Environmental Economics

Call for Papers | Marine Resource Economics | Special Issue on Attribute Non-Attendance

Call for Papers

Marine Resource Economics

Special Issue on Attribute Non-Attendance in Choice Experiments of Marine Ecosystem Goods and Services

 

Special Issue Editors:  Daniel K. Lew and John C. Whitehead

 

Stated preference discrete choice experiments (DCE) are increasingly being used by researchers seeking to understand consumer preferences and values in environmental economics, transportation, health, and marketing.  An active DCE research area relates to behaviors that break from the assumptions of fully compensatory behavior assumed in standard discrete choice models.  This has led to research on ways of incorporating heuristics and cognitive processes in models of DCE response behavior.  In particular, considerable attention in recent years has been on attribute non-attendance (AN-A)--a type of choice behavior where individuals ignore one or more attributes in the DCE question.

 

Marine Resource Economics is soliciting contributions for a special issue on the topic of AN-A in choice experiments of marine ecosystem goods and services in Volume 34 (2019).  We welcome submissions that are empirical, theoretical, or both and advance our understanding of AN-A as it is applied to marine ecosystem goods and services (marine habitats, coastal ecosystem services, recreational activities, threatened and endangered species, etc.).

 

The special issue editors request five types of papers:

• Comparison studies: There are numerous ways for accounting for AN-A behavior in the literature and that generally can be classified as either stated or inferred approaches.  Studies comparing AN-A approaches (stated versus inferred, alternative inferred approaches, joint versus separate, etc.) are welcome.
• Case studies: There have been a number of AN-A articles published in the areas of agriculture, environment, health, and transportation. The editors seek case studies focused on marine ecosystem goods and services.
• Replications: There have been a number of stated preference articles addressing marine ecosystem goods and services over the years. The editors seek re-examinations of these older, published studies with AN-A methods.
• Policy studies: How does AN-A affect benefit-cost, resource allocation, natural resource damage assessment, or other types of policy? AN-A may alter willingness to pay estimates. When there is AN-A on the cost coefficient, willingness to pay is biased upwards. When there is AN-A on an attribute coefficient, willingness to pay is biased downward. Should AN-A willingness to pay estimates be used as base case estimates or as alternatives in sensitivity analysis? Meta-analyses and benefit transfer studies are also welcome.
• Exploratory studies:  Studies exploring the theoretical and empirical bases of AN-A behavior and factors affecting it are also encouraged.

If interested, please send an abstract to the special issue guest editors (Dan Lew, [email protected]; John Whitehead, [email protected]) by May 25, 2018, for preliminary review.  Selected abstract authors will be asked to submit papers for the special issue through the Journal’s website (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/mre/current) by September 30, 2018.  All submissions are subject to the Journal’s standard review process. 

Brexit and the commercial fishing industry

In case you ever wondered why people might vote against their economic self interest (In Brexit, Economic Reality Competes With Nostalgia for Bygone Days):

There aren’t a lot of fishermen left in this town in North East England, once home to one of the largest fleet of trawlers in Britain. But nostalgia for the fishing industry permeates the place. So the result seemed inevitable when 70 percent of residents voted to leave the European Union. Britain’s fishermen have complained for years about regulations imposed on all members.

The surprise came later when a local business group began lobbying to avoid tariffs, customs and the other burdens of departing the European Union. Social media scorn ensued. In thousands of tweets across the country, the people of Grimsby were derided as dummies and hypocrites. Either they wanted the upsides of Brexit with none of its costs, or they didn’t grasp the harm that leaving would cause until it was too late. ...

Actually, what happened here is more about hearts than minds. The vote to leave was a vivid demonstration of the way emotions can transform politics and affect the economy. It’s a phenomenon found around the world, including in the United States, where the legacy and the romance of a declining industrial past often eclipse the interests of new and expanding businesses. Time and again, economic facts are no competition for sentiment and history.

“Some industries that are economically insignificant have enormous public resonance,” said Bronwen Maddox, director of the Institute for Government, an independent think tank in London. “And because of that, they have political influence that is way out of proportion.” ...

The once-bustling docks here would be pretty desolate were it not for 70 processing warehouses with some 5,000 employees, about one-third of whom are foreign nationals, mostly Poles and Lithuanians. To stay competitive, these companies want the kind of frictionless trade and immigration policy that they currently enjoy, and will probably lose, after Brexit.

The goal of fishermen, on the other hand, is regaining full control of British waters so that they aren’t forced to compete with trawlers from other countries.

