Combining discrete and continuous mixing approaches to accommodate heterogeneity in price sensitivities in environmental choice analysis

Danny Campbell (), Edel Doherty, Stephen Hynes and Tom M. van Rensburg

No 91723, 84th Annual Conference, March 29-31, 2010, Edinburgh, Scotland from Agricultural Economics Society

Abstract: Data from a discrete choice experiment aimed at eliciting the demand for recreational walking trails on farmland in the Republic of Ireland is used to explore the consequences of misspecifying the cost coefficient. To enable straightforward calculation of WTP from the distributions of the non-price coefficients, the price coefficient is typically held constant in mixed logit models. This implies that all respondents are equally price sensitive. In this paper we test the validity of this assumption. Our approach is based on a comparison and combination of discrete and continuous mixing approaches (i.e., a mixture of distributions) to uncover the unobserved heterogeneity in price sensitivities. Results from the analysis highlight that model fit and willingness to pay are sensitive to the distributional assumptions used to represent the price coefficient.

Keywords: Environmental; Economics; and; Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17
Date: 2010-03-29
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm, nep-env and nep-tur
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/91723/files/24 ... y_hynes_rensburg.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aesc10:91723

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.91723

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 84th Annual Conference, March 29-31, 2010, Edinburgh, Scotland from Agricultural Economics Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().