Conjoint Analysis of Individual and Aggregate Environmental Preferences

Environmental economists have long been faced with the challenge of valuing goods and services that are not traded in markets. In efforts to meet this challenge, several valuation techniques have emerged, including conjoint analysis. Conjoint exercises ask individuals to trade off various attributes, or characteristics, of a product or program. Subsequently, conjoint analysis derives a value for each of these attributes through sophisticated statistical techniques. In this paper, we develop a conceptual model of conjoint elicitations consistent with welfare theory, discuss the experimental-design considerations relevant for valuing environmental commodities, and investigate the behavioral and statistical properties of a conjoint data set. With this exploration, we hope to shed some light on the usefulness of this method for environmental valuation