• Energy Research

Supply of electricity is not keeping up with the rapidly increasing demand due to industrialization as well as electrification of rural areas in many developing countries. This study adds to the scarce literature on valuing the welfare loss to households in developing countries from energy poverty in terms of access only to intermittent or unreliable electricity networks. We conducted a Contingent Valuation (CV) survey of households in both urban (city of Mekelle) and rural areas (village of Ashegoda) in Northern Ethiopia to estimate households' willingness-to-pay (WTP) to avoid electricity blackouts. On average, the households experienced 160 blackouts per year with an average duration of four hours; and were on average willing to pay 499 Ethiopian birr (18 USD) per household per year. This corresponds to a 34% increase in their annual electricity bill and represents 1% of their mean annual income. Thus, this type of energy poverty represents significant welfare losses in developing countries. The households´ WTP to avoid blackouts increases significantly both with annual income and expenditure as a proxy for income; and with the annual number of experienced blackouts, the average length of these blackouts, and the number of damage categories experienced. These results are all as expected and support the validity and reliability of CV surveys to assess household welfare loss from this type of energy poverty in a developing country context.

Les préférences des consommateurs pour l’électricité à moindre impact environnemental : une approche Choice Modelling De nombreux pays sont confronté au choix entre une continuation de l’investissement dans les combustibles fossiles et un développement poussé des énergies renouvelables tels que l’éolienne et l’hydro-électricité. Tandis que les combustibles fossiles entraînent des émissions de polluants classiques et de gaz à effet de serre, les impacts principaux des énergies renouvelables sont l’intrusion visuelle et des impacts sur l’écologie locale. Par conséquence pour les énergies renouvelables le choix du site et la taille de l’installation deviennent préoccupant pour une décision. Nous avons effectué un Choice Experiment afin d’évaluer les préférences de la population et leur consentement-à-payer (CAP) pour différentes sources d’énergie et leurs caractéristiques. Les résultats montrent que les Norvégiens préfèrent l’électricité éolienne, étant donné le choix entre la continuation de l’importation de l’électricité des centrales de charbon et la construction en Norvège de nouvelles centrales hydro-électriques, des centrales éoliennes et des centrales à gaz naturel. Ils préfèrent aussi le développement de quelques installations éoliennes de grande taille plutôt qu’un grand nombre de petites installations. Pourtant, nous trouvons également un effet Not-In-My-Back-Yard (NIMBY) pour les centrales éoliennes. Le CAP observé est le reflet d’une différence des coûts externes entre ces sources d’énergie et peut être utilisé pour la planification du développement énergétique avec une allocation des investissements qui est économiquement optimale.

Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) pastoralism utilizes vast boreo-arctic taiga and tundra as grazing land. Highly fluctuating population sizes pose major challenges to the economy and livelihood of indigenous herder communities. In this study we investigated the effect of population fluctuations on core provisioning and regulating ecosystem services in two Sámi reindeer herding districts with contrasting fluctuation trends. We compared 50-year long time series on herd size, meat production, forage productivity, carbon footprint, and CO2-equivalence metrics for surface albedo change based on the radiative forcing concept. Our results show, for both districts, that the economic benefits from the provisioning services were higher than the costs from the regulating services. Still, there were major contrasts; the district with moderate and stable reindeer density gained nearly the double on provisioning services per unit area. The costs from increasing heat absorption due to reduction in surface albedo caused by replacement of high-reflective lichens with low-reflective woody plants, was 10.5 times higher per unit area in the district with large fluctuations. Overall, the net economic benefits per unit area were 237 % higher in the district with stable reindeer density. These results demonstrate that it is possible to minimize trade-offs between economic benefits from reindeer herding locally and global economic costs in terms of climate-regulating services by minimizing fluctuations in herds that are managed at sustainable densities.

The advent of biotechnology and conservation of genetic resources hold promise to improve traits to meet the challenges to coffee growing from climate change. Developing new varieties by integrating traits in high demand by farmers could greatly increase farmers’ adoption of new varieties. This study aims to inform breeding priority setting by examining farmers’ preferences for coffee traits. A Discrete Choice Experiment was applied to smallholder farmers in northern Ethiopia to map their willingness-to-pay for improvements in four coffee traits: i) yield, ii) weather tolerance, iii) disease resistance, and iv) the maturity period. The traits are important to the farmers in their choice of coffee varieties. They prefer weather tolerant and disease resistant varieties; implying that they prefer yield stability over high yielding and early maturing varieties. Education level, access to irrigation and farmers’ experience in coffee farming explain the preference heterogeneity across farmers. These results suggest that breeding programs should give priority to yield stability in order to increase farmers’ adoption of new varieties, and secure in situ preservation of these traits. Thus, ex situ conservation programs are needed for early maturing and high yielding varieties, which farmers do not give priority to maintain in their own fields. This would improve climate resilience of coffee farming, and at the same time conserve the Arabica coffee genetic heritage of Ethiopia. Bio-based and Applied Economics, Vol. 9 No. 3 (2020): Eliciting preferences using stated choice experiments

The benefits for specific health impacts related to air and water quality were measured in simultaneous contingent valuation surveys conducted in five different European countries. Consistent inter-country differences in willingness to pay to avoid ill health episodes could not be explained by measurable differences in individual characteristics. International transfer of unit values resulted in an average transfer error of 38%. Accounting for measurable differences among countries in health status, income and other demographic measures, either through ad hoc adjustments to the transferred values or through value function transfer, did not improve transfer performance.

Abstract Despite a large stated-preference (SP) literature on wind power externalities, few SP studies employ a case-control approach to examine whether people's acceptance of new wind power developments and renewable energy initiatives increases or decreases with exposure. Furthermore, the existing studies are inconclusive on this issue. In a case-control discrete choice experiment, we measure the level of acceptance in terms of people's willingness-to-accept (WTA) for having future land-based wind power developments in Norway; comparing exposed and non-exposed people's WTA. We find that exposure lowers acceptance. Furthermore, exposed people are also unwilling to pay as much to increase general domestic renewable energy production (from all sources) as non-exposed people, and thus have lower acceptance for such renewable energy policy initiatives. After testing for type of exposure, we argue that the inconclusiveness in the literature of how exposure affects acceptance of wind power developments could be due to the fact that impacts considered differ somewhat across studies.

The disappearance of intangible cultural heritages (ICHs) together with associated symbols and meanings in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) undermines 2003 UN Convention for Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. To contribute to reversing this trend, the present study estimates the economic value of preserving traditional kente weaving and interpretation of kente symbols by establishing national demonstration centers in Ghana. Contingent valuation (CV) surveys of both the public and kente weavers are used to elicit their preferences for these national centers. As CV surveys of cultural heritage have often been criticized for lacking both policy and payment consequentiality, we have used a specific preservation measure and a non-voluntary payment vehicle to make the decision context realistic and consequential. Households show significant, positive mean willingness-to-pay (WTP) for establishing national centers to preserve both the kente weaving technique and the interpretation of kente symbols. Furthermore, we find no distance decay in WTP for preservation of this ICH; indicating that people have strong preferences for preserving this ICH independent of how far they live from the center of kente weaving activities. This leads to larger aggregated benefits of preservation compared to built cultural heritage and local environmental goods, for example, where strong distance decay occurs in many cases. This makes the net present value of centers for demonstration of kente weaving and interpretation of kente symbols positive and an economically worthwhile investment. The policy implication of these results is that higher investments in preserving ICHs can be justified not only from a cultural heritage perspective, but also from an economic point of view.