New Zealand houses are cold, damp, and poorly insulated by international standards. Our substandard housing stock has negative effects on health, quality of life, productivity, winter air quality, energy use and transmission. Investment in home energy efficiency is below the socially optimal...

This paper explains a short term forecasting approach that uses whole milk powder prices from Fonterra’s globalDairyTrade. The latter provides forward contract prices eight months out from each event. The cumulative impact of up to seven successive events provides reasonable expectations...

With current concerns about climate change and the general status of the environment, there is an increasing expectation that products have sustainability credentials, and that these can be verified. Labelling is a common method of communicating certain product attributes to consumers that may...

The Agricultural Production Survey (APS) is Statistics New Zealand’s vehicle for collecting important information about New Zealand’s primary production. It is an annual postal survey and covers land use, livestock and arable farming, horticultural and forestry production, and selected farm...

The study examines the importance of community forest resources for income and employment in rural areas of Nepal by studying the effect of current forestry policy on forestland use. Using data from 259 households in six community forest user groups in three hilly districts (Dolakha, Kavre and...

The retail electricity market in New Zealand is evolving as the government continues to promote the development of a competitive and efficient market. Encouraging consumer switching through the “What’s My Number” campaign is expected to put pressure on electricity retailers to reduce...

Three axioms underpin consumer choice in neoclassical theory: weak order, independence, and continuity. Two of these axioms may not hold, however, for consumers’ choices regarding genetically modified (GM) food. Consumers may evaluate product attributes differently depending on whether the...

Focus groups were held with four pastoral sectors (sheep, dairy, deer, and beef) to investigate intensification strategies available to each sector. Focus groups first identified drivers of intensification in their sector, then identified the strategies they perceived as available, and evaluated...

Agribusiness, farm business and agricultural-environmental decisions which varied in their characteristics were used to evaluate multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) in an agricultural context. This paper discusses differences between the case studies, strengths and weaknesses of the methods...

The adoption of environmental management practices is addressed in this paper. The use of consumer behaviour theory and a market research approach is discussed by describing how it was used in the study. Qualitative methods were used to gather data from dairy farmers in four New Zealand...