In contingent valuation studies to assess the economic value of environmental goods, respondents are often given small presents or money amounts at the beginning of the interview to compensate them for their time spent on the survey and to encourage them to be conscientious when answering the questions. Yet, it is still an open question whether this practice biases contingent valuation survey responses, especially stated willingness to pay (WTP) for the respective environmental good. This study employs a set of field experiments to investigate the effect of respondent incentives in the form of monetary and in-kind gifts on responses in a contingent valuation survey. It is analysed how these different kinds of incentives affect (1) respondents’ diligence when answering contingent valuation method questions, (2) the likelihood of a respondent to state a positive WTP and (3) the amount of stated WTP. Results show that with respect to raising respondents' diligence in the survey interview, a moderate monetary incentive is most effective. The results regarding the effect on WTP statements are less clear. While the likelihood to state a positive WTP is increased by most incentives, mean WTP estimates are virtually unaffected.

This analysis focuses on the lockdown measures in the context of the Covid-19 crisis in Spring 2020 in Germany. In a randomized survey experiment, respondents were asked to evaluate their current life satisfaction after being provided with varying degrees of information about the lethality of Covid-19. We use reactance as a measure of the intensity of a preference for freedom to explain the variation in the observed subjective life satisfaction loss. Our results suggest that it is not high reactance alone that is associated with large losses of life satisfaction due to the curtailment of liberties. The satisfaction loss occurs in particular in combination with receiving information about the (previously overestimated) lethality of Covid-19.

In this paper we deal with the problem of missing data in environmental cost-benefit analysis. If government pursues the goal of maximizing social welfare, this implies that public funds should be allocated to those uses where they generate the highest net social benefit. This criterion makes it necessary to conduct cost-benefit analyses for public projects. While the assessment of project costs is typically rather straightforward, a comprehensive assessment of the project benefits is more complicated because one has to consider that also people living far away from the project site might benefit from that project. Neglecting these so-called passive use benefits would lead to a systematic undervaluation of environmental projects, thereby reducing their chances of being realized. A comprehensive cost-benefit analysis would, therefore, require benefit assessment studies in all areas where passive use values might occur. Obviously, this would be impossible. In this paper we show how the assessment of the social benefits from environmental projects can be enhanced even with an imperfect database by using benefit transfer techniques. This is also illustrated empirically using an example from Northwest China.

Zusammenfassung Die Corona-Krise betrifft die Bevölkerung vor allem auf der wirtschaftlichen Ebene. Aber auch die psychosozialen und gesellschaftlichen Kosten sind beträchtlich. Der Umfang der Verluste an Lebenszufriedenheit wird auf Basis einer repräsentativen Studie aus dem April 2020 untersucht. Diese Verluste treten vor allem bei Selbständigen auf, insbesondere bei Solo-Selbständigen und Unternehmerinnen, deren Tätigkeit ohnehin mit größeren Unsicherheiten und einer geringeren sozialen Absicherung verbunden ist.

The bioeconomy serves the goals of resource saving and of reducing environmental pollution and is, therefore, in accordance with principles of sustainable development. Since private markets alone fail to serve these goals successfully, the government is called for to promote the bioeconomy in order to ensure a sustainable development of the economy. In this chapter the concept of sustainability, which is essentially an intertemporal concept, is introduced. Thereafter, the basic principles of resource economics, i.e., the optimal use of natural resources over time, are discussed using a simple intertemporal model. Reasons for market failure in the environmental sector are discussed along with various governmental instruments and policies to address the different kinds of market failure.