Using a choice experiment, this paper investigates how Swedish citizens value three environmental quality objectives. In addition, a follow-up question is used to investigate whether respondents ignored any attributes when responding. The resulting information is used in the model estimation by restricting the individual parameters for the ignored attributes to zero. When taking the shares of respondents who considered both the environmental and the cost attributes (52-69 percent of the respondents) into account, then the WTPs for each attribute change if the respondents who ignored the attributes have a zero WTP. At the same time, we find evidence that not all respondents who claimed to have ignored an attribute really did. Instead, our results show that they put less weight on the attributes they claimed to have ignored. We also find that people with a university education were more likely to consider all the attributes than others did.

Unique survey data from a contingent valuation study conducted in three different countries (China, Sweden, and the United States) were used to investigate the ordinary citizen's willingness to pay (WTP) for reducing CO 2 emissions. We find that a large majority of the respondents in all three countries believe that the mean global temperature has increased over the last 100 years and that humans are responsible for the increase. A smaller share of Americans, however, believes these statements, when compared to the Chinese and Swedes. A larger share of Americans is also pessimistic and believes that nothing can be done to stop climate change. We also find that Sweden has the highest WTP for reductions of CO 2 , while China has the lowest. Thus, even though the Swedes and Chinese are similar to each other in their attitudes toward climate change, they differ considerably in their WTP. When WTP is measured as a share of household income, the willingness to pay is the same for Americans and Chinese, while again higher for the Swedes.

Hypothetical bias is one of the main issues bedeviling the field of nonmarket valuation. The general criticism is that survey responses reflect how people would like to behave, rather than how they actually behave. In our study of climate change and emissions reductions, we took advantage of the increasing bulk of evidence from psychology and economics that addresses the effects of making promises, in order to investigate the effect of an oath script in a contingent valuation survey. The survey was conducted in Sweden and China, and its results indicate that an oath script has significant effects on respondent behavior in answering willingness-to-pay (WTP) questions, some of which vary by country. In both countries, the share of zero WTP responses and extremely high WTP responses decreases when an oath script is used, which also results in lower variance. In China, the oath script also reduces the average WTP, cutting it by half in certain instances. We also found that the oath script has different impacts on various respondent groups. For example, without the oath script, Communist party members in China are more likely than others to have a positive WTP for emissions reductions, but with the oath script, there is no longer any difference between the groups.

Meat production and consumption have several negative environmental externalities and health impacts. Using a stated preference survey, this study identifies main barriers to and drivers of switching to the following meat substitutes: a plant-based veggie burger, a meat-like burger, and a lab burger. We find that price matters: given the right monetary incentives, many individuals express a willingness to switch to meatless alternatives. About a third of those who prefer meat would consider switching to a meat substitute if the price were two-thirds or less of the price of the meat option. However, almost half of the respondents would not choose a lab meat burger even if they would get it for free. Male individuals without university education and older than 30 years show a stronger resistance to substitute meat hamburgers, in particular if the substitute is a plant-based veggie burger that neither looks nor tastes like meat. Environmental and health consciousness and being familiar with the substitute are correlated with the willingness to substitute. Older individuals are less familiar with and less likely to choose meat substitutes compared with younger individuals. We also find that taste is a prominent barrier for people who prefer meat, indicating that there is room for improvements in the taste of the different meat substitutes.

Using a choice experiment, we investigated preferences for distributing the economic burden of decreasing CO 2 emissions in the two largest CO 2 -emitting countries: the United States and China. We asked respondents about their preferences for four burden-sharing rules to reduce CO 2 emissions according to their country's 1) historical emissions, 2) income level, 3) equal right to emit per person, and 4) current emissions. We found that U.S. respondents preferred the rule based on current emissions, while the equal right to emit rule was clearly least preferred. The Chinese respondents, on the other hand, preferred the historical rule, while the current emissions rule was the least preferred. Respondents overall favored the rule that was least costly for their country. These marked differences may explain the difficulties countries face in agreeing how to share costs, presenting a tough hurdle to overcome in future negotiations. We also found that the strength of the preferences was much stronger in China, suggesting that how mitigation costs are shared across countries is more important there.