Richard Carson

University of California, San Diego | UCSD · Department of Economics

The COVID-19 pandemic brought the need to quickly deploy non-pharmaceutical measures like facemasks to reduce transmission rates into sharp focus. Factors influencing this behavior are examined through the classic attitude–behavior lens of Fishbein and Ajzen [Belief, Attitude, Intention, and Behavior: An Introduction to Theory and Research. Reading...

Introduction Public perception of the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic compared to six other major public health problems (alcoholism and drug use, HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, lung cancer and respiratory diseases caused by air pollution and smoking, and water-borne diseases like diarrhea) is unclear. We designed a survey to examine this is...

We provide estimates of health priorities during the COVID-19 pandemic based on web-surveys administered in seven developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America in 2022. Using the best-worst scaling method, respondents ranked the importance of seven health problems, including COVID-19 (the others were alcohol and drugs, HIV/AIDS, malaria,...

Research has long debated the effectiveness of socio-demographics in understanding purchase behavior, with mixed conclusions. The appeal of socio-demographic data for customer relationship marketing is based on its low acquisition cost and the growing array of variables on which marketers can condition messages and offers. We reinvestigate the valu...

Objectives Wearing masks could still be one of the few non-pharmaceutical interventions for controlling the pandemic. There are people who wear them and people who don't, but this framing to be overly simplistic. We aim to chart the contradictions in attitudes and behavior regarding mask wearing and describe the messaging challenge that these gener...

Innovation is important for firm performance and broader economic growth. However, breakthrough innovations necessarily require greater risk taking than more incremental approaches. To understand how managers respond to uncertainty when making research and development decisions, we conducted experiments with master’s degree students in a program fo...

Volumetric Choice Experiments (VCEs) are designed to capture purchase quantities rather than a single, discrete choice. They can be seen as an extension of Discrete Choice Experiments (DCEs) where individuals decide how many units of a specific good or service to buy/use rather than deciding whether to buy/use it or not. There is different informat...

Objective To determine the relative importance members of the US public place on different patient attributes in triage decisions about who should receive the last available intensive care unit (ICU) bed. Methods A discrete choice experiment was conducted with a nationally representative sample of 2000 respondents from the YouGov internet panel of...

We measure the value placed by the American public on ensuring the continued existence of the traditional Hopi culture and way of life at the Hopi Reservation in Arizona. The Hopi are the oldest living culture in the United States. The continued existence of the Reservation is threatened by depletion of the groundwater resource underlying the reser...

This paper looks at how to measure the tradeoffs in monetary terms that the public is prepared to make with respect to adoption of different community policing options. The approach advanced is a discrete choice experiment in which survey respondents face different policing options which can be described by a set of attributes ranging from costs to...

When large-scale accidents cause catastrophic damage to natural or cultural resources, government and industry are faced with the challenge of assessing the extent of damages and the magnitude of restoration that is warranted. Although market transactions for privately owned assets provide information about how valuable they are to the people invol...

Discrete choice experiments (DCE) are widely used in many areas of applied social science research. The results of DCEs depend on the particular experimental design for the identification of the key parameters of interest and the statistical efficiency with which those parameters are estimated. Work on experimental designs for DCEs has almost alway...

Researchers, using contingent valuation (CV) to value changes in nonmarket goods, typically believe respondents always answer questions truthfully or they answer truthfully only when it is in their interest to do so. The second position, while consistent with economic theory, implies that interpreting survey responses depends critically on the ince...

In the past decade the Australian Federal government and state governments have established a wide range of programs to cut greenhouse gas emissions from all sectors. This paper examines the role of hot water system rebate programs in shifting the existing stock of electric water heaters toward more climate friendly versions using two unique data s...

The ability to store excess intermittent renewable electricity is increasingly being seen as a key option for integrating large quantities of renewable capacity. However, intermittent energy sources currently account for very small amounts of total generation. Despite this fact, policymakers have begun implementing requirements that will dramatical...

How many choice sets respondents will answer is a critical issue in how much data a researcher has for analysis. We used 66 separate surveys that ask respondents, from an opt-in web panel, sequences of preference questions about consumer products to study design factors that influence the rate of completing the entire sequence of questions comprisi...

