Klaus Glenk

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 estimates are considered to overshoot. This may be due to issues with (i) the design of the CE and/or (ii) respondents' behavior deviating from assumptions underpinning CEs. Applying the check to a sample of publications, this paper provides evidence on the incidence and magnitude of overshooting of WTP in the agricultural and environmental CE literature. Based on a random sample of publications including 304 observations representing individual studies and population samples, the results show that overshooting of WTP is widespread, with 65% of observations …

Valuing water is gaining popularity among policymakers and academics as a new water management paradigm. However, there is a lack of clarity about how to translate this paradigm into practice. We propose a multifaceted approach to valuing water that considers not just the values that people assign to water, such as its uses and benefits, but also broader personal guiding principles (e.g., security) and governance-related values (e.g., social justice) that underpin decision-making about water. Using an interdisciplinary conceptual framework and data from a global survey among water professionals (N = 293), we provide the first empirical evidence showing how preferences among three archetypical perspectives on water management – (1) controlling water flows through engineering solutions; (2) managing water through market-based mechanisms; (3) working with natural water ecosystems – can be explained …

Physical cage aquaculture structure can attract native fish species in marine and freshwater ecosystems. Most studies on the effects of cage farms on native fish distribution have been undertaken in marine environments and outside of Asia as the main freshwater cage aquaculture producing region. Many studies have emphasised connections between native fish distribution and feeding time. Previous research also has shown the necessity to use modelling to monitor this effect to reduce data collection costs. Here we analyse the distribution of an endemic fish species, Rasbora maninjau, and a native fish, Gobiopterus sp., associated with tilapia cage aquaculture occurrence using a Maximum Entropy Model (MaxEnt). We find that the application of the MaxEnt model can produce reliable and accurate information on the impacts of cage aquaculture on the native fish species distribution aligning with the more …

Understanding appropriate governance arrangements for managing cage aquaculture systems in tropical lakes is essential, yet it is still overlooked by current studies. Here we discuss the lessons obtained from our interdisciplinary research (environmental–social science, ecology, and ecological economics) evaluating cage aquaculture management scenarios with the aim of facilitating sustainable cage aquaculture management in Lake Maninjau, Indonesia. The lessons we present are based on our analysis of why current management fails to achieve its goals of reduced cage aquaculture and improved water quality in the lake, despite the presence of formal regulations for reaching these goals. The importance of understanding the social, ecological, and economic dimensions in designing management actions is highlighted. We discuss how our research framework embraces methodological and epistemological differences between natural and social scientists to improve research integration and how it supports an adaptive research approach to studying (interventions in) complex ecosystems. We compare the relative advantages of our framework with well-established interdisciplinary conceptual and

Understanding the value base of water decision-making: a practitioners’ guide to the Value Landscapes Approach — University of St Andrews Research Portal Skip to main navigation Skip to search Skip to main content University of St Andrews Research Portal Home University of St Andrews Research Portal Logo Help & FAQ Home Profiles Research output Datasets/Software Research units Projects Activities Impacts Prizes Press/Media Student theses Search by expertise, name or affiliation Understanding the value base of water decision-making: a practitioners’ guide to the Value Landscapes Approach Christopher Schulz, Julia Martin-Ortega, Klaus Glenk School of Geography & Sustainable Development Research output: Book/Report › Commissioned report Overview Original language English Place of Publication The Hague Publisher Valuing Water Initiative Number of pages 19 Publication status Published - …

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 considered to be implausible and overshoot. Failing this simple face validity test points to issues with i) the design of the choice experiment and/or ii) respondents’ behavior deviating from assumptions underpinning choice experiments. A random sample of choice experiment publications including 305 observations confirms that overshooting of WTP is an issue in the published choice experiment literature, with 66% of observations failing to pass the simple face validity test. We provide an exploratory analysis to identify factors associated with overshooting of WTP across studies, and discuss contributing factors related to study design and respondent behavior. Based on that, we e recommend that researchers dedicate greater effort to cost vector design. Studies that find that WTP exhibits overshooting should acknowledge the problem and scrutinize their design and data for potential contributing factors.

Research on the effects of cage aquaculture on native fish populations has revealed its negative and positive impacts. However, a separate analysis of its ecological and economic effects creates incomplete information for the decision-makers. Moreover, the inadequacy of time series data has caused challenges to knowledge-based decision-making in establishing new cage aquaculture sites, especially in low-middle income countries. We use the ecosystem services (ES) framework to analyse the synergy and trade-off of cage aquaculture to a native fish species, Gobiopterus sp. in Lake Maninjau, Indonesia, as an effort to provide comprehensive information to support local decision-makers and to fill the information gap. We engaged some modelling techniques such as the Maximum Entropy Model (MaxEnt) validated with field survey data, Bayesian Networks (BN), and Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) in this …

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 validity of such estimates. In this paper, we present cognitive models of Bayesian anchoring that control for choice-task ordering and cost-vector anomalies in discrete choice experiments. We show that ordering and cost-vector effects arise if respondents update their marginal utility of money based on the costs presented during the experiment and introduce novel models based on Bayesian updating that correct for anchoring processes at the individual level. Using data from a discrete choice experiment on micro-and nanoplastic pollution of freshwater ecosystems in Switzerland, we demonstrate how cognitive modeling can be used to correct willingness-to-pay estimates and discuss the implications for welfare analysis and policy design.

