The role of altruism in non-market valuation. An application to the Białowieża Forest

Anna Bartczak

No 2013-20, Working Papers from Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of an individual trait of altruism on social preferences and hence willingness to pay (WTP) for changes in forest management strategies in the Białowieża Forest in Poland. We used data from a discrete choice experiment (CE), where attributes described changes in the quality of the forest and recreation and were framed to capture the respondents’ non-use and use motivations. Patterns in the individual differences in altruistic behavior were elicited using a self-reported questionnaire developed by Rushton et al. (1981) concerning the frequency of an engagement in different altruistic behaviors. The application of the choice experiment technique allowed for the disentangling of the effect of a trait of altruism with regard to different attributes and their levels. The parameterization we employed in the survey was a WTP-space model (Train and Weeks 2005). Results show that the level of altruism has a significant effect on the valuation of restrictions in the forest visitor numbers; however, the altruism influence on the existence and bequest value from improving nature preservation depends on the current status of the forest.

Keywords: altruism; Choice Experiment; forest naturalness; number of visitors; use and non-use value; WTP-space model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q23 Q51 Q56 Q57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17 pages
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-cbe, nep-dcm, nep-env and nep-tur
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http://www.wne.uw.edu.pl/inf/wyd/WP/WNE_WP105.pdf First version, 2013 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:war:wpaper:2013-20

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