are also vital for tourism and armoring exposed shorelines against erosion and other storm-related effects. Since the 1980’s, there has been growing...

Coral reef preservation is a challenge for the whole of humanity, not just for the estimated three billion people that directly depend upon coral reefs for their livelihoods and food security. Ocean acidification combined with rising sea surface temperatures, and an array of other anthropogenic influences such as pollution, sedimentation, over fish...

Discourse analyses and expert interviews about climate engineering (CE) report high levels of reflectivity about the technologies’ risks and challenges, implying that CE experts are unlikely to display moral hazard behaviour, i.e. a reduced focus on mitigation. This has, however, not been empirically tested. Within CE experts we distinguish between...

The problem of fat yes-tail responses is well known from contingent valuation but has not been investigated thoroughly in the context of choice experiments. In this study, we use eight independent split-samples with nearly 3600 respondents and systematically combine four different bid vectors with a joint cheap talk (CT) and opt-out reminder (OOR)...

Labor time has been proposed as an alternative payment vehicle in eliciting preferences for public goods in nonmonetized communities. However, we so far have no empirical evidence for situations where the labor-time elicitation format reduces the respondent's contribution uncertainty. In this study we compare the uncertainty of people's stated will...

Urban parks offer city residents a broad range of opportunities for recreation. This paper explores whether preferences for urban parks are context-dependent, i.e., whether they differ between recreational occasions on weekdays and weekends. Knowledge about such differences in behaviour and preferences could help decision makers in cities to optimi...

A significant share of the world’s undiscovered oil and natural gas resources are assumed to lie under the seabed of the Arctic Ocean. Up until now, the exploitation of the resources especially under the European Arctic has largely been prevented by the challenges posed by sea ice coverage, harsh weather conditions, darkness, remoteness of the fiel...

Using representative household survey data from Japan after the Fukushima accident, we estimate peoples' willingness-to-pay (WTP) for renewable, nuclear, and fossil fuels in electricity generation. We rely on random parameter econometric techniques to capture various degrees of heterogeneity between the respondents, and use detailed regional inform...

Climate engineering (CE) and carbon capture and storage are controversial options for addressing climate change. This study compares public perception in Germany of three specific measures: solar radiation management (SRM) via stratospheric sulphate injection, large-scale afforestation, and carbon capture and storage sub-seabed (CCS-S). In a survey...

Ecosystem-based approaches provide opportunities for climate policy to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, to expand the adaptive capacities and resilience of land systems to a changing climate, and to simultaneously protect biodiversity and ecosystems services (ESS). However, knowledge about the economic benefits and cost-efficiency of ecosyste...

This paper analyses how new information shapes public perception of a controversially discussed technology over time. The test case analysed in this paper is solar radiation management (SRM), a potentially risky, environmental engineering technology, which aims to fight climate change by the injection of sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere. Usi...

Ocean acidification (OA) is increasingly recognized as a major global problem. Despite the scientific evidence, economic assessments of its effects are few. This analysis is an attempt to perform a national and sub-national assessment of the economic impact of OA on mollusc production in Europe. We focus on mollusc production because the scientific...

Understanding the dynamics of urban ecosystem services is a necessary requirement for adequate planning, management, and governance of urban green infrastructure. Through the three-year Urban Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (URBES) research project, we conducted case study and comparative research on urban biodiversity and ecosystem services ac...

Stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) is a climate engineering (CE) method that is reputed to be very effective in cooling the planet but is also thought to involve major risks and side effects. As a new option in the bid to counter climate change, it has attracted an increasing amount of research and the debate on its potential gained momentum aft...

Recent studies in the marketing literature developed a new method for eliciting willingness to pay (WTP) with an open-ended elicitation format: the Range-WTP method. In contrast to the traditional approach of eliciting WTP as a single value (Point-WTP), Range-WTP explicitly allows for preference uncertainty in responses. The aim of this paper is to...

Table A-I: Summary Statistics. (PDF)

Willingness to pay questions. (PDF)

Information provided in the SRM video. (PDF)

This study explores the amenity value of climate to households in Britain. We employ the hedonic technique and use household panel data to derive the marginal willingness to pay for small changes in climate variables. We analyse both the housing and the labour market. Climate is described in terms of heating, cooling degree and rain days. Evidence...

This book chapter reviews the literature on water-related CGE modeling by providing a survey that focuses on the implications of different modeling techniques of water resource.

Most people in Europe live in urban environments. For these people, urban green space is an important element of well-being, but it is often in short supply. We use self-reported information on life satisfaction and two individual green space measures to explore how urban green space affects the well-being of the residents of Berlin, the capital ci...

Our analysis is the first of its kind to explore patterns of subsidization and CO2 emissions in China’s electricity-producing sector. Applying data for all power plants across China and controlling for the age, capacity and location of generating stations, we find that plants attracting a higher government subsidy are also the plants generating a d...

The North Atlantic and Arctic Ocean region includes Food and Agriculture Organization fishing regions 21, 27 and 18. Possible impacts of ocean acidification on fisheries and aquaculture in the region differ between northern and southern parts of the North Atlantic, and are higher in the North in terms of degree of acidification and organisms and ec...

At present, electricity generated from power plants using renewable sources costs more than electricity generated from power plants using conventional fuels. Consumers bear these expenses directly or indirectly through higher prices for renewable energy or taxes. The number of studies published over the last few years focusing on people’s preferenc...

Injecting sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere could quickly offset global warming caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Because the technology would have global side effects, it raises not only technological but also political, ethical, and social concerns. Therefore, research on sulfate injection should be accompanied by a global de...

Based on a quasi-experimental difference-in-differences approach, we use panel data for 5,979 individuals interviewed in Japan before and after the tsunami and nuclear accident at Fukushima to analyze the effects of the combined disaster on people's subjective well-being. To conduct our analysis, we use Geographical Information Systems to merge the...

This paper is the first to link economic theory with empirical life-satisfaction analyses referring to internal migration. We derive an extension of the Roback (1982) model to account for benefits from regional amenities in the utility function, while controlling for income, housing costs, and migration costs. Using highly disaggregated spatial pan...

This paper is the first to link economic theory with empirical life-satisfaction analyses referring to internal migration. We derive an extension of the Roback (1982) model to account for benefits from regional amenities in the utility function, while controlling for income, housing costs, and migration costs. Using highly disaggregated spatial pan...

This paper is the first to link economic theory with empirical life-satisfaction analyses referring to internal migration. We derive an extension of the Roback (1982) model to account for benefits from regional amenities in the utility function, while