Agricultural support in Scotland represents a significant contribution of the taxpayer. Following Brexit, it is expedient to re-establish the legitimacy for agricultural income support in Scotland. Towards this end, this survey-based study provides empirical evidence on views of members of the Scottish public for key guiding principles and characteristics that should shape a farmer’s support payments. We take a novel perspective by focusing on the acceptability of support for individual farmers. This perspective is enabled through a multi-factorial survey experiment (MFE), which varies 12 attributes across 6 short vignettes presented to respondents. Each vignette describes a farmer and their farm. The attributes include characteristics of farmers (eg, gender, experience) and of farms (eg size, production type/level, environmental performance, financial performance). Attributes varied following an experimental design. Each vignette describes potential changes to the farms’ payments. For each vignette, respondents were asked to indicate on 11-point scales (i) general acceptability of payments;(ii) perceived fairness of income support;(iii) willingness to be supplied with produce by the farmer; and (iv) willingness to petition for continued financial support for the farmer with local politicians. In addition to the MFE, the survey included a Best-Worst-Scaling (BWS) exercise to derive preference rankings for important guiding principles (“items”) for the design of an agricultural support scheme. The inclusion of 16 items included a mix of existing and potentially novel dimensions of agricultural support. Each respondent faced 8 BWS tasks that varied items according to …

Urban greenspaces are multifunctional spaces, providing services to people and biodiversity. With space in urban areas being limited creation and maintenance of urban greenspaces relies on understanding the preferences of urban residents for their characteristics. Such preferences are expected to vary with current availability, and the availability of alternatives to greenspaces such as gardens or gyms. We carried out a nationwide discrete choice experiment with Scottish urban residents to estimate values associated with greenspace attributes of: recreational features; plants and natural features; trees; accessibility; time to walk from home and size, to test the hypotheses that: (i) people are willing to pay to maintain greenspace, (ii) people have willingness to pay for greenspaces with multiple functions, including features for direct use (e.g. play equipment) and biodiversity (e.g. wildflowers), (iii) willingness to pay …

The importance of peatlands for conservation and provision of public services has been well evidenced in the last years, especially in relation to their contribution to the net zero carbon emission agenda. However, little is known about the importance of recreation relative to conservation and their trade-offs. In this paper we address this knowledge gap by exploring the trade-offs between natural properties of peatlands and recreational infrastructures for different categories of recreationists (walkers, cyclists, anglers, and birdwatchers) of an open heather moors and peatlands landscape. We do so building on a series of management scenarios formulated through participatory methods and applying choice experiment related to an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and UNESCO Global Geopark in the UK. Results show a high degree of heterogeneity in landscape preferences across different user groups …

Including resilience in the breeding objective of dairy cattle is gaining increasing attention, primarily as anticipated challenges to production systems, such as climate change, may make some perturbations more difficult to moderate at the farm level. Consequently, the underlying biological mechanisms by which resilience is achieved are likely to become an important part of the system itself, increasing value on the animal's ability to be unperturbed by variable production circumstances, or to quickly return to pre-perturbed levels of productivity and health. However, because the value of improving genetic traits to a system is usually based on known profit functions or bioeconomic models linked to current production conditions, it can be difficult to define longer-term value, especially under uncertain future production circumstances and where nonmonetary values may be progressively more important. We present the …

Despite the fact that sustainable agricultural technologies and practices have been developed and introduced to farmers in both developed and developing countries, there are concerns about low levels of adoption. Empirical evidence of the past 40 years shows that adoption of new practices can be hindered by a wide range of factors, from financial to attitudinal, from personal to social, from agronomic to regulatory. Conclusions that can be generalised across different contexts could help in moving the institutional and policy environment in a direction that strengthens the move towards a more sustainable food production. This is particularly important regarding hotspots of environmental pollution, for example, the release of reactive nitrogen compounds in South Asia. This paper followed the PRISMA protocol and systematically reviewed the adoption literature in South Asia to identify factors that affect farmers' …

The Valuing Water Survey represents the first attempt to study links between personal values and preferences for strategic dimensions of the global water governance agenda. This presumes that there are indeed commonalities that can be found across cultures, sectors, and locally specific scenarios for water management. This is possible through consideration of a relatively broad level of values which may demonstrate that concerns and patterns of interaction around water are, in fact, rather universal. It is also worth noting that this is the first survey of its kind based on the views of professional respondents, that is, people who are actively involved in decision-making about water as part of their work (while previous surveys were based on the views of citizens).The survey measured several kinds of personal values held by respondents. 3 First, we sought to understand people’s perceptions of water values, that is, the importance that people assign to water resources. Water values are often expressed in economic, ecological, or cultural terms. All terms cover important values of water, but not everyone would prioritise them in the same way. For example, to measure water values, we included questions about uses or values of freshwater resources such as ‘basis for agricultural production’,‘places of beauty’, or as ‘habitats for aquatic animals and plants’. 4

