Wintersemester 2022/2023

Natural resources are on decline and are subject to human exploitation. A growing world population and increased per capita consumption require informed choices of policy-makers on different scales to achieve efficient and just management. Economic valuation can serve as a tool to make evidence based policy decisions contrasting social and private costs to benefits. This seminar introduces one such valuation method – choice experiments – as a tool to value environmental goods and services (ecosystem services). Choice experiments allow to measure preferences and calculating welfare measures based on individual choices made by a specific target group. The idea is to create a hypothetical market and ask participants to choose between different alternatives. The alternatives are described by attributes which take different levels. Discrete choice models (e.g. logit models) are used to analyze the data.