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Do institutions and culture affect environmental values? In this article we analyze 1,041 environmental valuations of 223 wetlands in 38 developing countries, to examine the effect of institutions and culture on environmental values. We assess three dimensions of institutional quality: economic freedom, democracy, and good governance. We also consider the impact of cultural differences. Possibly surprisingly, wetland values are lower in more market based economies and they are lower in cultures that are more indulgent and authoritarian. In contrast, improved government effectiveness increases wetland valuations. Understanding these important and varying effects of institutions and culture on wetland valuations is important for policy development and environmental preservation.

This paper presents analysis of a choice experiment (CE) designed to estimate willingness-topay (WTP) to mitigate damages caused by invasive plant species (IPS) in a rural community of Nepal. In order to address the cash constraints problem in a subsistence economy, two payment attributes, labor contribution and membership fee, were included in the choice sets. The results reveal that rural farmers have significant WTP for forest management activities, in terms of both cash and labor contributions. The results also suggest that rural farmers value their time in this context at a different rate to the current wage rate.

Southern bluefin tuna (Thunnus Maccoyii) is a global resource which is critically endangered. The Committee for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna (CCSBT) sets commercial quota levels for member nations, including Australia, each year. However, southern bluefin tuna is also a popular “trophy” fish with recreational anglers and the size of the total recreational catch in Australia is unknown but thought to be significant. This study focuses on the recreational southern bluefin tuna catch at Portland, in southwest Victoria and is based on data collected during the 2010 fishing season. The results indicate that the size of the recreational catch at Portland is significant in terms of the management of the fishery. A travel cost study was undertaken to estimate the recreational value of the fishery. The on-site recreational use value (consumer surplus) per person per visit is estimated to be between $33 and $132 and the on-site annual recreational use value of the fishery for this one season is estimated to be between $449,533 and $1,325,124.

Climate change introduces numerous uncertainties over the livelihoods of farming communities that depend heavily on weather and climate. Rain-fed farmers in developing countries are among the most vulnerable communities. However, climate risks are not new to farmers. Coping with ‘natural variability’ of climate has been a constant challenge faced by farmers even though broad sweeping change in climate due to anthropogenic causes is a relatively new prospect. Some argue ‘climate change’ could be significantly different from ‘climatic variability’ known to and experienced by farmers. In spite of this it is widely accepted that understanding farmers’ behavior towards adapting to climatic variability could generate useful insights in facing the risk of climate change. In Sri Lanka, the village tank farming community in the dry zone is one of the most vulnerable communities thereby deserving the priority attention of policy makers. This study is based on information gathered in Anuradhapura district of Sri Lanka. It depends mainly on information from secondary sources supplemented by qualitative primary information. Analysis was guided by recently introduced behavioral economics concepts of decisions based on experience. Accordingly adaptation is viewed as a response to the climate perceptions of farmers' aided by judgments based on heuristics. Farmers' adaptation decisions can be explained on the basis of their perception of climate variability with two major components. Firstly, farmers perceive climatic variability as an average annual pattern with variable probabilities of seasonal distribution of precipitation. Farmers base their long-term adaptation responses on this perceived average pattern and many of the choices made by them in the existing farming system and resource management practices can be explained accordingly. The average pattern of variability is largely a shared perception and therefore enables the option of joint adaptation. The land allocation practice popularly known as ‘Bethma’ provides a fine example for this. Secondly, farmers also perceive feasibility of random shocks with variable probabilities across the average pattern. This gives rise to short-term responses in the farming system activities. Such responses seem to be more individually oriented and reflect the variations in individual perceptions of climate risks.

Societal expectations from rural lands have traditionally been focussed on the production of food and fibre. Yet the perception of rural areas is changing and they are now seen in many instances to be capable of delivering multiple functions or non-commodity outputs including land conservation and the preservation of biodiversity, contributing to the sustainable management of renewable natural resources and enhancing the socio-economic viability of many areas (OECD, 2001). The overall multifunctionality is constrained or favoured by biophysical and socio-economic drivers. As these types of drivers vary spatially and temporally, so does the functionality of the landscape and heterogeneous patterns emerge. Associated with multiple functions at a single location are a variety of pressures which can manifest themselves as conflict between interacting land uses (Gimona and van der Horst, 2007; Willemen et al., 2010). One such conflict in rural zones is that between agricultural use and residential use.

Recent modelling of the costs and benefits of climate change has renewed debate surrounding assumptions regarding the social discount rate in analysing the impacts of environmental change. Previous literature segments the social discount rate into being influenced by two key factors; the rate of pure time preference and the elasticity of marginal utility of future consumption. These components of the social discount rate reinforce the linkages between the choice of social discount rate and intergenerational distribution. In an extension of previous work by the author on intergenerational distributional preferences, this paper discusses the relationship between intergenerational equity and the social discount rate. The work has significant policy implications given the sensitivity of Cost Benefit Analysis outcomes to assumptions regarding the social discount rate.

This paper presents analysis of the decision-making strategies adopted by respondents when confronted with potential policy options that include changes in both aggregate levels of welfare and equity in distribution. The analysis is based on the results of a choice experiment designed to estimate intergenerational distributional preferences. Non-linear welfare functions are employed within a conventional conditional logit framework. The heuristics employed by respondents in the stated preference context provide valuable insights into the application of welfare principles by respondents in determining trade-offs between the potential changes in the well-being of different generations.

Resource management decisions influence not only the output of the economy but also the distribution of utility between groups within the community. The theory of Benefit Cost Analysis provides a means of incorporating this distributional change through the application of distributional or welfare weights. This paper reports the results of research designed to estimate distributional weights suitable for inclusion in a Benefit Cost Analysis framework. The findings of a choice modelling experiment estimating community preferences with respect to intergenerational utility distribution are presented to illustrate this innovative application of a stated preference technique.

This paper reports on the development of an innovative teaching strategy: an eRoadmap. Based on the theory of conceptual mapping, the eRoadmap provides an interactive, hierarchical structure for course delivery, using the readily accessible platform provided by Microsoft PowerPoint. For the student, the eRoadmap provides a self-paced learning environment which encourages student engagement; for the teacher, it provides an environment for the development of a course framework, and the integration of teaching materials from a variety of sources. Further advantages of the eRoadmap from the perspectives of both students and teachers are discussed, and future directions for development, evaluation and research are outlined.