A person may be willing to make an economic tradeoff to assure that a wilderness area or scenic resource is protected even if neither that person nor (per anyone else will actually visit this area. This tradeoff is commonly labeled passive use value. Contingent valuation studies ask questions that help to rev monetary tradeoff each person would mak...

Results are presented from a large-scale stated preference study designed to estimate the nonmarket benefits for households in England and Wales arising from the European Union Water Framework Directive (WFD). Multiple elicitation methods (a discrete choice experiment and two forms of contingent valuation) are employed, with the order in which they...

We present an experiment designed to investigate the presence and nature of ordering effects within repeat-response stated preference (SP) studies. Our experiment takes the form of a large sample, full-factorial, discrete choice SP exercise investigating preferences for tap water quality improvements. Our study simultaneously investigates a variety...

Fisheries are subject to multiple forms of uncertainty. One of these, parameter uncertainty, has been largely ignored in the fisheries economics literature even though it is known elsewhere (e.g., macroeconomics) to play an important role in models with a similar structure. We model management of a renewable resource with unknown growth parameters...

Disagreement among researchers regarding types of optimal choice experiments is often best seen as resulting from differences in the set of assumptions researchers are willing to make about the underlying data generating process. Much of the current debate may have confused, rather than enlightened applied researchers because the underlying source...

It is often difficult to determine what actually was done in work involving data collected with stated preference surveys because the terms used to describe various procedures have ambiguous and sometimes conflicting meanings. Further, terms used to describe data collection procedures often are confounded with terms used to describe statistical tec...

This chapter is both a commentary on and extension of the Carson and Groves (2007) (hereafter CG) article reprinted in this volume. The substantial attention the paper has received has been enormously gratifying. Reception of CG has largely been positive with little if any substantive criticism directed toward it; and, there are many papers now bei...

Rural families in Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world, face financial risks from major illness both from the cost of medical care and from the loss of income associated with reduced labor supply and productivity. Chronic exposure to arsenic in drinking water has often been associated with the development of skin cancers and intern...

We briefly review and discuss traditional conjoint analysis (CA) and discrete choice experiments (DCEs), widely used stated preference elicitation methods in several disciplines. We pay particular attention to the origins and basis of CA, and show that it is generally inconsistent with economic demand theory, and is subject to several logical incon...

In the early 1990s the attention of economists was captured by empirical evidence suggesting that rising income levels in developing countries could be good rather than bad for the environment. This evidence drove a stake into the heart of those opposing growth on environmental grounds. Ultimately, the view that income growth by itself eventually w...

Climate change has come to the forefront of Australian politics and there is now an active on-going policy debate about how to best reach a commonly agreed long term goal. This paper looks at five major dimensions of this debate and constructs policy options based on them. A discrete choice experiment approach was used with a representative sample...

Discounting plays a major role in the life cycle of environmental and natural resource policies. Evaluating centuries-scale problems like climate change with standard discount rates yields results that many find ethically unacceptable. Paradoxes abound. Low discount rates are urged for determining the net benefits of climate change, while household...

Recent Monte Carlo work on choosing experimental designs for discrete choice experiments seemed to greatly simplify this choice for applied researchers. It suggested that ("a") commonly used designs can generate unbiased estimates for indirect utility function specifications with main effects only and main effects plus higher order terms, and ("b")...

Foreword This paper (and the large study behind it) was in some ways a labor of love. We set out to build a discrete choice model to predict recreational fishing behavior that would extend the literature along several dimensions. our interest in doing so stemmed from ear-lier work that we were individually or collectively involved in. hanemann's di...

In marine areas throughout the world where recreational boats are densely located, concentrations of copper in the water are being found to be in excess of government standards, due to the hull coatings used on these boats. Copper-based hull coatings are intended to be antifouling in that they retard the growth of algae, barnacles and tubeworms; bu...

Why do some countries have no first-order administrative subdivisions (e.g., states or provinces), whereas other countries have over 80? Recently, economists have started to look at the optimal size of countries and forces influencing the creation of local political jurisdictions like school districts. This paper provides the first analysis of the...

