IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/gunwpe/0034.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Environmental Policy when People's Preferences are Inconsistent, Non-Welfaristic, or simply Not Developed

Author

Listed:
  • Johansson-Stenman, Olof

    (Department of Economics, School of Economics and Commercial Law, Göteborg University)

Abstract

This paper discusses how a benevolent policy maker should act based on some, possibly non-welfaristic,ethical principle in cases where people's preferences are not perfectly informed,consistent and fully developed with regard to all goods, including all kinds of environmental goods, as is normally assumed in mainstream economic theory. When stated or revealed preferences do not reflect the maximization of individual welfare, it is argued that welfare,rather than preferences, has intrinsic value. However, it is also argued that properly designed stated preference methods may provide useful information about people’s views about alternative ethical ends, besides human well-being, and that policy makers should take such views seriously.

Suggested Citation

  • Johansson-Stenman, Olof, 2001. "Environmental Policy when People's Preferences are Inconsistent, Non-Welfaristic, or simply Not Developed," Working Papers in Economics 34, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0034
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://swopec.hhs.se/gunwpe/papers/gunwpe0034.pdf
    File Function: Complete Rendering
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stephen A. Marglin, 1963. "The Social Rate of Discount and The Optimal Rate of Investment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 77(1), pages 95-111.
    2. Spash, Clive L. & Hanley, Nick, 1995. "Preferences, information and biodiversity preservation," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 191-208, March.
    3. Schkade David A. & Payne John W., 1994. "How People Respond to Contingent Valuation Questions: A Verbal Protocol Analysis of Willingness to Pay for an Environmental Regulation," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 88-109, January.
    4. Akerlof, George A & Dickens, William T, 1982. "The Economic Consequences of Cognitive Dissonance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(3), pages 307-319, June.
    5. Yew-Kwang Ng, 1999. "Utility, informed preference, or happiness: Following Harsanyi's argument to its logical conclusion," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 16(2), pages 197-216.
    6. Becker, Gary S, 1993. "Nobel Lecture: The Economic Way of Looking at Behavior," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(3), pages 385-409, June.
    7. John C. Harsanyi, 1996. "Utilities, preferences, and substantive goods," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 14(1), pages 129-145.
    8. Sagoff, M., 1998. "Aggregation and deliberation in valuing environmental public goods:: A look beyond contingent pricing," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(2-3), pages 213-230, February.
    9. Kahneman, Daniel & Knetsch, Jack L., 1992. "Valuing public goods: The purchase of moral satisfaction," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 57-70, January.
    10. Tversky, Amos & Slovic, Paul & Kahneman, Daniel, 1990. "The Causes of Preference Reversal," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(1), pages 204-217, March.
    11. Akerlof, George A, 1991. "Procrastination and Obedience," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(2), pages 1-19, May.
    12. Stephan, Paula E., 2010. "The Economics of Science," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 217-273, Elsevier.
    13. Gregory, Robin & Lichtenstein, Sarah & Slovic, Paul, 1993. "Valuing Environmental Resources: A Constructive Approach," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 7(2), pages 177-197, October.
    14. Olof Johansson-Stenman, 1998. "The Importance of Ethics in Environmental Economics with a Focus on Existence Values," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 11(3), pages 429-442, April.
    15. Sen, Amartya K, 1979. "Personal Utilities and Public Judgements: Or What's Wrong with Welfare Economics?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 89(355), pages 537-558, September.
    16. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    17. Slovic, Paul & Lichtenstein, Sarah, 1983. "Preference Reversals: A Broader Perspective," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(4), pages 596-605, September.
    18. Sen, Amartya, 1985. "Goals, Commitment, and Identity," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 1(2), pages 341-355, Fall.
    19. Thomas H. Stevens & Jaime Echeverria & Ronald J. Glass & Tim Hager & Thomas A. More, 1991. "Measuring the Existence Value of Wildlife: What Do CVM Estimates Really Show?," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 67(4), pages 390-400.
    20. Broome,John, 1999. "Ethics out of Economics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521642750, January.
    21. Jerry A. Hausman, 1979. "Individual Discount Rates and the Purchase and Utilization of Energy-Using Durables," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 33-54, Spring.
    22. John Conlisk, 1996. "Why Bounded Rationality?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 34(2), pages 669-700, June.
    23. Vatn Arild & Bromley Daniel W., 1994. "Choices without Prices without Apologies," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 129-148, March.
    24. Pollak, Robert A, 1998. "Imagined Risks and Cost-Benefit Analysis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(2), pages 376-380, May.
    25. Gregory, Robin & Slovic, Paul, 1997. "A constructive approach to environmental valuation," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 175-181, June.
