Social Values in Economic Environmental Valuation: A Conceptual Framework

Abstract

Economic environmental valuation remains a much debated and contested issue. Concerns have been voiced that it is unable to capture the manifold immaterial values of ecosystems due to conceptual and methodological issues. Thus, additional value categories (social values) as well as novel valuation approaches like deliberative (monetary) valuation are areas of growing interest, yet the theoretical foundations are rather weak. Against this background, this article aims to develop a consistent conceptual framework for making sense of social values in economic environmental valuation. Based on a holistic view of society and individuals, the role of institutions, the social environment, culture and transcendental values is emphasised. To synthesise diverging concepts of value into an economic concept and to account for the multidimensionality of social values, the framework consists of three spheres: social, natural and contextual. The novel framework demonstrates that social values may be integrated into a preference-based utility framework when denoting a holistic understanding of social preferences and human embeddedness in nature and society.

Desire, moral evaluation or sense of duty: The modal framing of stated preference elicitation

“…Therefore, we framed one of the payment vehicles of a non-use value scenario as a tax (the ‘Amazon rainforest tax’) and the other one as a voluntary contribution (donation to the ‘Arctic Ocean sanctuary’), which may be perceived as being more realistic for a good outside of the realm of domestic governance. Since payment vehicles can fundamentally influence people's apprehension of the scenarios and, for instance, trigger protesting behaviour if they disagree with them (Meyerhoff et al, 2014), we analysed potential differences in the perception of the scenarios by focusing on the share of zero bids as well as importance ratings.…”

“…The notion of citizen preferences is derived from a deontological understanding of rational choice and thereby conceptually diverges from the mainstream definition of economic preferences. Massenberg et al (2023) proposed a conceptual framework of how social values enter economic environmental valuation, which consists of three spheres: social, natural and contextual. The social sphere, in their understanding, comprises social factors that influence the valuing individual(s) independently of the concrete valuation exercise, such as transcendental values, beliefs, dispositions, and cultural aspects.…”

“…Notably, the valuation context leads from abstract values to concrete (economic) value articulations. Massenberg et al (2023) highlighted the role of information for the likelihood of considering specific aspects of the natural and social spheres, alluding to the possibility that tweaks in the descriptions of environmental goods and services can give indications as to which value dimensions are deemed relevant in a given valuation context.…”

“…values that may not correspond (only) to the definition of consumer preferences, but that can also be based on deontological ethics, considerations of justice and norms. Those kinds of value motivations have been recognised as being integral to environmental values, as discussed above (Arias-Arévalo et al, 2018;Hart and Latacz-Lohmann, 2001;Massenberg et al, 2023;Sagoff, 1988;1998). We assume that if a small change in linguistic modals used in establishing practical commitments (as defined below) can lead to differentiated stated preferences, even when measured only on a monetary scale, then this is indicative of the richness of environmental values, which too linguistically rigid experimental standards in traditional CVM studies may conceal or flatten out.…”