Sietz, D., U. Frey, M. Roggero, Y. Gong, N. Magliocca, R. Tan, P. Janssen, and T. Václavík. 2019. Archetype analysis in sustainability research: methodological portfolio and analytical frontiers. Ecology and Society 24(3):34. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-11103-240334

The percentage of protesters in contingent valuation surveys is substantial–about 20% across many studies. This paper seeks to clarify the motivations behind protest responses. In addition, the question whether the estimation of willingness to pay (WTP) is more biased by the exclusion or inclusion of protest bids is yet undecided. Methodological improvements are difficult for three reasons: motivations behind protest responses are largely unclear, definitions of protest differ between studies and often only participants who state a zero WTP are asked for their reasons. Our survey on farm animal welfare (n = 1335) provides detailed motivations, two definitions and includes debriefing of all participants for their WTP. We find that protest bids are not a refusal to answer, they are neither irrational nor driven by lack of understanding. Quite the contrary, a large part of participants is directly motivated by moral reasons. Furthermore, protest responses are not coupled to a zero WTP. In our sample, only 8% out of 32% protesting participants had a zero WTP. Only a small fraction of zero bids (0.4%) are true WTP-statements, i.e. respondents were satisfied with the status quo. This finding has important implications for existing WTP-estimates which might be biased. Finally, we provide detailed estimates of the WTP for animal welfare issues by including and excluding different types of protesters and outliers.

AMIRIS is an agent-based model (ABM) to simulate electricity markets. The focus of this bottom-up model is on the business-oriented decisions of actors in the energy system. These actors are represented as prototypical agents in the model, each with own complex decisionmaking strategies. Inter alia, the bidding decisions are based on the assessment of electricity market prices and generation forecasts (Nitsch, Deissenroth-Uhrig, et al., 2021), and diverse actors deciding on different time scales may be modelled. In particular, the agents' behavior does not only reflect marginal prices, but can also consider effects of support instruments like market premia, uncertainties and limited information, or market power (Frey et al., 2020). This allows assessing which policy or market design is best suited to an economic and effective energy system (Torralba-Díaz et al., 2020). The simulations generate results on the dispatch of power plants and flexibility options, technology-specific market values, development of system costs or CO2 emissions. One important output of the model are simulated market prices (Deissenroth et al., 2017).

This study examines the impact of ethical attitude on the willingness to pay for farm animal welfare improvement in Germany. Little is known about the pluralism of moral attitudes that may exist behind farm animal welfare issues and its relationship to customers' willingness to pay for it. Via a large survey (n = 1334) we are able to identify different moral dimensions by employing validated scales. We find utilitarian alongside deontological attitudes as well as a mixture of both. Thus, presupposing a standard moral attitude is too simple. This has implications for decision-making on markets, since the implicit normative assumptions of a utilitarian position in economics has to be critically assessed. Furthermore, we asked for the willingness to pay for various aspects of farm animal welfare improvement. We find significant positive correlations between willingness to pay and environmental concern, altruism and less apathy. Measured in Euro, a higher environmental concern has the strongest effect on WTP for all five moral scales. Outliers with higher bids are willing to pay almost five times for any aspect of farm animal welfare than the rest of the sample. A more detailed analysis of outliers demonstrates that market-based approaches have restrictions in capturing certain moral values. Moreover, the motivations behind zero bids reveal that moral concerns outweigh indifference towards animal welfare by far. This has implications how policy can be designed to serve people’s demand for higher animal welfare standards. Two other findings are of interest. First, we find a very high number of people assigning an intrinsic value to animals (90%). Second, zero bids and outlier treatment in WTP-studies deserves more careful consideration, since WTP-estimates are easily skewed by excluding these groups.

This paper tries to show the various roles agent-based modeling and simulation (ABMS) can play in technology and policy assessment of energy systems. We examine the advantages of ABMS methods using three case studies of electricity market models as example (AMIRIS, EMLab-Generation and PowerACE). In particular, we argue why ABMS might serve as framework for many future energy system models that integrate many di erent algorithms. We then discuss practical and theoretical problems in the development, validation and assessment of energy-system-analytical ABMS and conclude with an outlook and recommendations for energy system modellers who consider incorporating ABMS into their modelling toolbox.