Controlling for the effects of information in a public goods discrete choice model

Czajkowski, M., Hanley, N. and LaRiviere, J. (2016) Controlling for the effects of information in a public goods discrete choice model. Environmental and Resource Economics, 63(3), pp. 523-544. (doi: 10.1007/s10640-014-9847-z)

Abstract

This paper develops a reduced form method of controlling for differences in information sets of subjects in public good discrete choice models, using stated preference data. The main contribution of our method comes from accounting for the effect of information provided during a survey on the mean and the variance of individual-specific scale parameters. In this way we incorporate both scale heterogeneity as well as observed and unobserved preference heterogeneity to investigate differences across and within information treatments. Our approach will also be useful to researchers who want to combine stated preference data sets while controlling for scale differences. We illustrate our approach using the data from a discrete choice experiment study of a biodiversity conservation program and find that the mean of individual-specific scale parameters and its variance in the sample is sensitive to the information set provided to the respondents.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Czajkowski, Dr Mikolaj and Hanley, Professor Nicholas
• Authors: Czajkowski, M., Hanley, N., and LaRiviere, J.
• College/School: College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences > School of Biodiversity, One Health & Veterinary Medicine
• Journal Name: Environmental and Resource Economics
• Publisher: Springer
• ISSN: 0924-6460
• ISSN (Online): 1573-1502
• Published Online: 22 November 2014
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2014 The Author
• First Published: First published in Environmental and Resource Economics 63(3):523-544
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License