The Impact of Individual Risk Preferences on Valuing Preservation of Threatened Species: an Application to Lynx Populations in Poland

A recent innovation in environmental valuation surveys has been to acknowledge the inherent uncertainties surrounding the provision of environmental goods and services and to incorporate it into non-market survey designs. So far, little is known about how people assimilate and respond to such uncertainty, particularly in terms of how it affects their stated valuations. In this paper we focus on the impact of risk preferences on people’s investments in environment. Individual risk preferences are elicited through a standard, incentivized multiple price list mechanism and used as a independent variable in the analysis of a choice experiment valuing the preservation of two threatened lynx populations in Poland. We find that risk-seeking respondents were more likely to choose the status quo option, which was the riskiest option in terms of the survival of the two distinct lynx populations. Risk seekers revealed also a significantly lower willingness to pay for lynx preservations.