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International audience; The tourism sector has voluntarily undertaken several initiatives to boost customer confidence in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, in the hotel industry, three different strategies have been implemented: sending no COVID-19 safety signal; sending a moderate signal through a charter; or sending a strong signal through a label. This study aims to identify the main drivers of the hotels’ choice among these strategies and to analyze the influence of their choice on price setting. We estimate a system of three equations (hotel pricing, star rating, COVID-19 safety signal) on a sample of 418 rated hotels in the Hauts-de-France region. Results support three main findings: 1) star rating positively correlates with COVID-19 certification; 2) COVID-19 certification has a strongly negative impact on hotel prices; 3) star rating moderates positively the effect of COVID-19 certification on prices. Furthermore, error terms between the star rating level and COVID-19 certification equations are strongly correlated. Hence unobserved common factors play a role in the adoption of these quality signals. Our findings are consistent with the idea that managers implementing safety signaling strategies are more worried about recovery speed after lockdowns.

Offshore wind energy development can have major economic implications because of the potential impact on coastal recreation demand – particularly for countries that are characterised by high offshore wind power potential while also being popular tourist destinations. In this context, the impact of offshore wind farm projects on beach recreation demand in Catalonia (Spain) during the 2012 summer season was examined. A combined revealed and stated preference approach, which allows joint modelling of actual and hypothetical demands, was applied. The results demonstrate a significant welfare loss up to €203 million per season. The results further show that the installation of a wind farm mainly will cause a shift in trips to Catalan beaches without wind farms, which implies that the estimated negative economic impacts will occur mostly in areas where wind farms are located. From a political economy point of view, this may call for the design and implementation of re-distributive instruments to offset the negative impacts caused by wind farms.

• We explore the possibility of generating revenue from nature-based tourism for future nature reserves.

International audience; A convergent validity test is performed between two groups of versions of the payment card format. The first group, the classic payment card (CPC), asks respondents to report their willingness to pay (WTP) as a point from a list of amounts, and then treats each WTP response as an interval. The second group generates WTP data that may contain both single point and interval values. It includes the two-way-payment ladder (TWPL) (respondents have to tick amounts they would definitely pay and cross amounts they would definitely not pay), and point-interval payment card (PIPC) (respondents have to tick their WTP as either a point or an interval). The test is conducted using data from one TWPL study and two PIPC studies. For each study, we use WTP values stated to simulate 200 CPC WTP datasets, which allows controlling for any behavioral biases likely to confound the outcome of the test. The results challenge the conventional way of eliciting WTP under the CPC and the typical way of treating WTP data from this PC version. Although convergent validity holds between the TWPL/PIPC and CPC, parameter and mean WTP estimates from the TWPL and PIPC are more stable as PC intervals widths increase.

A combined travel cost – contingent behaviour survey of residents and tourists in Catalonia is conducted on-site to examine the effects on beach recreational demand of developing an offshore wind farm (OWF) project. The survey considers four potential OWF scenarios with different degrees of visual impact. We allow for heterogeneity in trip preferences among individuals and control for on-site sampling through the use of a random parameters negative binomial (RPNB) model and a Multivariate Poisson log-normal (MPLN) model, respectively. The welfare measures derived from the RPNB model relate to the current beach users only, whereas those from the MPLN model refer to the general population of residents and tourists in Catalonia. The results show the importance of the specific place of location of the OWF project and how the installation of wind turbines would significantly decrease the demand for trips, depending on their degree of visual impacts, leading to a substantial welfare loss. However, the results also show that the project mainly would cause a displacement of trips to other beaches within Catalonia rather than outside Catalonia and that the welfare per trip measures generated by the RPNB and MPLN models substantially differ. Policy implications of these findings are discussed.

Most environmental economists argue that direct experience with the good being valuated, or with similar goods, is a precondition for providing valid willingness to pay (WTP) responses to contingent valuation questions. Two questions are posed in this article. The first is whether previous use experience of a resource (Sene nature reserve) similar to that being valuated (future nature reserves) and located in the same geographical area (Gulf of Morbihan) impacts on WTP. The second is whether accounting for the endogeneity of direct experience matters in the estimation of WTP. We find that respondents who have not experienced the Sene nature reserve provide value estimates that are statistically comparable to that of respondents who have experienced it. Our assumption is that respondents have acquired sufficient and adequate experience of future nature reserves from the questionnaire that experience obtained by experiencing the Sene nature reserve was not necessary for making a valid value formulation. Hen...

International audience; Beach erosion can have major economic implications because of the potential impact on coastal recreation demand – particularly for countries where coastal tourism is one of the main sources of external revenue. Djerba Island (Tunisia) falls in that category. With about 125 km of coastline, Djerba Island is one of the most important Tunisian destinations. However, the island is experiencing coastal erosion problems. The Tunisia government launched a project to fight costal erosion through the Stabiplage technique. This study provides the first economic valuation of beach erosion control in Tunisia and is the first one that focuses on the Stabiplage technique. Specifically, a contingent valuation survey is carried out to elicit the public willingness to pay (WTP) for the project. An interval payment card question format is used to obtain information about WTP from representative samples of residents and tourists in Djerba. The results reveal a positive WTP for the project. Aggregate WTP estimates range from €133,459 (median value) to €5,180,269 (mean value). These values can help inform decisions about whether to undertake the project based on either the benefit-cost ratio rule or majority voting

International audience; This paper explores the potential link between the sensitivity of willingness to pay (WTP) to the order of presenting bid amounts in contingent valuation questions (ordering effect) and respondent uncertainty. The resource being valued is a public project to protect salt marshes against the spread of an invasive aquatic plant in the Brest roadstead (France). Valuation uncertainty is captured through a variant of payment card format where respondents are given the opportunity to report their WTP as either a single value (Option A) or an interval of values (Option B). The ordering effect is tested using both parametric models that ignore and control for the potential sample selection bias related to the choice between Option A and Option B, as well as non-parametric models. The results suggest that (1) respondents place substantial WTP values on salt marsh conservation, and (2) the ordering effect is linked to respondent uncertainty since only uncertain respondents react differently to changes in the order of presenting bid amounts. Specifically, for uncertain respondents, putting bid amounts in ascending order yields lower welfare estimates than putting bid amounts in descending order or random order. Policy recommendations and options to deal with ordering effect are discussed. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

In this paper, we propose an alternative preference uncertainty measurement approach where respondents have the option to indicate their willingness to pay (WTP) for a nature protection program either as exact values or intervals from a payment card, depending on whether they are uncertain about their valuation. On the basis of their responses, we then estimate their degree of uncertainty. New within this study is that the respondent's degree of uncertainty is "revealed", while it is "stated" in those using existing measurement methods. Three statistical models are used to explore the sources of respondent uncertainty. We also present a simple way of calculating the uncertainty adjusted mean WTP, and compare this to the one obtained from an interval regression. Our findings in terms of determinants of preference uncertainty are broadly consistent with a priori expectations. In addition, the uncertainty adjusted mean WTP is quite similar to the one derived from an interval regression. We conclude that our method is promising in accounting for preference uncertainty in WTP answers at little cost to interviewees in terms of time and cognitive effort, on the one hand, and without researcher assumptions regarding the interpretation of degrees of uncertainty reported by respondents, on the other. © 2013 Elsevier B.V.