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When assessing strategies for implementing Nature-Based Solutions (NBS), it is paramount to identify and quantify all benefits for securing better, informed decisionmaking. Nevertheless, there appears to be a lack of primary data for linking the valuation of NBS sites with the preferences and attitudes of people interacting with them and their connection to supporting efforts to reduce biodiversity loss. This is a critical gap, as the socio-cultural context of NBS has been proven to play a big role in NBS valuation, especially for their non-tangible benefits (e.g. physical and psychological well-being, habitat enhancements, etc.). Consequently, through cocreation with the local government, we co-designed a contingent valuation (CV) survey to explore how the valuation of NBS sites may be shaped by their relationship with the users and the specific respondent and site characteristics. We applied this method to a case study of two distinct areas located in Aarhus, Denmark, with notable differences related to their attributes (e.g. size, location, time passed since construction). The esults obtained from 607 households in Aarhus Municipality show that the personal preferences of the respondent are the most relevant driver of value, surpassing both the perceptions linked to the physical features of the NBS and the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents. Specifically, the respondents attributing most importance to nature benefits were the ones assigning a higher value to the NBS and being willing to pay more for an improvement of the nature quality in the area. These findings highlight the relevance of applying a method assessing the interconnections between human perceptions and nature benefits to ensure a holistic valuation and purposeful design of NBS.

The correlation between screen size and visualisations of wind turbines in an internet survey with 2,359 respondents is analysed. Respondents answering the survey on a screen smaller than or equal to an A4 sheet find the visualised wind turbines significantly less visible than respondents answering on a larger screen. These results fuel the debate on using visualisations in internet surveys.

The interaction between leaders and employees plays a key role in determining organizational outcomes and performance. Although the human resources management literature posits positive effects of leadership behaviors on employee job satisfaction, the causal path between the two is unclear due to potential endogeneity issues inherent in this relationship. To address the issue, we first provide theoretical explanations about why and how transformational and transactional leadership behaviors would enhance employee job satisfaction. Second, we test the relationship between leadership behaviors and employee job satisfaction using panel data from a year-long randomized field experiment that engaged leaders and employees from hundreds of public and private organizations in Denmark. Primary findings suggest that although leadership training does not have direct effects on changes in employee job satisfaction, leadership-training-induced changes in leadership behaviors (transformational leadership and verbal rewards) are positively related to changes in job satisfaction.

Visual external costs are significant elements in the cost-benefit analysis of wind farm locations. This has been demonstrated well in the literature. However, in the assessment of the visual costs, a large share of the earlier studies used no or only simplistic visualizations of the visual impacts at stake. The cost estimates thus rely on the respondents’ ability to imagine the visual impacts associated with wind turbines of different sizes and at different locations. This has been argued to potentially reduce the validity of the visual cost estimates. The present paper analyzes whether respondents’ prior perceptions of the visual impacts from offshore wind farms correlate with their stated preferences for reducing the same visual impacts from offshore wind farms, when presented with visualizations of the visual impacts. The results show that respondents who perceive offshore wind farms to have positive or neutral visual impacts express equally strong preferences and high positive willingness to pay for reducing visual impacts, compared to respondents who perceive the visual impacts to be negative. The information in the visualizations thus appears to have updated the prior perception of the visual impacts of offshore wind farms.