Background1. In this report, we update figures from previous reports (Glenk et al. 2020; 2021) on peatland restoration cost based on data collected as part of the Peatland Action Programme (PAP). 2. The previous reports can be found on the SEFARI webpage: https://sefari. scot/research/the-costof-peatland-restoration-in-scotland.3. Our update is based on another batch of additional data, which going forward will enhance the robustness of the analysis. For the purpose of this report, we closely follow the structure of the initial Glenk et al.(2021) report. This means that we will keep the Section structure and numbering of Tables and Figures, making the report directly comparable with previously reported estimates. 4. We refer the reader to the initial Glenk et al.(2020) report for detailed background information, and a more detailed account of the structure of the data and the interpretation of findings. 5. The initial database was collated by researchers of SRUC, the James Hutton Institute and the University of Leeds using data collected as part of the grant application and reporting process for the PAP, funded by Scottish Government and administered by Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), between 2016 and 2019 (https://www. nature. scot/climate-change/taking-action/peatlandaction). The update, involving researchers of SRUC and the University of Leeds, includes more recent data from the 2019/20 and 20/21 PAP funding rounds. 6. The authors wish to acknowledge and highlight that data collection was greatly facilitated through collaboration between SRUC, James Hutton Institute, the University of Leeds and the SNH Peatland Action coordination and …

This study aims (i) to increase the evidence base on cost vector effects with a focus on food choice;(ii) to offer a novel and more transparent approach to defining cost vector bounds via scanner data; and (iii) tests the sensitivity of choices and WTP estimates to different cost vector definitions across two datasets (ie, lamb chops and porridge). The data come from two web-based surveys for a choice experiment (one on lamb and the other one on porridge). The modelling approach to analyse the choice data for different treatments is based on the random utility theory and uses a random parameter logit model. The main findings are: compared to a ‘baseline’treatment (T1-regular prices),(i) increasing the upper bound of the cost vector results in an increase in WTP; and (ii) decreasing the lower bound of the cost vector also results in an increase in WTP. We find a greater number of significant differences in marginal WTP if the difference in the upper bound between ‘baseline’(T1) and other treatments is greater.

The Brazilian agricultural commodities market and the agribusiness sector are facing an increasing international demand for improved environmental standards, such as those regarding climate change and biodiversity loss. Although there are many studies on the structural determinants of sustainable agriculture related to the production systems, markets, and governance, there is a paucity of studies focusing on the valuation of ecosystem services (ES) provided by agricultural landscapes for which no market exists. In this context, the present paper provides estimates of the value of ES related to changes in land use and management in intensive agricultural landscapes in Brazil, using a discrete choice experiment. The results show a significant demand for changes in land use and management to deliver improved ES provision, with marginal willingness to pay (WTP) estimates falling within the R$104-541 interval …

This study addresses an important gap in the stated preference literature concerning valence-based framing of discrete choice experiment attributes. Valence-based framing arises when equivalent outcomes are presented in different ways by accentuating either the positive (e.g., more in good condition) or negative information (e.g., less in bad condition). We find that alternative framings produce different willingness-to-pay estimates, with implications for benefit-cost analysis. We recommend neutral attribute descriptions and otherwise testing for the effects of alternative framings to obtain more robust welfare evidence. We also show that the framing used does not affect the choice paradigm adopted by respondents.

Fertiliser use is environmentally unsustainable in South Asia. Ideally, farmers would follow optimal fertilisation rates for crops based on scientific recommendations. However, there is ample evidence on why farmers under-fertilise or over-fertilise their crops. Important amongst them is that farmers’ attitude to risk influences decisions on fertiliser use. This paper reviews studies on the effects of risk attitude on fertiliser use, the timing of application, and application intensity. We observe that the use of fertiliser is affected by perceptions of fertiliser as a risk-enhancing or risk-reducing input. To influence future fertiliser decisions of farmers, several policy measures are suggested. Among these, gradual withdrawal of fertiliser subsidies, providing enhanced-efficiency fertilisers and eliminating the fraudulent practice of fertiliser adulteration may be the most appropriate in a South Asian context.

This study investigates whether and how the demand for animal‐friendly pork can benefit from the individual and joint use of the label “Animal Friendly,” “Organic,” “Local,” and “Low Fat.” A choice experiment was conducted to collect the data. The data were analyzed using the random parameter logit and the latent class models. Three consumer segments were identified. Consumers in Segment 1 (pro‐welfare consumers—39% of all respondents) were found to highly value the four labels. The results showed that their price premium for animal‐friendly pork could be increased significantly if the product is also labeled as “Local” or “Low Fat.” The members of Segment 2 (Welfare‐reluctant consumers—41% of all respondents) were found to negatively value the use of the label “Animal Friendly.” For “welfare‐reluctant” consumers, label bundling is of marginal effect. The rem1aining 20% of respondents (“Indifferent …