We analyze whether it is better to forecast air travel demand using aggregate data at (say) a national level, or to aggregate the forecasts derived for individual airports using airport-specific data. We compare the US Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) practice of predicting the total number of passengers using macroeconomic variables with an...

This paper examines the consequences of data error in data series used to construct aggregate indicators. Using the most popular indicator of country level economic development, the Human Development Index (HDI), we identify three separate sources of data error. We propose a simple statistical framework to investigate how data error may bias rank a...

We present an experiment designed to investigate the presence and nature of ordering effects within repeated response stated preference studies. We formulate a general structural model of such effects and use this to isolate signature patterns for position-dependent effects (learning about preferences or institutions, and the impact of fatigue) and...

We analyze whether it is better to forecast air travel demand using aggregate data at (say) a national level, or to aggregate the forecasts derived for individual airports using airport-specific data. We compare the US Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) practice of predicting the total number of passengers using macroeconomic variables with an...

This paper provides a survey on studies that analyze the macroeconomic effects of intellectual property rights (IPR). The first part of this paper introduces different patent policy instruments and reviews their effects on R&D and economic growth. This part also discusses the distortionary effects and distributional consequences of IPR protection a...

Housing prices have plummeted across the United States. This paper examines differences in the magnitude of housing price decreases across metropolitan areas. A relatively small number of housing market variables observable before the fall are capable of explaining over 70% of the considerable variation in price declines. An additional nonparametri...

In the early 1990's the attention of economists was captured by empirical evidence suggesting rising income levels in developing countries could be good rather than bad for the environment. This evidence drove a stake into the heart of those opposing growth on environmental grounds. Ultimately, the view that income growth by itself eventually will...

Sustained growth in both incomes and life spans are the hallmarks of modern development. Fluctuations around trend in the former, or business cycles, have been a traditional focus in macroeconomics, while similar cyclical patterns in mortality are also interesting and are now increasingly studied. In this paper, I assess the welfare implications of...

Our results suggest that the anticipated path of China's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions has dramatically increased over the last five years. The magnitude of the projected increase in Chinese emissions out to 2010 is several times larger than reductions embodied in the Kyoto Protocol. Our estimates are based on a unique provincial-level panel data...

The choice experiment elicitation format confronts survey respondents with repeated choice tasks. Particularly within the context of valuing pure public goods, this repetition raises two issues. First, does advanced awareness of multiple tasks influence stated preferences from the outset, and second, even in the absence of such awareness, does the...

Researchers using stated preference methods typically hold one of two beliefs about the preference information they obtain: respondents always answer questions truthfully or they answer truthfully only when it is in their interest to do so. The second position is consistent with economic theory, but it implies that the interpretation of survey resp...

The standard Tobit maximum likelihood estimator under zero censoring threshold produces inconsistent parameter estimates, when the constant censoring threshold γ is non-zero and unknown. Unfortunately, the recording of a zero rather than the actual censoring threshold value is typical of economic data. Non-trivial minimum purchase prices for most g...

Surveys are frequently used by businesses and governments to elicit information about the public’s preferences. They have become the most common way to gather preference information regarding goods, that are not (or are not yet) bought or sold in markets. In this paper we apply the standard neoclassical economic framework to generate predictions ab...

Our results suggest the path of Chinese Carbon Dioxide (CO 2) emissions has dramatically increased over the last five years. The magnitude of the projected increase in Chinese emissions out to 2015 is several times larger than reductions embodied in the Kyoto Protocol. Our estimates are based on a unique provincial level panel data set from the Chi...

Almost all fisher models assume time-invariant parameter values of the underlying biological growth function except for an i.i.d. error term. We examine the economic implications of cyclical growth parameters in both single and multi-species models, which are frequently observed in many real-world fisheries. Neither optimal harvest rates nor optima...

The concept of a consideration set has become a central concept in the study of consumer behavior. This paper shows that the common practice of estimating models using only the set of alternatives deemed to be in the set considered by a consumer will usually result in estimated parameters that are biased due to a sample selection effect. This effec...