Aging populations put pressure on the provision and financing of long-term care (LTC) services in many countries. The projected increase in LTC expenditures may in particular constitute a threat to the future sustainability of public budgets in welfare states, where LTC is financed through taxes. To accommodate the increasing number of 80+ year-olds in society, policy-makers and service administrators need a better understanding of care preferences among future older adults: What types of services do older citizens prefer most, and which factors shape their LTC preferences? A discrete choice experiment (DCE) was administered to a representative sample of the Danish population aged 54-64 from May to July 2019 (n = 1154), investigating which factors shape individuals' preferences and willingness-to-pay (WTP) for their future LTC. Our results reveal that respondents are willing to make additional out-of-pocket payments to supplement the care provided for free by the municipality. The WTP was highest for services such as receiving help from a regular care team ($129 per month) and an extra shower a week ($116 per month). Moreover, we find heterogeneous care preferences, with three user characteristics associated with higher WTP for services: higher education, high wealth, and a low trust in the publicly financed care system. Our results raise concerns that inequalities between relatively more- and less-resourceful older adults may increase in Scandinavian-type welfare states in the future. Such increasing inequality in service provision may undermine citizens' trust in and support of the publicly financed care system.

There is a huge gap between how employees see leaders’ behavior and how leaders see themselves regardless of sector and functional area. Because this gap can be a serious problem in managing organizations, scholars have investigated how the gap can be reduced. This article focuses on leadership training and tests whether and under what conditions it narrows the gap. Using quantitative and qualitative data from a randomized field experiment with several hundred Danish leaders from public and private organizations, we find that a yearlong leadership training course decreases the differences between leader and employee perceptions of transformational and transactional leadership behaviors in public sector organizations but not in private organizations. The findings imply that leadership training can be one way for public organizations to align perceptions of leadership.

Theoretically, the choice of childcare mode should be influenced by the quality of the childcare attributes. However, such preference relations have been difficult to identify in past studies. One ...

Fear of Crime (FoC) has social and economic consequences and can impact both physical and mental health. Consequently, strategies to reduce FoC are imperative to national and local policy makers. We use the stated preference method choice experiments to elicit preferences for multiple FoC mitigation attributes in a nightlife setting among adolescents and their parents in 10 Danish cities. We find the strongest FoC mitigation preferences for higher number of friends accompanying the adolescent and the atmosphere in the nightlife, followed by police, limiting the number of strangers and the presence of volunteers. Significant differences in preferences between adolescents and their parents are evident.

We investigate whether accommodating job attributes influence the probability of returning to work three years after a cancer diagnosis. Using a combination of Danish administrative data and a survey carried out among Danish breast, colon, and melanoma skin cancer survivors, we find that the probability of returning to work is significantly and positively correlated with a flexible work schedule during and after cancer treatment. The result is robust when controlling for pre-cancer work experience, job seniority, pre-cancer job dissatisfaction, and post-cancer ability to work. Furthermore, we show that the influence of a flexible schedule varies with respect to cancer survivors’ ability to work, level of education, and type of cancer.

Preferences for developing 3600 MW offshore wind farms in Denmark are estimated based on data from a choice experiment. The variation in willingness to pay for the location of offshore wind power development at 8, 12, 18, or 50 km from shore is analysed as a function of gender, age, education, income, wind turbine viewshed, and beach visits. With a willingness to pay space mixlogit model, we find that willingness to pay varies significantly as a function of the age, income level, viewshed to offshore wind farms, and beach visit frequency of the respondents.

With a higher share of renewable energy in the energy production mix, the need for a flexible electricity production, storage and demand increases. At household level, flexibility in the electricity consumption has the potential to mitigate unexpected drastic shortages of electricity in the system. The efficiency of household flexibility depends on the level of compensation needed to make households accept restrictions in their electricity consumption. The present paper contributes to a growing literature estimating the compensation requirements. Using the economic valuation methods choice experiments, we estimate the amount of compensation needed for households to accept contracts, which allow the energy company to remotely switch off the washing machine, laundry dryer and dishwasher in the household. The contracts vary with the number of times the appliances can be switched off in a year and the duration of each switch off event. Households are willing to accept contracts that allow the energy company to turn off individual devices and charge compensation ranging between 4.8 and 99.0 €/year, depending on the type of contract. The compensation level is found to increase exponentially with the number of annual switch-offs and a linearly with the duration of each switch-off.

