This paper focuses on behavioural reasons underlying stated attribute nonattendance. In order to identify and incorporate procedures for dealing with heterogeneous attribute processing strategies, we ask respondents follow-up questions regarding their reasons for ignoring attributes. Based on these statements, we conclude that the standard way of assigning a zero impact of ignored attributes on the likelihood is inappropriate. We find that some respondents act in accordance with the passive bounded rationality assumption since they ignore an attribute simply because it does not affect their utility. Excluding these genuine zero preferences, as the standard approach essentially does, might bias results. Other respondents claim to have ignored attributes to simplify choices. However, we find that these respondents have actually not completely ignored attributes. We argue along the rationally adaptive behavioural model that preferences are indeed elicited in these cases, and we show how using a scaling approach can appropriately weight these observations in the econometric model. Finally, we find that some respondents ignore attributes for protest-like reasons which essentially convey no information about preferences. We suggest that using the standard approach combined with weighting procedures and recoding of non-attendance statements conditional on the specific reasons for non-attendance could be more appropriate than the current standard way of taking stated non-attendance into account.

The European Union's (EU) Water Framework Directive (WFD) is implemented as an instrument to obtain good ecological status in waterbodies of Europe. The directive recognises the need to accommodate social and economic considerations to obtain cost-effective implementation of the directive. In particular, EU member states can apply for various exemptions from the objectives if costs are considered disproportionate, e.g. compared to potential benefits. This paper addresses the costs and benefits of achieving good ecological status and demonstrates a methodology designed to investigate disproportionate costs at the national level. Specifically, we propose to use a screening procedure based on a relatively conservative cost-benefit analysis (CBA) as a first step towards identifying areas where costs could be disproportionate. We provide an empirical example by applying the proposed screening procedure to a total of 23 river basin areas in Denmark where costs and benefits are estimated for each of the areas. The results suggest that costs could be disproportionate in several Danish river basins. The sensitivity analysis further helps to pinpoint two or three basins where we suggest that much more detailed and elaborate CBAs should be targeted in order to properly ascertain whether costs are indeed disproportionate.

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