Estimation of implicit discount rates for climate change adaptation policies.

This article used evidence from tourists' willingness to pay (WTP) for a set of climate change adaptation policies to estimate implicit discount rates under different discounting structures. A choice experiment with two different split samples framed at two different time horizons was used to analyse how WTP changes as a function of the timing of the expected benefits. Results confirm that individuals are time sensitive to different horizons and provide support for the use of a very low discount rate in the evaluation of policies having effects in the long and very long run and show that the social acceptability of climate change (CC) adaptation policies can be affected by the timing of the benefits and the use of one or another discounting model.

Substitution patterns across alternatives as a source of preference heterogeneity in recreation demand models.

Recent stated choice studies have shown that, in a context of inter-alternative correlation, individuals can assess alternatives differently. This asymmetry in perception between alternatives with different levels of substitutability becomes one additional, but usually overlooked, source of observed preference heterogeneity. In the context of beach recreation in Mallorca, Spain, this paper extends the investigation on this source of heterogeneity to a revealed preference setting.