Diabetic foot ulcers are a serious complication of diabetes with high costs and adverse sequelae, such as lower-extremity amputations. International guidelines recommend that all people with diabetes should have their feet inspected at least once a year. This study is aimed at determining whether socioeconomic factors influence the probability of having the feet inspected by a chiropodist on a nationally representative sample of people with diabetes. We estimate a logit model for the choice determinants of foot inspections among people with diabetes. Of all people with diabetes, 73% have not had their feet inspected by a chiropodist. The results indicate social and geographical inequality with regard to diabetic foot care. Especially for ethnic minorities, people with low income and people living in rural and remote areas. The findings are robust to a series of sensitivity analyses.Published: Online October 2019.

Existing conceptualizations and measures of transformational and transactional leadership have unclear theoretical bases, confound leadership and its effects, and are not necessarily suitable for public organizations. Overcoming these problems is necessary to test how leadership affects performance. Many public administration scholars apply the concepts, emphasizing the need to ensure that the concepts are applicable in both public and private organizations. The article reconceptualizes transformational and transactional leadership and develops and tests revised measures that can be employed on employees and leaders, are robust in terms of repeated use by the same respondents, and are applicable to public and private organizations alike.

Population aging is expected to result in an increased demand for long-term home care services world-wide. In Denmark, long-term home care is predominately provided by local municipalities and is publicly financed. This paper uses a stated preferences approach to study the willingness to pay (WTP) for various components of long-term home care services, using household taxes as the payment vehicle. In our discrete choice experiment, we ask respondents to consider a hypothetical individual – an 83-year-old woman with physical limitations who lives alone – and to choose among various service packages for her. We find that respondents, on average, have strong preferences for improving long-term home care services. However, these average results are strongly driven by positive WTP among respondents with left-wing political views. Furthermore, WTP is positively associated with age, which implies an increasing demand for improved services as longevity increases. We conclude that WTP for tax-financed, long-term home care services is closely linked to respondent characteristics.

Installed wind energy capacity has been increasing steadily across the world and is expected to continue to do so in the future, in response to lowering costs of technology as well as increased renewable energy goals put forth by governments. Nonetheless, public opposition has been increasing and the discussion regarding siting wind turbines onshore or offshore is consistently present in public discourse. In combining a stated preference study with spatial data processed via GIS (Geographic Information Systems), spatial preferences for onshore and offshore wind turbines are explored while considering their visual impact and costs as well as controlling for the respondents' socioeconomic characteristics. In general, respondents state strong preferences towards offshore wind turbines as opposed to onshore. Furthermore, spatial data is found to be significant with regard to the preferences of the respondents, particularly respondents' distance to the coast and potential offshore wind farms and the number of wind turbines seen from the residence and the number of turbines in the postal area. As a secondary result, findings suggest socioeconomic characteristics such as age and income are significantly related to respondents’ preferences, in line with previous research.

Wind energy installed capacity has been increasing steadily all over the world and is expected to continue to do so in the future, following lowering costs of technology as well as increased renewable energy goals by governments. Nonetheless, public opposition has been increasing, and the discussion regarding siting wind turbines onshore or offshore is constantly present on public discourse. By combining a stated preference study with spatial data processed utilising GIS (Geographic Information System), we explore preferences for onshore and offshore wind turbines, considering their visual impact, costs, as well as socioeconomic and spatial attributes of the respondents. Results show that in general respondents show strong preferences towards offshore wind turbines as opposed to onshore. Furthermore, spatial data is found to be significant in regards to the preferences of the respondents, particularly the respondents’ distance to the coast and potential offshore wind farms and the number of wind turbines seen from the residence. In the same line, socioeconomic indicators such as age and income prove significant to respondents’ preferences in line with previous research.

