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Effective carbon taxation is essential to achieving the green transition. However, there is typically stiff opposition to carbon taxation due to perceived or actual adverse equity and other impacts. Hence, a better understanding of which factors, including the use of tax revenue, can increase acceptability is essential. To date, stated preference methods have rarely been used to analyse this issue and, when used, have focused only on households’ acceptance. We conduct two identical national choice experiment surveys of Norwegian households and companies, respectively, including carbon tax levels and associated emission reductions and different revenue recycling options as attributes. We find that acceptance for higher tax levels increases among both groups if revenue finances climate mitigation measures. There is some heterogeneity among the groups with regard to using revenue to reduce different dimensions of inequality. Simulating policy options, we find acceptance for the highest carbon tax among both groups when revenue is used both to finance climate mitigation measures and to reduce rural-urban inequalities. This policy option points to an acceptable carbon tax close to an estimated level necessary for reaching the most ambitious climate target set by the Norwegian government. An effective carbon tax level can potentially be achieved in Norway with modest efficiency costs to alleviate inequality.

Economists have neglected place attachment as a potential explanation for people’s preferences for environmental goods. We conducted the first discrete choice experiment to assess the place attachment concept in the valuation of and response to the place-specific environmental impact from a proposed wind farm in Norway. Place attachment increases required compensation for accepting the wind farm, strengthens resistance, and leads to a higher propensity to systematically choose the status quo option of no wind farm in the discrete choice experiment. This finding suggests that the so-called “not-in-my-backyard” (NIMBY) effect should be recognized as a rational response when people place a high value on local environmental amenities, including place identity and a sense of place.

Despite a large stated-preference literature on wind power externalities, few SP studies employ a case-control approach to examine whether people´s acceptance of new wind power developments increases or decreases with exposure to and familiarity with wind turbines. Furthermore, the existing studies are inconclusive on this issue. In a case-control discrete choice experiment we measure the level of acceptance in terms of people´s willingness-to-accept compensation for having future land-based wind power developments in Norway; comparing exposed and non-exposed people’s WTA. We find that exposure lowers acceptance. Furthermore, exposed people are also unwilling to pay as much as non-exposed people to increase general domestic renewable energy production (from all sources), and thus have lower acceptance for such renewable energy policy initiatives. After testing for type of exposure, we argue that the inconclusiveness in the literature of how exposure affects acceptance of wind power developments could be due to the fact that impacts considered differs somewhat across studies.

Sensitivity to scope in nonmarket valuation refers to the property that people are willing to pay more for a higher quality or quantity of a nonmarket public good. Establishing significant scope sensitivity has been an important check of validity and a point of contention for decades in stated preference (SP) research, primarily on contingent valuation. Recently, researchers have begun to differentiate between statistical and economic significance. This paper contributes to this line of research by studying the significance of scope effects in discrete choice experiments (DCE) using the scope elasticity of willingness-to-pay (WTP) concept. We first formalize the scope elasticity concept in a DCE context and relate it to economic significance. Next, we review a selection of DCE studies from different fields and derive their implied scope elasticity estimates. We observe that scope tests as validity checks are uncommon in the DCE literature. Most studies assume unitary elastic scope sensitivities by employing linear functional forms, and when more flexible specifications are employed, the tendency is towards inelastic scope sensitivity. Then, we apply the scope elasticity concept to primary DCE data on people’s preference for expanding the production of renewable energy in Norway. We find that all scope elasticity estimates are statistically significant and vary between 0.18 and 0.46, depending on attribute analyzed, model specification, geographic subsample, and unit of measurement chosen for a key attribute. While there is no strict, universally applicable benchmark for determining the economic significance of scope impacts, we deem these estimates to be of an adequate and plausible order of magnitude. Implications of the results for future DCE research are provided.