Value estimates for environmental goods can be obtained by either estimating preference parameters as “revealed” through behavior related to some aspect of the amenity or using “stated” information concerning preferences for the good. In the environmental economics literature the stated preference approach has come to be known as “contingent valuat...

Forecasts of Chinese carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are critical to any global agreement on mitigating possible global climate change. We provide such forecasts through 2050 using a reduced form model. These estimates are the first based upon provincial-level data (1985-1999). We estimate a reduced form model selected by minimizing the Schwartz Inf...

Standard fisheries models used in economics and for management purposes almost always assume parameter values of the fishing system are stable. In this paper, we put forth models where the parameters of the biological growth model systematically change over time. The models considered are fundamentally different from those in the literature (e.g.,...

We describe recent progress in several areas related to endogeneity, including: choice set formation and attention to attributes; interactions among decision-makers; respondents' strategic behavior in answering stated preference choices; models of multiple discrete/continuous choice; distributions of willingness-to-pay; and methods for handling tra...

This manual offers a detailed, up-to-date explanation of how to carry out economic valuation using stated preference techniques. It is relevant for the application of these techniques to all non-market goods and services including air and water quality; provision of public open space; health care that is not sold through private markets; risk reduc...

China's Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions are expected to surpass US levels by the year 2020. To look at the spatial structure of these emissions we use a provincial level panel dataset from 1985 to 1995 to estimate per capita emissions in terms of income, time and set of provincial level fixed effects. We find strong support for the presence of an en...

The COS study team undertook this research effort in order to construct a monetary measure of the total ex ante economic value for preventing a specified set of natural resource injuries. There are two standard (Hicksian) monetary welfare measures used by economists: minimum willingness to accept (WTA) compensation to voluntarily give up a good and...

This chapter describes section by section the wording, format, and sequence used in the main study survey instrument as well as the rationale underlying the key features of the final design. Unless otherwise indicated, all quoted text in this chapter is from the survey questionnaire itself and is presented in a different typeface. Any questionnaire...

This chapter examines the measures related to the reliability of the choice data. In section 5.2, responses to selected open-ended questions are examined. The primary focus is on the open-ended, follow-up questions recommended by the NOAA Panel that ask respondents to explain their reasons for voting for or against the Central Coast prevention prog...

Huge oil spills capture the attention of the public and policymakers alike. The recent spill off the coast of Spain involving the tanker Prestige engendered active discussion within the European Union about liability rules and the measurement of damages. This same discussion arose in the United States more than ten years earlier when the Exxon Vald...

Westat’s implementation of the main study survey consisted of several steps. In preparation for fielding the survey, a random sample of dwelling units (DU’s) was drawn; an interviewer’s training manual was prepared; and Westat’s interviewers attended a two-day training session.1 During the 14 weeks of main survey data collection, the interviewers w...

In this chapter the choices made by respondents in the main survey are used to construct a lower-bound estimate of the ex ante total value for preventing the expected harm from oil spills along the California Central Coast over the next decade. The relationships between the choice measure and other respondent characteristics measured by the survey...

We report on the results of a large-scale contingent valuation (CV) study conducted after the Exxon Valdez oil spill to assess the harm caused by it. Among the issues considered are the design features of the CV survey, its administration to a national sample of U.S. households, estimation of household willingness to pay to prevent another Exxon Va...

According to many seasoned survey researchers, offering a no-opinion option should reduce the pressure to give substantive responses felt by respondents who have no true opinions. By contrast, the survey satisficing perspective suggests that no-opinion options may discourage some respondents from doing the cognitive work necessary to report the tru...

We illustrate and discuss several general issues associated with the random component of utility, or more generally unobserved variability. We posit a general conceptual framework that suggests a variance components view as an appropriate structure for unobserved variability. This framework suggests that unobserved heterogeneity is only one compone...

Contingent valuation (CV) has become one of the most widely usednon-market valuation techniques. CV's prominence is due to itsflexibility and ability to estimate total value, includingpassive use value. Its use and the inclusion of passive use valuein benefit-cost analyses and environmental litigation are thesubject of a contentious debate. This pa...