An increasing number of studies suggest that the cumulative impacts of wind turbine encounters might have a negative impact on the acceptance of onshore wind power development. In many countries offshore wind resources are seen as the new wind energy resource, though the offshore cost of energy is markedly higher compared to onshore. In the present paper it is tested if the cumulative effect of wind turbines makes people favour offshore wind turbine development to onshore development. The results suggest that the cumulative effects from wind turbine encounters have weak effects on the relative attitude towards more onshore and offshore wind power development. This suggests that increasing onshore wind power development does not make people favour offshore wind power development to a higher extent.

Using Danish survey data from a choice experiment, parental preferences for class-size reduction are estimated. While parents with children in large classes are willing to pay for class-size reduction, parents with children in small classes are reluctant and even express negative utility for further class-size reduction. We interpret this as parents balancing the risk of ‘Lazearian’ interrupters and the benefits of educational and social peers when forming their preferences for class size.

To secure the validity and applicability of stated preference measures in economic analysis, hypothetical preferences must mimic real life preferences. For instance, people have a propensity to prefer what they already have when presented with alternatives that, all things being equal, seem to be superior, i.e. a status quo effect. However, in the stated preference literature, the tendency to choose the alternative representing the status quo situation seems to exceed real life status quo effects. Accordingly, status quo bias can be a problem. In the Choice Experiment literature, status quo bias is found to be a function of protest attitudes concerning the payment of the hypothetical good. In a split sample framework we test an ex-ante entreaty aimed at reducing payment based protest attitudes. We find that the entreaty reduces status quo bias and improves the internal validity of stated preferences in our data based on Swedish ostomates’ preferences for ostomy pouch quality changes. To secure the validity and applicability of stated preference measures in economic analysis, hypothetical preferences must mimic real life preferences. For instance, people have a propensity to prefer what they already have when presented with alternatives that, all things being equal, seem to be superior, i.e. a status quo effect. However, in the stated preference literature, the tendency to choose the alternative representing the status quo situation seems to exceed real life status quo effects. Accordingly, status quo bias can be a problem. In the Choice Experiment literature, status quo bias is found to be a function of protest attitudes concerning the payment of the hypothetical good. In a split sample framework we test an ex-ante entreaty aimed at reducing payment based protest attitudes. We find that the entreaty reduces status quo bias and improves the internal validity of stated preferences in our data based on Swedish ostomates’ preferences for ostomy pouch quality changes.

We investigate the association between pre-cancer job dissatisfaction and return-to-work probability 3 years after a cancer diagnosis. We use a Danish data set combining administrative data and a survey to breast and colon cancer survivors. We find that the return-to-work probability has a negative correlation with pre-cancer job dissatisfaction with mental demands (where the correlation is driven by the high-educated) and with physical demands and the superior (where the correlation is driven by the low-educated). Educational gradients in the probability of returning to work after cancer are not significantly affected by controlling for pre-cancer job dissatisfaction and pre-cancer ability to work.

Based on a Danish survey including respondents with on-shore viewshed experience and different degrees of off-shore viewshed experiences, it is estimated how the different types of wind power experience influence the preferences for extend wind power, biomass energy and solar energy should be developed in Denmark. The preference relations indicate that on-shore viewshed experience reduces preferences for wind power with 6% and increase preferences for biomass and solar energy solutions relative to wind power with nearly 5%. In contrast, off-shore viewshed experience increases preferences with 24% for wind power relative to biomass energy. However, the effect is dependent on the type of off-shore wind farm experience. Thus, experience with near-shore wind farms can reduce the preferences for wind power. The results also suggest that some of the viewshed effects from wind turbines carry over to the relative preferences between solar energy and biomass energy.