The first problem with this dream is the scarcity of local fishermen. Today, there are not enough here to fill a service elevator. ...

So how did the interests of a tiny, shrinking industry defeat a larger, thriving one at the polls? While active fisherman here are nearly extinct, the job maintains an almost folkloric hold throughout Britain. ...

A similar calculus is evident in the United States, where President Trump has promised to resuscitate coal mining. It’s an industry that now employs roughly 55,000 people, a figure that has been trending downward for years. If economic agendas were driven strictly by data, a lot more would be heard about solar power, which employs about five times the number of people.

In Grimsby, the fishing past is very much alive. Pubs are filled with sepia-toned photographs of the town in its 1950s heyday, when 500 boats were crammed into what was then one of the largest ports in the world. Locals speak wistfully about the work of their fathers, taking an almost perverse pleasure in underscoring the hardships that were part of their lives. ...

Were the manpower problem solved, others would persist. The species in Britain’s waters are scallops, crab, lobsters and other delicacies that have never been popular in this country. The fish of choice here are cod and haddock, staples of fish-and-chip shops. Those species are found closer to Norway and Iceland.

In other words, Britain exports most of what it catches and imports most of what it eats. Either the country will need to change its appetite or it will need to trade. ...

Make a note to remind yourself that behavior is guided by more than economic self-interest.  

New publication: "Convergent validity of stated preference methods to estimate willingness-to-pay for seafood traceability"

Whitehead, John, O. Morgan, and William Huth. "Convergent validity of stated preference methods to estimate willingness-to-pay for seafood traceability: The case of Gulf of Mexico oysters." Economics Bulletin 38, no. 1 (2018): 326-335.

Abstract: In this study we compare willingness to pay for a seafood traceability system from contingent behavior demand and contingent valuation referendum vote models using data from a survey of Gulf of Mexico oyster consumers following the BP oil spill in 2010. We estimate a random effects model of oyster demand using contingent behavior data and find that a traceability program increases demand and consumer surplus. We estimate a referendum model for the seafood traceability program using contingent valuation data. We find that welfare estimates from the contingent behavior and contingent valuation methods are convergent valid under certain conditions.

URL: http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2018/Volume38/EB-18-V38-I1-P31.pdf

For me, the most interesting part of the paper is our robustness checks on the contingent behavior and contingent valuation data. Here is what we say about the CVM data:

The traceability program increases consumer surplus per meal by $0.95 with a 95% confidence interval of $0.37 to $1.53. The consumer surplus estimates are robust to alternative econometric models such as random effects Poisson and random and fixed effects ordinary least squares models (these results are available upon request). ...

The conditional mean willingness-to-pay per meal ... constrains willingness-to-pay to be positive (Hanemann 1989). The 95% confidence interval is constructed using a bootstrapping procedure (Krinsky and Robb 1986). The willingness-to-pay per meal is $2.69 with a 95% confidence interval of 1.23 to 4.15. ...

We find that differences in the consumer surplus and mean willingness-to-pay estimates are not statistically significant since the 95% confidence intervals overlap. However, this obscures large differences in the point estimates. Mean willingness-to-pay is 183% higher than the consumer surplus estimate from the demand model.

When referendum data exhibits “fat tails” ... welfare measures will be less robust to alternative models relative to textbook data. The conditional mean welfare measure is not robust to alternatives such as the log-linear logit model (median WTP = $0.27 [-$0.03, $0.56] with the 95% confidence interval in brackets) and the Turnbull (Haab and McConnell 1997) nonparametric estimate (WTP = $1.47 [$1.20, $1.74]) which are not sensitive to the tail of the distribution. However, these two estimates also lead to the conclusion of convergent validity with the consumer surplus estimate.

On the other hand, the conditional mean willingness-to-pay estimate is robust to comparison with the Kriström (1990) nonparametric estimate (WTP = $2.65 [$2.23, $3.06]) (Boman, Bostedt, and Kriström 1999). But the confidence interval of the Kriström estimate does not overlap the confidence interval for the consumer surplus estimate. This lack of convergent validity is due to the narrow Kriström confidence interval which is partially an artifact of the smoothing of the data at the upper two bid amounts.

