• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.873-900
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• 2007

Non-market valuation studies tend to assume that individual households have homogeneous preferences for a non-market good to value. However, since the preferences for non-market goods, especially environmental goods are more likely to be heterogeneous by nature, it may be more appropriate to assume heterogeneous preferences for non-market goods, which may in turn may lead to reduced biases in the WTP estimation. This study investigate the extent to which individual households have heterogeneous preferences for reduced concentrations of radon, a radioactive indoor air pollutant, for road safety, and for nuclear power safety. We also analyze the effect of heterogeneity assumption on the results of model and WTP estimation. Using the choice experiments and mixed logit models, we found that allowing for heterogeneous preferences improved model fitness and that there existed heterogeneous preferences for both reduced radon concentration and road safety, albeit not for nuclear power safety. The mean WTP for reduced radon concentrations and road safety increased by factors of 2.44 and l.74 respectively with the models allowing for heterogeneous preferences.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.337-379
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• 2005

This choice experiments study values the non-market benefits of water quality improvements in Paldang Reservoir and Han River, located in Korea. A fractional factorial orthogonal design was used to produce four different choice sets per respondent, before employing choice examples to screen out irrational responses. The panel mixed logit model (with normal distributions for the attributes) fit the data best, indicating that allowing for both heterogeneous preferences across households and correlation between repeated choices may represent actual choice behaviors best of all the estimated models. The significant standard deviations of the random attributes suggest that the taste for each attribute may vary considerably in the population. The annual benefits to the Seoul Metropolitan area for a small (large) enhancement of the clarity of water, a gradual removal of unpleasant waters, and a gradual improvement in biodiversity, were estimated to be some 1.5 trillion (1.7 trillion) Won, 2 trillion Won, and 1.7 trillion Won, respectively, with 1.8~2.6 trillion Won for at least two of them occurring together. The study also discusses potential biases germane to choice experiments studies of this type.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.93-102
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• 2016

Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) system, bi-direction power trading technology, enables drivers possessing electric vehicle to sell the spare electricity charged in the vehicle to power distribution company. The drivers gain profit by charging electricity in the day time of high electricity rate. In this regard, the government is preparing the policies of building and supporting V2G infrastructure and demanding the potential consumers' preference for the V2G system. This paper attempts to analyze the consumers' preference using the data from obtained a survey of randomly selected 1,000 individuals. To this end, choice experiment, an economic technique, is employed here. The attributes considered in the study are residual amount of electricity, electricity trading hours, required plug-in time, and price measured as an amount additional to current gasoline vehicle price. The multinomial logit model, which requires the assumption of 'independence of irrelevant alternatives', is applied but the assumption could not be satisfied in our data. Thus, we finally utilized nested logit model which does not require the assumption. All the parameter estimates in the utility function are statistically significant at the 10% level. The estimation results show that the marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) for one hour increase in electricity trading hours is estimated to be KRW 1,601,057. On the other hand, a one percent reduction in residual amount of electricity and one hour reduction in required plug-in time in V2G system are computed to be KRW -91,911 and -470,619, respectively. The findings can provide policy makers with useful information for decision-making about introducing and managing V2G system.

• Journal of the Korean Regional Science Association
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.61-78
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• 2017

Among several policies for industrial decentralization introduced since the 1960s, business relocation grant policies put a heavy financial burden on central and local governments. This study investigates the change in the likelihood of manufacturing establishments' relocation to the non-SMA associate with the change in business relocation grant policies. Using the mining and manufacturing survey data from 1996 to 2014, manufacturing firms' relocation decision model in nested logit structure was estimated. The data showed that the proportion of movements from the SMA to the non-SMA significantly increased after the introduction of the grant policies. However, estimation results of firms' relocation decision model indicated that the likelihood of firms relocating from the SMA to the non-SMA decreased after the introduction of the grant policies. In particular, firms' likelihood to move into the rural regions is even lower in the period of the grant extension. This suggests that increasing rate of relocations toward the rural regions may have been driven by the growing advantage of rural locations, such as low land rent and improvement in market accessibility, rather than the grants per se. This implies that the alleviation of physical and environmental constraints of the rural regions and the creation of business friendly environment such as easy access to premises at reasonable prices and strengthened linkage with the SMA, rather than simple provision of business relocation grants, needed to attract businesses in the rural regions.