• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.149-165
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• 2018

Purpose As Korean economy has been sluggish in recent years, firms' interest in publicly financed projects has increased due to the relatively increasing proportion in the economy. Since 1999, publicly financed projects in Korea need to undergo preliminary feasibility study to evaluate economic efficiency and policy quality if they are larger than a certain scale. The benefits of public projects are one of the most important factors in the preliminary feasibility study but are difficult to estimate due to their nature. Design/methodology/approach This study estimates the benefits of the agricultural soil information database, a public database in Korea. The method used in the study is the stated preference method which is formally used in Korea's preliminary feasibility study. Data are collected through surveys and a logit model is constructed to be estimated by the maximum likelihood estimation method. Findings As the first study evaluating a public database, this study can be used as a baseline in all public database projects developed in the future. In addition, this study can contribute to improving the understanding of both private companies and public organizations who are interested in the cost-benefit analysis and estimation procedure for the publicly financed projects.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.137-159
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• 2023

This study focuses on consumers' perceptions of virtual influencers, which many companies recently used for marketing. This study uses the Q methodology to derive what kind of perception consumers have about virtual influencers who work with various appearances, background stories, and worldviews as components. In addition, we want to see how the expected value of virtual influencers differs by age group. To this end, 34 statements were produced through preliminary interviews and literature reviews. This study showed that some consumers preferred appearances similar to humans, despite recognizing that virtual influencers are fictional characters. Some other consumers preferred to feel like a fictional character by maintaining virtuality, confirming that there are both opposite consumers. In addition, consumers expect virtual influencers to have consistency and expertise in the content field covered, and some consumers do not prefer to show an overly commercial appearance. This study will likely provide implications for companies that want to utilize virtual influencers in considering which ones to use for target customers in marketing activities.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.109-121
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• 2015

The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore consumer behavioral trends, psychological characteristics and various cognitive types of Millennial Generation consumers, primarily in their 20s, who are familiar with sharing economy services based on the emerging social networking technology. Using Q methodology, this paper theoretically defines four and interprets via a social science perspective four different types of these young consumers who are skilled at state-of-the-art ICT equipment, devices or online networking services. Sharing economy services in Korea's academic and industrial services are influenced by government policy, and related research is relatively new. This study is focused on discovering unique psychographic characteristics called 'schemata' that include personal interest, preference, attitude, and opinion. On the basis of 40 Q-sorted data samples, the analysis examined 180 collected statements from meta-studies and interviews with 35 individuals born between 1997 and 1992. As a result, four consumer groups were identifies: Type 1 'Early majority', Type 2 'Laggard', Type 3 'Opinion leader', and Type 4 'Late majority'. The results of this research can be used to explore to study in greater detail the behavior and psychological aspects of Millennial General consumers'.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.219-243
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• 2004

Generally, electricity market has monopoly market structure because of need of enormous investment for infrastructure. However, the introduction of competition in network industry as electricity is a tendency of the world with decreasing the effects of economy of scale due to the advancement of technology. Now, electricity industry restructuring is in progress but the competition in electricity retail market is not in force yet in Korea. Whether a effective competition exist or not is very important to policy decision maker who drive restructuring, but there are small numbers of quantitative researches on that. In this study, we estimated the effectiveness of competition in the electricity retail market through switching costs. If switching costs are high, consumers actually can be locked in incumbent firm in spite of introduction of competition. Therefore switching is a critical factor to determine effectiveness of competition and to estimate the size of switching costs quantitatively can proffer the information about whether the competition in the electricity retail market is effective or not in the future. We estimated switching costs using consumer' stated-preference data by conjoint analysis. In according to estimation results, the cost of switching process is not so high, but the relative brand loyalty of an incumbent company is significantly high. And the price is considered as the most important factor choosing an electric service commodity. Based on the empirical results, it is possible to analyze the relationship between suppliers' competitiveness resulted from management efficiency and customers' switching possibilities. The paper therefore provides guidance for suppliers in deciding to enter into retail competition and for policy makers in introducing retail competition. And it has a significance of estimating the switching costs directly.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.42-52
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• 2013

In this study, value of VMS (Variable Message Sign) traffic information is estimated by using CVM (Contingent Valuation Method), which is developed to quantify the value of non-marketable goods in environmental economics. CVM is used to estimate the value of goods provided by a project under consideration and then the project feasibility can be indirectly examined on the basis of the estimated value. This study focuses on estimating to estimate value of traffic information provided through VMS, a part of the transportation system enhancement project by Korea Expressway Corporation which is aimed at mitigating traffic problems on expressways. In particular, this study analyzes value of information separately by trip purpose, information type, and traffic flow condition. A state preference survey was designed to estimate the value of non-marketable traffic information. To maximize reliability of the survey results, a pilot survey was taken before the main survey. The open-ended question method was adopted in capturing users' willingness-to-pay. Both Tobit and binary Probit models were applied in estimating the value of VMS traffic information and their parameters were estimated using the maximum likelihood estimation. The estimation results suggests that the value of traffic information perceived by users is 518.28 KRW.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.1-30
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• 2022