This sensitivity analysis was prompted by referee comments and my experience with two recent contingent valuation studies that, in my opinion, relied too heavily on the Turnbull estimator, especially with "smoothed" due to non-monotonicity (see Whitehead 2017a, 2017b). Smoothing data is equivalent recoding the dependent variable to fit the theory. Typically, recoding the dependent variable to fit the theory is a strong no-no. In the willingness-to-pay context it is OK in order to provide a lower bound willingness-to-pay estimate. But this estimate should not be used for hypothesis testing in the absence of other estimators. Here is the last line of Whitehead (2017b): 

With what Haab and McConnell (2002) call “difficult data,” the entire range of nonparametric and parametric WTP estimates should be examined for validity testing and benefit-cost analysis.

References

Whitehead, John C., “Who Knows What Willingness to Pay Lurks in the Hearts of Men? A Rejoinder to Egan, Corrigan, and Dwyer,” Econ Journal Watch 14(3), 346-361, September 2017a. https://econjwatch.org/articles/who-knows-what-willingness-to-pay-lurks-in-the-hearts-of-men-a-rejoinder-to-egan-corrigan-and-dwyer?ref=articles

Whitehead, John C. "A replication of willingness-to-pay estimates in An adding up test on contingent valuations of river and lake quality’(Land Economics, 2015). Economics Discussion Papers, No 2017-55." Kiel Institute for the World Economy. http://www. economics-ejournal. org/economics/discussionpapers/2017-55 Page 2, no. 2 (2017b). http://www.economics-ejournal.org/economics/discussionpapers/2017-55/file

5 out of 7 continents isn't bad, right?

We're working on PhD recruitment this week (if you applied to OSU AEDE and were accepted, join us, we're FUN!).  I put together a Google map with our PhD placements since 2007.  A bit scary that I might be influencing thinking for this many people and this wide an area.   

 

It ain't over 'til it's over

The Council's Socio-Economic Panel is in the midst of an interesting discussion about #wreckfish in the South Atlantic - listen in until 5 PM and then join us online again tomorrow beginning at 8 AM: https://t.co/dwPU1JelpN pic.twitter.com/a36dhZ5qMR

— SAFMC (@SAFMC) February 6, 2018

I drove to Charleston, SC today and listened to R.E.M. the whole dang way

I'm here:

February 6 & 7, 2018

Socio-Economic Panel
Crowne Plaza Hotel
4381 Tanger Outlet Boulevard
North Charleston, SC  29418

Briefing Book 

Webinar Registration 

February 6, 2017, 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM 

February 7, 2017, 8:00 AM - 12:30 PM

Public Comment

Click here to submit public comment on SEP agenda items

Click here to read what others have already said

Note: I listened to Spotify's "This is R.E.M." playlist for about 4 hours. Once that ran out of songs I listened to Radio Free Europe and, my favorite album, Reckoning (1984) to further remind me of my college and grad school days. 

Non-sequitur of the Day: Predatory journals at their best

From the inbox:

We had a glance at your published article Reply to "Comment on: A revealed preference approach to valuing non-market recreational fishing losses from the deepwater horizon oil spill and its corrigendum".

We found your article very innovative, insightful & interesting; we really value your outstanding contribution towards Scientific Community. The time and attention you devoted in presenting a realistic and pragmatic article was really appreciated.

With the theme of ‘Serving Scientific Community for a better mankind’,

International Journal of Poultry and Fisheries Sciences is publishing articles dealing with all aspects of etiology, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of liver diseases.

Challenge:  Define a logical path from recreational fishing losses to liver disease.

Go.

"Senior NOAA appointee calls for retraction of paper on illegal fishing"

It sounds like there may be some problems with this paper:

A top US official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who was recently appointed by President Donald Trump, has called for the retraction of a paper that suggests the country exports a significant amount of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing.

The paper, published July 6 in Marine Policy, estimated that in 2015 approximately one-fifth of Alaska pollock exports to Japan were either illegal, unreported, or unregulated — a value of as much as $75 million.

In an Oct. 11 letter (first reported by IntraFish), Chris Oliver, NOAA assistant administrator for fisheries, criticized the paper’s methodology for calculating the illegal hauls.

Oliver wrote to the journal’s editor-in-chief to say that the National Marine Fisheries Service:

Strongly objects to the authors’ claims regarding US seafood exports to Japan and doubts the validity of the methodology used to make such estimates. The allegations made in the paper absent any transparency regarding the data and assumptions supporting them are irresponsible and call into question the authors’ conclusions. Without significantly more information and transparency regarding data sources and methodologies applied, the paper should be retracted in its entirety.

Oliver has some expertise in Alaskan fisheries: Prior to joining NOAA in June, the official oversaw commercial fishing throughout Alaska as Executive Director of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, one of eight federally established organizations that manage the country’s fisheries.