Hypothetical bias remains a major problem when valuing non-market goods with stated preference methods. Originally developed for Contingent Valuation studies, Cheap Talk has been found to effectively reduce hypothetical bias in some applications, though empirical results are ambiguous. We discuss reasons why Cheap Talk may fail to effectively remove hypothetical bias, especially in Choice Experiments. In this light, we suggest augmenting Cheap Talk in Choice Experiments with a so-called Opt-Out Reminder. Prior to each single choice set, the Opt-Out Reminder explicitly instructs respondents to choose the opt-out alternative if they find the experimentally designed alternatives too expensive. In an empirical Choice Experiment survey we find the Opt-Out Reminder to significantly reduce total WTP and to some extent also marginal WTP beyond the capability of the Cheap Talk applied without the Opt-Out Reminder. This suggests that rather than merely adopting the Cheap Talk practice directly from Contingent Valuation, it should be adapted to fit the potentially different decision processes and repeated choices structure of the Choice Experiment format. Our results further suggest that augmenting Cheap Talk with a dynamic Opt-Out Reminder can be an effective and promising improvement in the ongoing effort to remedy the particular types of hypothetical bias that potentially continue to invalidate Choice Experiment surveys.

People experience welfare losses in the event of power outages. A higher share of wind power in the power generation mix increases difficulties in forecasting power generation. This, in turn, challenges an effective utilization of wind power and increases the risk of power outages. Using a split sample approach, we test whether private households’ preferences for power outages are sensitive to information regarding the positive influence that controlled power outages can have on the utilization of wind energy in particular. Information increases the overall acceptance of contracts with low compensation, but influences females and males differently. Relative to female respondents, information increases male respondents’ preferences for accepting a contract, whilst information reduces preferences among females, relative to males, for contracts with higher levels of compensation.

Welfare estimates in discrete choice experiments studies are found to be sensitive towards the applied bid vector, i.e. anchoring bias or starting point bias. Furthermore, there are some evidence that female respondents might be more prone to starting point bias compared to male respondents. Using a market good, starting point bias is tested and found on the preference margin only to be evident among female respondents with less experience with the market good. Experienced female and male respondents do not state significant starting point biased preferences. This suggests that starting point bias might be less severe among well-informed respondents.

Costs and benefits of water restoration projects are not necessarily evenly spread out over the entire area affected by the project. The physical distribution of benefits is, therefore, an important parameter when conducting economic analyses of water restoration projects. Two particularly relevant spatial issues relate to 1) the location of the population relative to the location of the waterbody, and 2) the availability and characteristics of substitute water bodies. Based on a contingent valuation (CV) study of the demand for restoring Odense River in Denmark a spatial demand model which accounts for travel time both to the river subject for valuation and to potential substitute sites is estimated. It is concluded that the spatial distribution of benefits is unlikely to be homogeneously determined by a one-dimensional spatial model. Moreover, the results suggest that the effect of spatial issues on preferences varies between users and non-users. For non-users the spatial impacts from potential substitutes significantly reduce demand for improvements in Odense River. This indicates that focus on estimation of distance decay effects may be an important tool in relation to ensuring proper geographical delimitation of the population in a given context.

Presently, onshore wind turbine densities are increasing in many countries. The “crowding” of wind turbines in especially the urban fringe and in more densely populated rural areas is expected to meet resistance. However, few studies have to date analysed the cumulative effects of wind power on the social acceptance of wind power. We shed light on this issue and find that the attitude towards increasing the onshore wind power capacity in Denmark is significantly influenced by the number of turbines people see on a daily basis. However, we find that this effect is conditional on having a wind turbine in the viewshed from the permanent or summer residence. Accordingly, if people cannot see an onshore wind turbine from their permanent or summer residence we do not find significant evidence of cumulative effects on attitude. Furthermore, if we hypothesise that an increase in the wind power capacity is implemented by replacing smaller wind turbines with larger ones, we find that the cumulative effects are reduced also among respondents having onshore wind turbines in the viewshed. This suggests that alternative strategies for increasing the onshore wind power capacity can have significant impact on social acceptance.