The Amazon rainforest is the world's largest rainforest. Currently, at least 16 percent of the area has disappeared due to deforestation. Deforestation results in loss of ecosystem services and goods which provide local and distant households with benefits. Consequently, preservation of the Amazon rainforest has grown to become a global concern. Implementation of a preservation plan to preserve the Amazon rainforest depends on costs and benefits, which must be determined and weighted against each other. The respective benefits among distant beneficiaries are assumingly related to non-use values, which implies existence and bequest values. Through a contingent valuation survey with an internet panel of 300 randomly sampled Norwegian respondents, the study finds that Norwegian households are, on average, willing to pay between NOK 950-1100 as an annual national tax to secure the realization of an extensive preservation plan, which implies no further forest and species loss within 2050. Implicitly, the study provides clear evidence that distant beneficiaries are willing to pay to preserve the Amazon rainforest, where non-use values and carbon storage values are of great importance. Further, the study evaluates the reliability of utilizing three benefit transfer techniques, including the Delphi method, to determine mean WTP among Norwegian households to secure the realization of two preservation plans. Results indicate that estimates derived by utilizing the Delphi method as a benefit transfer technique are directly comparable to estimates derived by a population contingent valuation survey. On the other hand, utilizing unit transfer with income adjustment and function transfer as benefit transfer techniques do not provide directly comparable estimates. Thus, through low transfer errors and test results, the study provides evidence that the Delphi method is a reliable benefit transfer technique, which entails substantially less costs and time expenditures compared to population CV surveys. Amazonasregnskogen er verdens største regnskog. Per dags dato er minst 16 prosent av skogen borte som resultat av avskoging. Avskoging medfører tap av økosystemtjenester og goder som forsørger lokale og fraværende husholdninger med nytte. Derav har preservering av Amazonasregnskogen blitt en global bekymring. Implementering av en preservasjonsplan for å preservere Amazonasregskogen avhenger av kostnader og nytter knyttet til tiltaket. Disse må estimeres og inkluderes i en kostnytteanalyse. Den respektive nytten blant fraværende husholdninger er antageligvis relatert til ikke-bruksverdier som innebærer eksisens- og arvverdier. Gjennom en betinget verdsettingsspørreundersøkelse med et internettpanel på 300 tilfeldig valgte norske respondenter, finner studien at norske husholdninger er villig til å betale i gjennomsnitt mellom NOK950-1100 for å sikre implementering av en preservasjonsplan som sikrer intet mer tap av skog og arter i Amazonas. Studien demonstrer at fraværende husholdninger er villig til å betale for å preservere Amazonasregsnkogen, hvor eksistensverdier og karbonlagringsverdier verdsettes høyt. Videre vurderer studien påliteligheten av å benytte tre ulike verdioverføringsmetoder, inkludert Delphi-metoden, for å determinere gjennomsnittlig betalingsvillighet blant norske husholdninger for å sikre implementering av to preservasjonsplaner. Resultatene indikerer at estimater determinert ved å benytte Delphi-metoden som en verdioverføringsmetode er direkte sammenliknbare til estimater determinert av en betinget verdsettingsundersøkelse. På den andre siden, enhetsverdioverføring justert for inntektsforskjell og funksjonsoverføring gir ikke direkte sammenliknbare estimater. Derfor, gjennom lave overføringserror og testresultater, demons-trerer studien at Delphi-metoden er en pålitelig verdioverføringsmetode som innebærer betydelig lavere kostnader sammenliknet med en betinget verdsettingsundersøkelse. M-ECON

Oil spills from ships can cause environmental damage along shorelines as the oil will float and eventually reach the shoreline. This damage threatens marine life. Further, it influences the recreational experiences on the beach and other marine activities. Thus, it creates a temporary loss of welfare. Ecosystem services do not have a market price but do possess a value. This study conducts econometric analyses of two existing contingent valuation data sets of similar oil spill environmental damage scenarios from 2015 and 2020. The benefit transfer methods used are the unit transfer with income adjustments and different specifications of the value function transfer, both temporal over a five-year period and spatial. The results contribute to improving the validity of the cost-benefit analyses of measures to reduce the occurrence of marine oil spills from ships. The study finds that the different payment methods have an unexpected outcome as the willingness to pay for the 2020 data set is much higher than expected. It shows that a budget constraint affects the willingness to pay for one-time payments if the damage scenario is extra-large and gives a policy recommendation to avoid a high number of protest bidders. Further, the study could not prove an expected Covid-19 pandemic effect on people’s willingness to pay. M-ØA

The main aim of this thesis is twofold: i) add to the scarce empirical evidence of the environmental costs of local wind power developments in Norway, and ii) add to the methodological development of stated preference methods in this context by comparing estimates from Contingent Valuation (CV) and Choice Experiments (CE) over two elicitation formats (Willingness to pay (WTP) to avoid the wind farm and Willingness to accept (WTA) compensation to have the wind farm). After careful pilot testing, data for 393 respondents in the Aurskog-Høland Municipality were obtained in an internet survey with recruitment both from an internet panel and by phone. The subsample that was asked for WTA in both CE and CV worked well, while we quite early in the sampling period had to stop the WTP subsample due to heavy local protests to this elicitation format. This resulted in only 85 observation for the WTP subsample and the remaining 308 in the WTA subsample instead of the planned 50-50 split. In CE, the attribute of overhead powerlines needed for the wind power development was found to cause the largest welfare loss to the locals. In CV a disparity was observed between mean WTA of NOK 8600 (NOK 7822 – 9378), and mean WTP of NOK 1578 (NOK 1457 – 1699) per household per year. Thus, welfare loss due to the wind power development was more than 5 time higher in the WTA subsample. After the first interval regression models, the dependent variable was altered in order to analyze the two separate consideration a respondents makes when answering the CV question: i) whether to pay or demand compensation, ii) if they decide to pay or demand in compensation, how much should it be. This was an important distinction to make, because some variables changed coefficients in the separate analysis. The income variable, for example, had opposite signs of the coefficients in the WTA sample for the logit model and the interval regression with only positive values. A respondent with lower income was more likely to demand compensation, yet a respondent with higher income demanded more. Thus, the way a policymaker maker asks about compensation is important for the outcome. The results of this thesis can be used in Cost-Benefit analysis to decide whether to pursue a wind power development or not. This is done by aggregating all environmental costs of the wind farm (from CE or CV) over the number of affected households, which can be added to investment and operating costs of the windfarm and compared to the social benefits of electricity production. M-ECON