A spokesperson for NOAA said neither Oliver nor the agency had anything further to say about the call to retract the paper.

First author Pramod Ganapathiraju, a fisheries consultant at IUU Risk Intelligence in Toronto, and last author, Gopikrishna Mantha, of King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia, did not respond to our request for comment.

Hance Smith, editor-in-chief of Marine Policy, did not respond our question about whether he planned to retract the paper; however, he told us:

Upon receiving these [letters] we normally anticipate debate in the pages of Marine Policy, but do not otherwise comment.

[...]

via retractionwatch.com

However, no one should go around demanding that peer-reviewed journal articles be retracted (especially an official in the Trump Administration -- use twitter and call the authors funny names instead!). The more normal procedure is to write a comment on the paper and, if it has merit and the editor isn't afraid of the embarrassment that something wrong slipped through his/her the peer review process, it will be published. The authors will then have a chance to reply. If you don't like how the comment/reply goes, you can find another outlet to voice your concerns. There are plenty of options relative to bullying authors and journal editors. 

Are you interested in the internal workings of fish?*

From the inbox:

Dear Dr. Haab,

One of the articles you authored a while ago caught my attention and I am hoping to discuss with you publishing a followup article, or even a review article in the Internal Medicine Review. The article was entitled "A revealed preference approach to valuing non-market recreational fishing losses from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.". I am sure our readers would find an article that continues this work valuable. The parameters of the article are flexible and I am happy to help in any way I can.

Would you or perhaps one of your students have time to contribute an article over the summer?

 Sincerely,
 Lisseth Tovar, M. D.

 Senior Editor

 Internal Medicine Review

Those parameters must be REALLY flexible.

*Yes, that was my actual response.

"Fishermen Can Make Their Catch Count for Red Snapper Fishery with iSnapper"

From the inbox:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DATE: May 31, 2017

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — With the announcement by federal fisheries officials that this summer’s federal recreational Gulf of Mexico Red Snapper season would be the shortest ever at just three days, fishermen are invited to join the effort to collect more robust catch data with the goal of providing a longer season through better science.

By downloading and using iSnapper, a mobile application created by the Center for Sportfish Science and Conservation (CSSC) at the Harte Research Institute (HRI) for Gulf of Mexico Studies, anglers can take an active role in helping to secure the long-term sustainability of this prized Gulf of Mexico fishery.

“Management is currently hindered by the lack of accurate and timely catch data for the private and for-hire recreational fishery,” said Dr. Greg Stunz, HRI Endowed Chair for Fisheries and Ocean Health and Director of the Center for Sportfish Science and Conservation “iSnapper represents an opportunity to improve data collection and recreational access to this fishery.”

The announcement of the three-day federal season, beginning June 1, troubled anglers and coastal community officials who have seen a recovery in the Red Snapper fishery and don’t understand why seasons keep getting shorter. Challenges with collecting accurate fisheries data during the short seasons is a major part of the problem, and iSnapper, available for iOS and Android, was launched in 2015 to give anglers an easy, secure method of reporting their catch, and provide researchers with access to timely, accurate data about what private recreational anglers are catching. ...

Last year, despite some inclement weather at the beginning of the season, a total of 120 fishing trips were entered using iSnapper, with 1,238 Red Snapper reported harvested during the federal season. More than 600 anglers were reported as having fished for Red Snapper, with other popular species caught including King Mackerel and Cobia. ...

The ability to collect timely and accurate catch data from recreational fishermen is a major challenge to fisheries management, which is designed to keep fish populations stable and prevent overfishing that can diminish a species’ population. Because of these problems, the Red Snapper quota for the recreational sector includes a 20 percent buffer to ensure that quota is not exceeded, which would violate federal laws. With more accurate data sourced directly from fishermen in near-real time, this buffer could be reduced or even eliminated, allowing a greater amount of fish to be harvested.

The CSSC previously launched iSnapper as a pilot project with charter for-hire captains in 2011 to see if app technology could provide a faster and more accurate means of reporting catch. That app was an overwhelming success, and this new version of iSnapper opens the door to a much wider audience of recreational fishermen who want to aid in better fisheries management.

For more information visit iSnapper.org or the CSSC’s website, SportfishCenter.org.

Here is the link to the NMFS funded report: http://sportfishcenter.org/sites/default/files/2015_iSnapper_Results.pdf.

Will someone out the economist(s) who is working on the demand model with these data?