The offshore wind power generation market is currently experiencing large growth rates on a global scale and investments exceeding several billion euro are being made. From a welfare economic point of view there is a non-trivial economic trade-off between offshore wind generation costs and the visual impacts from offshore wind farms. Offshore wind farms close to the shore generate cheaper electricity, but also cause higher levels of visual impacts compared to locations at larger distances. In the present paper we carry out a review of the stated preference studies that have elicited the demand for visual disamenity reduction from offshore wind farms. The review has three objectives: (a) to present the results of the different surveys; (b) to explore the more technical parts of the different surveys; and (c) to present the frontiers in the assessment of the demand for visual disamenity reductions associated with offshore wind farm locations. The paper is based on the results from five different studies. The review indicates that locations of offshore wind farms which are close to the shore generate significant welfare losses and that these can be reduced by locating the wind farms at more distant locations. The results also show that the welfare economic costs vary in terms of a range of socio demographic characteristics, experience with wind turbines and recreational activities. Finally, the review suggests that the welfare impacts related to the spatial distribution of the wind farms, intergenerational effects and experience with wind turbines are potential areas that would be beneficial to explore in future studies.

As the amount of wind energy installed capacity keeps growing, in Europe and the world in general, the siting of wind projects near population or recreational centres becomes a frequent possibility. Therefore, it is of high interest for policy makers and developers to be able to quantify the effect of wind projects on public acceptance.Currently, one of the main drivers for acceptance of wind turbines by the public is their level of visual impacts. While recent studies have focused on estimating the welfare loss of visual impacts from wind turbines, a large share of the applied studies have used no or very simple visualisation of the actual visual impacts at stake. These studies thus rely on the cognitive skills of the respondents to imagine wind turbines of different sizes and locations; and on the prior experience people have had with wind turbines.By extending the economic model of perceived quality developed by Blomquist and Whitehead (1998), this paper provides a theoretical argument for the need of visualisations when describing valuation scenarios for respondents, as well as the relevance to correctly de ne the amount of attributes of the good to be represented on the visualisation, and which visualisation techniques to utilise. Afterwards, we propose a framework for classifying different visualisation types and utilise it to classify recent studies regarding wind turbines acceptance, highlighting the lack of visualisations in recent studies, as well as the need to raise the bar on scenario descriptions for wind turbine visual impacts valuation.

Web surveys are becoming an indispensable tool for quantitative researchers, and online survey panels have proliferated in recent years. However, little research has addressed the challenges of using online panels, namely the potential effects of respondents’ survey experience, also known as panel conditioning. This paper is based on a study of Danish parents’ day care arrangements and their associated level of satisfaction. A survey was conducted through an online panel and included measurements of past survey participation. Through tests of independence on key variables and the application of various ordered logit models, we find no significant evidence that survey experience affects respondents’ reported level of satisfaction. These results persist when testing the potential interaction between survey experience and experiences with day care services. Furthermore, we relate our results to the existing literature and discuss the possibility of different effects cancelling each other out. This leads us to recommendations on the use of online panels and suggestions for elaboration in future research.

Presently, less than a handful of papers have analysed the attitude towards offshore wind farms in a population living in an area with offshore wind farms. This leaves the experience-based attitude and demographic relations analysis relatively unexplored. The present studies aims at covering some of that seemingly uncharted territory by analysing attitudes from a sample of more than 1000 respondents. Applying an Ordered Probit Model, the results show general positive attitudes towards offshore wind farms and that the attitude formation seems to be a function of the gender, income, level of education, visit frequency and type of visit to the beach and the view to on-land turbines from the residence. Interestingly and perhaps the most interesting results, the observed relations between demographics and attitude are found to be dependent on the type and frequency of usage of the beach among the respondents. Attitudes towards offshore wind farms and demographic associations are thus found to be more evident in the case that respondents do use not the beach for walking on a relatively frequent basis but much weaker if the respondent use the beach on a frequent basis. However, these results are sensitive to the type of beach usage. This suggests that attitude formation towards offshore wind farms appear to be dependent on a combination of the type and frequency of use of the beach. To the author's knowledge these findings are novel, as such relation has not yet been identified in the literature. As such, the results shed light on a new angle in both the literature focusing on the opposition formation towards wind power projects in general and offshore wind farms in particular.

