Selection effects include seemingly independent influences on, and choices in, conducting and reporting primary research that may bias a stock of knowledge. Such effects may arise from sociopolitical influences (research priority selection), researcher choices (methodology selection), peer...

Land-use policies may affect the structure of local economies as they respond to internal and external factors. We apply a discrete duration model to estimate the effect of designated wilderness on the rate and timing of counties’ economic transition in the Appalachian Region from 1969 to...

Stated preference surveys often provide ambiguous descriptions of ecological commodities, yielding welfare estimates that have unclear interpretations and cannot be linked to measurable outcomes. This paper proposes guidelines to promote ecological content validity in survey scenarios and...

In a site-selection choice experiment various hypotheses are tested related to spatial heterogeneity in willingness to pay (WTP) for environmental improvements. Spatial heterogeneity is measured through distance-decay effects, substitute sites inside and outside the experiment’s choice set,...

We contrast the discovered preference hypothesis against the theory of coherent arbitrariness in a split-sample stated choice experiment on flood-risk exposure. A semiparametric local multinomial logit model is developed as an alternative to the Swait and Louviere (1993) test procedure...

Land value taxation has numerous potential advantages compared to conventional property taxes on capital and land. The models that establish these advantages, however, are grounded in the unlikely assumption that land values are assessed without error. This paper demonstrates that levying taxes...

This paper addresses uncertain biomass shifts in renewable resources. A biomass shift occurs when a dominant renewable resource stock collapses and its ecosystem niche is filled by a replacement species which increases in abundance after the initial collapse. This paper develops a bioeconomic...

This paper explores potential focus shift asymmetries in an ordered strength of preference model applied to contingent choice data. A focus shift occurs when respondents weight factors differently when assessing preference for an "accepted" scenario than they do when assessing preference for a...

The main objective is to assess preference heterogeneity related to the spatial distribution of water quality improvements throughout a river basin. In a choice experiment, the river basin’s hydrogeographical units and the levels of water quality improvement are included as attributes in the...