A COMPARISON OF STATED PREFERENCE METHODS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL VALUATION

This paper presents an empirical comparison of contingent valuation (C VM) and choice experiments which are used to value environmental quali ty changes, Both of these methods require individuals to state their p references for environmental qualities. However, choice experiments di ffer from CVM in that environmental attributes are varied in an experi mental design which requires respondents to make repeated choices betw een bundles of attributes. The empirical application involved the effe ct of environmental quality changes arising from forest management pra ctices on recreational moose hunting values. Significant differences w ere found between the values derived from the two methods. However, de tailed examination of the implied choice behaviour suggested that resp ondents ignored substitute recreation areas in the CVM question. Restr icting the choice experiment model to consider only the one site where quality was varied, resulted in welfare estimates similar to the CVM model. This highlights the importance of substitutes in environmental valuation and suggests that choice experiments may be more appropriate than CVM in some cases.