Offshore wind power has a large potential as a vast resource for delivering clean and abundant energy on a global scale. However, the siting of offshore wind farms in the coastal zone has negative effects on the seascape. This might be particularly evident in the case if offshore wind farms are located close to areas with recreational activities in the coastal zone. Extending the analysis from a previous investigation of the preference for reducing visual impacts from offshore wind farms, the present paper utilises the same sample representing the Danish population. Based on the stated preferences from a Choice Experiment in a mail survey the preferences for reducing visual disamenities from offshore wind farms among different types of coastal zone users are compared to the preferences of less frequent users of the coastal zone. The results strongly indicate that in addition people who can see offshore wind farms from their residence, anglers and recreational boaters, i.e. users of the coastal zone, significantly perceive the visual impacts to be more negative compared to people who do not use the coastal area for those specific purposes. Furthermore, the results also indicate that respondents who visit the beach on a frequent basis also have stronger preferences for reducing the visual disamenities, when compared to less frequent visitors. As a consequence, the specific users and frequent visitors of the coastal zone are willing to pay approximately twice as much to have future offshore wind farms moved further away from the coast, when compared to less frequent users and visitors. These results display that, given the wind farms are not located at relative large distance from the shore, the recreational value of the coastal use is potentially jeopardised by visual impacts from offshore wind farms. From an energy planner's point of view, these results are noteworthy, as they – everything else being equal – point towards that potential gains in capital cost (investment, construction and running costs) by locating offshore wind farms at relative close distances from the shore might be outweighed by the visual disamenity costs in coastal areas with a large recreational activity. As such, the optimal location, i.e. distance from the shore, of offshore wind farms might be closer to the coast in areas with little recreational activities compared to coastal areas with a higher level of recreational activities.

With the increasing number of on-land turbines and the increasing size of the individual turbines, on-land locations for wind power development have become more difficult to find in an increasing number of countries. In the literature and the public debate, these on-land siting difficulties are often put forward to be related to the perceived environmental costs of wind turbines. However, offshore wind power generation might be a solution to this problem, if the perceived environmental costs are smaller offshore compared with on-land. Based on a review of seven papers focusing on the preferences and willingness to pay for different wind power development sites, people in different countries generally seem to hold significant preferences of offshore wind power development when compared with different types of locations on-land. However, the preferences for offshore wind power development seem to be dependent on the specific place of location offshore. This points towards the fact that offshore locations potentially can have higher environmental costs than on-land locations. However, the preferences for offshore locations strongly indicate that the environmental costs can be significantly reduced by the location of offshore wind farms at large distances from the coast. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Energy planners have shifted their attention towards offshore wind power generation and the decision is supported by the public in general, which in the literature has a positive attitude towards offshore wind generation. However, globally only a few offshore wind farms are operating. As more wind farms start operating and more people become experienced with especially the visual impacts from offshore wind farms, the public positive attitude could change if the experienced impacts are different from the initially perceived visual interference. Using a binary logit model, the present paper investigates the relation between different levels of prior experience with visual disamenities from offshore wind farms and perception of visual impacts from offshore wind farms. The differences in prior experience are systematically controlled for sampling respondents living in the areas close to the large scale offshore wind farms Nysted and Horns Rev and by sampling the a group of respondents representing the Danish population, which has little experience with offshore wind farms. Compared to previous results in the literature, the present paper finds that perception of wind power generation is influenced by prior experience. More specifically, the results show that people with experience from offshore wind farms located far from the coast have a significant more positive perception of the visual impacts from offshore wind farms than people with experience from wind farms located closer to the coast. These results are noteworthy on two levels. First of all, the results show that perceptions of offshore wind generation are systematically significantly influenced by prior experience with offshore wind farms. Secondly, and in a policy context, the results indicate that the future acceptance of future offshore wind farms is not independent of the location of existing and new offshore wind farms. This poses for caution in relation to locating offshore wind farms too close to the coast.