    26. Richard H. Thaler, 2000. "From Homo Economicus to Homo Sapiens," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(1), pages 133-141, Winter.
    27. Harrison, Glenn W., 1992. "Valuing public goods with the contingent valuation method: A critique of kahneman and knetsch," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 248-257, November.
    28. Sen, Amartya, 1991. "Utility: Ideas and Terminology," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 7(2), pages 277-283, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Elisabeth Gsottbauer & Jeroen Bergh, 2011. "Environmental Policy Theory Given Bounded Rationality and Other-regarding Preferences," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 49(2), pages 263-304, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Veisten, Knut, 2007. "Contingent valuation controversies: Philosophic debates about economic theory," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 204-232, April.
    2. Johansson-Stenman, Olof, 2006. "Should Animal Welfare Count?," Working Papers in Economics 197, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics, revised 09 May 2006.
    3. Johansson-Stenman, Olof, 2006. "Cost Benefit Rules when Nature Counts," Working Papers in Economics 198, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics, revised 09 May 2006.
    4. Szabó, Zoltán, 2011. "Reducing protest responses by deliberative monetary valuation: Improving the validity of biodiversity valuation," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 37-44.
    5. Lo, Alex Y. & Spash, Clive L., 2011. "Articulation of Plural Values in Deliberative Monetary Valuation: Beyond Preference Economisation and Moralisation," MPRA Paper 30002, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Soderholm, Patrik & Sundqvist, Thomas, 2003. "Pricing environmental externalities in the power sector: ethical limits and implications for social choice," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(3), pages 333-350, October.
    7. Cooper, Philip & Poe, Gregory L. & Bateman, Ian J., 2004. "The structure of motivation for contingent values: a case study of lake water quality improvement," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(1-2), pages 69-82, September.
    8. Todd D. Gerarden & Richard G. Newell & Robert N. Stavins, 2017. "Assessing the Energy-Efficiency Gap," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1486-1525, December.
    9. Stern, David I., 1997. "Limits to substitution and irreversibility in production and consumption: A neoclassical interpretation of ecological economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 197-215, June.
    10. Clark, Judy & Burgess, Jacquelin & Harrison, Carolyn M., 2000. ""I struggled with this money business": respondents' perspectives on contingent valuation," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 45-62, April.
    11. Sagoff, M., 1998. "Aggregation and deliberation in valuing environmental public goods:: A look beyond contingent pricing," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(2-3), pages 213-230, February.
    12. Jacobs Martin, 2016. "Accounting for Changing Tastes: Approaches to Explaining Unstable Individual Preferences," Review of Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 67(2), pages 121-183, August.
    13. Olof Johansson-Stenman, 1998. "The Importance of Ethics in Environmental Economics with a Focus on Existence Values," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 11(3), pages 429-442, April.
    14. Frör, Oliver, 2008. "Bounded rationality in contingent valuation: Empirical evidence using cognitive psychology," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1-2), pages 570-581, December.
    15. Rosenberger, Randall S. & Peterson, George L. & Clarke, Andrea & Brown, Thomas C., 2003. "Measuring dispositions for lexicographic preferences of environmental goods: integrating economics, psychology and ethics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 63-76, February.
    16. Schlapfer, Felix, 2008. "Contingent valuation: A new perspective," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(4), pages 729-740, February.
    17. Nick Hanley & Clive Spash & Lorna Walker, 1995. "Problems in valuing the benefits of biodiversity protection," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 5(3), pages 249-272, April.
    18. Contini, Bruno & Morini, Matteo, 2007. "Testing Bounded Rationality against Full Rationality in Job Changing Behavior," IZA Discussion Papers 3148, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Clive L. Spash, 2006. "Non-Economic Motivation for Contingent Values: Rights and Attitudinal Beliefs in the Willingness To Pay for Environmental Improvements," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 82(4), pages 602-622.
    20. Bromley, Daniel W., 1995. "Property rights and natural resource damage assessments," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 129-135, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ethics; environmental policy; environmental valuation; cost-benefit analysis; endogenous preferences; preference construction; irrationality; bounded rationality; cognitive dissonance; anthropocentrism;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A13 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Social Values
    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
    • Q28 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Government Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0034. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jessica Oscarsson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/naiguse.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.