This paper explores the extent to which preference asymmetries occur in Likert-scale indicators of support or opposition to rural land use policies, and implications for methods used to model policy support. Data are drawn from responses to the Rhode Island Rural Land Use Survey.

This paper assesses the potential for function based benefit transfer to inform farmland preservation policy, with emphasis on distinctions between welfare estimation and policy prioritization. Data are drawn from a parallel choice experiments implemented in six communities and statewide in...

In stated preference assessments of farmland preservation programs, respondents are often told that preservation will occur within a given scale-e.g., community, state, county-but do not know the specific location of parcels in question. Hence, welfare estimates may be available for different...

Newer residents of rural, urban-fringe communities are often assumed to have preferences for the development and conservation of rural lands that differ from those of longer-term residents. The existing literature offers little to verify or quantify presumed preference shifts. This paper...

Economists frequently assess willingness to pay (WTP) for land preservation outcomes independent of information regarding policy implementation. The public, however, may not only be concerned with the consequences of land management, but also may have systematic preferences for policy procedures...

Although mixed logit models are common in stated preference applications, resulting welfare estimates can be sensitive to minor changes in specification. This can be of critical relevance for policy and welfare analysis, particularly if policymakers are unaware of practical implications. Drawing...

Stated preference analyses commonly impose strong and unrealistic assumptions in response to spatial welfare heterogeneity. These include spatial homogeneity or continuous distance decay. Despite their ubiquity in the valuation literature, global assumptions such as these have been increasingly...

Maps in stated preference surveys rarely identify the location of respondents’ homes. This standard approach is grounded in the assumption that respondents are aware of their exact household locations relative to mapped policy effects, and hence possess sufficient understanding of spatial...

This paper reports on a contingent choice study in which residents of a rural Rhode Island community were asked to express their preferences for packages of growth management outcomes, where surveys presented both spatial and non-spatial attributes of growth management outcomes. Survey results...

This paper describes a choice experiment addressing preferences for ecolabeled seafood, in which the experimental design allows for choices among various fresh seafood products. The primary emphasis is the potential trade-off between taste (i.e., a favored species) and the presence of an...