Speaker
Description
Motivation and Research Question
Trade-offs between ecosystem services (ES) are currently resolved at the expense of public goods. Multifunctional agriculture has the potential to regionally balance ES supply, but bears the risk of stifling indirect land-use changes abroad, leading to a loss of ES in other countries. We design a spatially explicit discrete choice experiment to estimate preferences for climate regulation, water quality, above and below-ground biodiversity, and indirect land-use effects. Different ecological conditions and agricultural production patterns lead to spatial variation in the current ES supply. We test how varying endowments influence aggregated value estimates. Further, we evaluate how respondents trade off local ES improvements against ES losses abroad and risks of water pollution and N2O emissions against enhanced carbon sequestration.
Methods
Preferences are elicited via a discrete choice experiment (DCE) consisting of 10-12 choice cards with two alternatives. One alternative represents the status quo scenario and the other one exhibits changes in ES and biodiversity under the policy scenario. Cheap-talk and opt-out reminders are included to mitigate cost-vector effects. We convey a policy scenario to the survey participants in which farmers receive payments for adopting diversified management practices. Those result in enhanced carbon sequestration (Mg carbon per ha), improved biodiversity, measured via species richness of farmland birds and earthworms, and reduced (or increased) nitrogen leached to the environment in kg per ha, with changes occurring in a 35 km radius around the respondent’s home. Further, respondents face increased land conversion towards agricultural use abroad (in ha) due to leakage effects, and increased household costs due to tax hikes. All ES, also the ones related to biodiversity are explained to the respondents in an introduction video. Data for the status quo alternative, the regional endowment with ES, is drawn from different sources and spatial scales. Survey participants include all German citizens above the age of eighteen. In cooperation with a market research institute, we will sample 1500 participants, using a quota or a stratified random sampling approach. Quotas/strata include gender, age, education, place of residence (urban/rural), and household income. We will analyze the choice data with multinomial and mixed logit models. To avoid assumptions about the functional form, endowment values will enter the models via interaction terms. We will further test other non-linear specifications (e.g. quadratic and logarithmic), that penalize marginal gains for larger values. AIC and BIC values as well as interpretability serve as model selection criteria.
| Keywords | ecosystem services, multifunctionality, valuation, DCE, biodiversity |
|---|---|
| Status of your work | Experimental Design |
| Early Career Researcher Award | Yes, the paper is eligible |
