It was found that price is the most important attribute determining consumer preferences, followed by the hens' feed and their rearing conditions. It was also found that only some groups of consumers are willing to pay the premium necessary for alternative methods of production.

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) aims at improving the ecological status of the water bodies in Europe. In this context, some rivers are currently being restored and, in accordance with this Directive, the restoration actions have to be evaluated from a socio‐economic approach. This work applies the Choice Modelling method to the WFD provisions for river restoration. This method proves to be useful for the economic valuation of the restoration measures, as well as a very important tool for people's public participation. In this sense, the water quality improvement has been defined as a priority action from a social point of view. Moreover, the method used has provided answers to both basic questions included in the WFD: the calculation of the economic value of the Segura River's ecological flow, the decrease of which would pose an environmental cost, and the estimation of the environmental income generated by this river.

Coastal lagoons are a special type of boundary ecosystem between marine and terrestrial environments, which in many cases are threatened by human activities developed in the periphery. One of the most important anthropogenic impacts sustained by coastal lagoons is eutrophication, as a result of nutrient enrichment of the water from agriculture and deficient treatment systems. In the European Union, laws such as the Water Framework Directive and Marine Strategy Framework Directive aim to achieve a good ecological status for these ecosystems through a program of measures, which must take into account the benefits generated by them. In this study we have applied the contingent valuation method to estimate the benefits generated by the measures to improve the ecological status of the Mar Menor coastal lagoon (SE Spain), one of the most important of the Mediterranean Sea. The results show that there is a willingness to pay for the implementation of additional measures apart from urban wastewater treatment and other obligatory measures. From the willingness to pay values obtained, the environmental benefits generated by the correction of the impacts at Mar Menor were estimated. These benefits add up to 17.4 million euros per year, of which 7.7 and 9.7 are related to the increase in the use and non-use values, respectively. On the other hand, the estimation of the derived demand function has shown that variables such as the connection to Mar Menor and the level of environmental awareness have a positive influence on the willingness to pay.

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