Using an intervention framework to value salient ecosystem services in a stated preference experiment
2015
Lewis, D. J. | Provencher, Bill | Beardmore, Ben
To estimate the value of an improvement in the provision of an ecosystem service, analysts often use an intervention framework in a stated preference experiment. An intervention framework is defined by (i) an intervention, such as a publicly-funded program, and (ii) the intervention effect — the difference in the provision of the ecosystem service with and without the intervention. The contention of this paper is that if the purpose of an experiment is to estimate the value of the intervention effect, rather than the intervention itself, consideration needs to be given to the saliency of the service to the respondent population, because for salient services respondents often have prior beliefs about the intervention effect, and if these prior beliefs are different on average than implicitly assumed or explicitly presented in the choice experiment, the estimate of the value of the improvement will be biased. We emphasize that in some cases a structural model can be used to identify the value of the intervention effect, whereas for others, only the value of the intervention can be identified. We illustrate the issue using two case studies concerning ecosystem service provision on freshwater lakes, prevention of aquatic species invasions, and fish habitat enhancement.
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