When prompting respondents to act on the hypothetical markets that are presented to them in stated preference surveys, it is often observed that a proportion of the sample state a zero demand for the good in question even though their genuine demand is positive. Though the literature comes up with some means to calibrate the estimated preferences ex-post, this is far from being unproblematic and uncontroversial. In this paper we test whether a short ex-ante entreaty, presented to respondents in a health economic stated preference survey, can effectively reduce the number of protest zero bids. We first of all find that the protest reduction entreaty significantly reduces the number of protest zero bids in the survey. Furthermore, the results indicate that marginal demand for the individual attributes as well as general preferences do not seem to be influenced by the protest reduction entreaty. Compared to the traditional ex-post calibration of protest zero bids in stated preference surveys, these results suggest that an ex-ante reduction in protest zero bids by using a simple and short entreaty is possible without introducing other types of biases in the survey.

In this paper, we test whether preferences and willingness-to-pay estimates obtained in a Choice Experiment study are susceptible to starting point bias as is often the case in Dichotomous Choice Contingent Valuation studies. On the basis of a multinomial probit model, we find that preferences are indeed susceptible to starting point bias. In a split-sample design our results suggest that varying the price levels displayed in a so-called Instructional Choice Set presented prior to the actual preference eliciting choice sets, significantly impacts respondents’ preferences and willingness-to-pay for protecting Danish nature areas from new motorway development. In particular, our results show that the bias is gender-specific. Only female respondents are significantly affected. Results further reveal that the impact of the starting point bias decays as respondents evaluate more and more choice sets. This supports the Discovered Preference Hypothesis, and on the basis of this we suggest a number of ways to potentially mitigate the starting point bias.

Wind power generation is expected to increase significantly in the near future. Owing to the increasingly limited possibilities for using on-land turbines, offshore wind generation is a potential alternative. However, wind turbines located offshore are still associated with visual disamenities potentially making offshore location a less attractive alternative to on-land wind power generation. The present paper analyses attitudes towards both on-land and offshore wind power development using a probit model. It also discusses the elicited determinants of attitude in relation to developing wind power on-land or offshore. Compared to other papers on attitude, the paper is unique in the sense that the Danish population has considerable experience with the different impacts associated with wind turbines compared to most of the other countries investing in wind power generation. This is particularly evident with regards to offshore development. The paper establishes that whilst offshore wind farms are preferred to on-land development, the results also imply that on-land development is still a feasible alternative. In that relation, differences in wind power generation costs and the substitution of smaller on-land turbines with fewer but larger turbines might make on-land development even more attractive. On a more detailed level, younger respondents are more positive towards wind power than older respondents. Interestingly, respondents living close to either on-land or offshore wind turbines did not display a more negative attitude towards wind power generation when compared to respondents who were not living close to wind turbines.

Expansion of offshore wind power plays a significant role in the energy policies of many EU countries. However, offshore wind farms create visual disamenities. These disamenities can be reduced by siting wind farms at larger distances from the coast—and accepting higher costs per kWh produced. In this paper willingness to pay for reducing the visual disamenities from future offshore wind farms is elicited using the economic valuation method Choice Experiments. The valuation scenario comprises the location of 720 offshore wind turbines (equivalent to 3600 MW) in farms at distances equal to: 12, 18 or 50 km from the shore, relative to an 8 km baseline. Using a fixed effect logit model average willingness to pay amounts were estimated as: 46, 96 and 122 Euros/household/year for having the wind farms located at 12, 18 and 50 km from the coast as opposed to 8 km. The results also reveal that WTP deviates significantly depending on the age of respondents and their experiences with offshore wind farms.