Willingness to pay for and property rights beliefs on river water quality improvements in Central Chile : an application of the Choice Experiment method

Although significant improvements have been achieved in past years, river water quality in Chile is still poor in some places. In particular, the negative effect of pulp mill wastewater on river water quality has received significant attention. Studies indicate that the river environment downstream from pulp mills is considered as severely compromised in Chile. In this regard, I present results of a Choice Experiment (CE) study designed to analyze respondent preferences for river water quality attributes affected by pulp mill wastewater in Central Chile. The CE included policy-relevant attributes on river pollution risk and on river water quality effects that have an impact on threatened species as well as on the yield of local fisheries. Moreover, we tested the extent to which a different framing of a stated preference valuation exercise in terms of the environmental property rights distribution (Industry Pays’ vs ‘Citizens pay impacts stated demand for environmental quality improvements ...