This study is to investigate consumers' acceptance and their willingness to pay for clothes made of materials with low microplastic emissions as an alternative to synthetic fibers made of plastics by applying the contingent valuation method. A nationwide web-based survey was conducted for 1,052 respondents proportional to region, age, and gender during February 2021. More than 75% of the sample expressed intentions to purchase microplastic emission-reducing clothing instead of synthetic fiber clothing, and more than 80% of them have stated their willingness to pay for additional prices. A variation of Heckman's sample selection model was adopted to estimate factors affecting respondents' intentions to pay for additional prices, in which the probit model of intentions to purchase the clothing with alternative materials was used as a sample selection equation. While respondents were sensitive to the amounts of price increases suggested in the CV scenario, they expressed high acceptance and preferences for eco-friendly materials regardless of the microplastic emission-reducing levels. Consumers in the circular economy were willing to pay for the range of 41,000 to 51,000 won for a pair of clothing made with microplastic emission-reducing materials. In addition, as the microplastic emission-reducing rate has increased from 50% to 80%, the willingness to pay estimates were also significantly increased, ranging from 41,000~50,500 to 42,000~51,700 won.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.379-387
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• 2017

As the average load factor of High-Speed Rail (HSR) trains increased up to 98%, it caused uncomfortable crowdedness in the cabin and deteriorated the level of service to the HSR users. In this paper, we estimated the willingness-to-pay (WTP) of the HSR users for mitigating the crowdedness in the cabin. The contingent valuation method based on the stated preference data was used and the tobit model was applied for the estimation of WTP. It can be concluded that WTP for mitigating the crowdedness in the HSR trains is proportional to the congestion level of train and income level of user. Males, first-class users, not-assigned ticket users, and monthly pass users have relatively higher WTPs, while homemakers, travelers in weekends, commuters and leisure travelers have relatively lower values. The results can provide the fundamental information to estimate the benefits of mitigating crowdedness or the magnitude of governmental subsidy to railway operators for additional introduction of HSR trains.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.38 no.10
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• pp.580-587
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• 2016

This study aims to estimate the values of freshwater ecosystem services from demand and supply perspectives. From demand side, unit-values of ecosystem services are derived from Environmental Valuation Information System (EVIS) and aggregated to 5 main watersheds in Korea. The derived unit-values are based on the willingness to pay estimates per household from stated preference methods. The nation-wide average total values of water quantity supply, water purification, and natural disaster control are estimated as 501.2, 410.4, and 242.4 billion won/year, respectively. From supply side, we examine the direct and indirect public expenditures (or investment) in 2013 to improve freshwater ecosystem services by the government. The total sum of government expenditures corresponds to 8,882 billion won in 2013, where 12.9, 81.3, 0.3 and 5.3% are spent to improve provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural services, respectively, indicating that most efforts are concentrated in enhancing regulating services.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.875-901
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• 2008

This article estimates the economic values of changes in water quality of the Paldang Watershed by using the Choice Experiment (CE). The conditional logit model estimation results show that a small improvement in water quality from the 'status quo' level to the level of 'very good' increases average household's monthly utility by 3,157 Won, whereas a water quality degradation down to the 'normal' level gives rise to an increase in the monthly average utility by 9,649 Won. The corresponding social gain and loss of water quality changes to the Metropolitan Area were thus estimated about 285 billion Won and 872 billion Won, respectively. This article seems meaningful in that it resorts to the new water ecosystem classification criteria and indices that are respondent-friendly. They help a CE study like this to overcome one of its critical weakness that the number and contents of attributes of a CE study can quickly add to the information overload problem, especially where the environmental good under investigation is hard for ordinary respondents to understand.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.1-22
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• 2020

While contingent valuation method (CVM) has been widely used for non-market valuations, it has been argued that it may suffer from hypothetical bias. However, if CVM respondents believe that their responses could affect the real consequence, the method could satisfy consequentiality. If a CVM satisfies a sufficiently high consequentiality, hypothetical bias could disappear as shown by some previous studies. In this study, we experimentally compare the willingness to pay (WTP) for donation of a relatively high consequentiality group with that of a relatively low consequentiality group for Korean university students. We find that both the existence probability and the size of hypothetical bias are lower for the high consequentiality group. This result implies that a CVM for a real policy including environmental policies could be free from hypothetical bias because its consequentiality would be relatively high, and warrants a future field study investigating the effect of consequentiality on hypothetical bias.