Valuing the commons: An international study on the recreational benefits of the Baltic Sea.

The Baltic Sea provides benefits to all of the nine nations along its coastline, with some 85 million people living within the catchment area. Achieving improvements in water quality requires international cooperation. The likelihood of effective cooperation is known to depend on the distribution across countries of the benefits and costs of actions needed to improve water quality. In this paper, we estimate the benefits associated with recreational use of the Baltic Sea in current environmental conditions using a travel cost approach, based on data from a large, standardized survey of households in each of the 9 Baltic Sea states. Both the probability of engaging in recreation (participation) and the number of visits people make are modeled. A large variation in the number of trips and the extent of participation is found, along with large differences in current annual economic benefits from Baltic Sea recreation. The total annual recreation benefits are close to 15 billion EUR. Under a water quality improvement scenario, the proportional increases in benefits range from 7 to 18% of the current annual benefits across countries. Depending on how the costs of actions are distributed, this could imply difficulties in achieving more international cooperation to achieve such improvements.

Evolution of preferences for COVID-19 vaccine throughout the pandemic - The choice experiment approach.

In this study, we employ a choice experiment to study individual preferences for COVID-19 vaccines in the US. A unique characteristic of the microdata (N = 5671) is that the survey was conducted in five distinct waves from October 2020 to October 2021. Because of this dynamic feature, it is possible to control for evolving pandemic conditions such as the number of COVID-19 active cases, vaccination uptake, and the frequency of Google searches related to the vaccines. Furthermore, we employ a hybrid choice model to incorporate respondents' attitudes related to their perceived vulnerability to diseases, as well as their perceived health status. The hybrid choice model was extended to incorporate latent classes as well as random effects. We find that the rate of vaccinated individuals in the population actually increases the probability of vaccine hesitancy, and therefore may discourage people to get vaccinated. This may be evidence of free-riding behavior. On the other hand, the number of COVID-19 cases has a positive effect on the probability of getting vaccinated, suggesting that individuals react to the pandemic conditions by taking some protective measures. Google trend data do not seem to have a straightforward effect on the vaccination demand, but it increases consumers' willingness to pay for several vaccine characteristics. With respect to the analyzed attitudes, we find that perceived uninfectability is a significant driver of vaccine hesitancy, probably related to the frequent "natural immunity" argument. In turn, germ aversion has a positive effect on the probability of getting vaccinated as well as on the marginal willingness to pay. Finally, health status has a limited effect on whether the individual will decide to vaccinate or not.

Preferences for online grocery shopping during the COVID-19 pandemic - the role of fear-related attitudes.

In this study, we employ a choice experiment to analyze New York City residents' preferences for online grocery shopping at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. We employ a latent class specification to identify three market segments and estimate consumers' willingness to pay for a variety of attributes of online grocery services related to the quality of the stock, delivery characteristics, and the cost of the online order. We characterize consumers in each segment by their observed characteristics as well as fear-related latent variables. On the one hand, we find that individuals who are actively protecting themselves against COVID-19 have a higher willingness to pay for almost all attributes. On the other hand, consumers who avoid crowds have a lower willingness to pay, but they assign relatively higher importance to no-contact delivery.

Increasing the cost-effectiveness of nutrient reduction targets using different spatial scales.

In this paper, we investigate the potential gains in cost-effectiveness from changing the spatial scale at which nutrient reduction targets are set for the Baltic Sea, with particular focus on nutrient loadings from agriculture. The costs of achieving loading reductions are compared across five levels of spatial scale, namely the entire Baltic Sea; the marine basin level; the country level; the watershed level; and the grid square level. A novel highly-disaggregated model, which represents decreases in agricultural profits, changes in root zone N concentrations and transport to the Baltic Sea is used. The model includes 14 Baltic Sea marine basins, 14 countries, 117 watersheds and 19,023 10-by-10 km grid squares. The main result which emerges is that there is a large variation in the total cost of the program depending on the spatial scale of targeting: for example, for a 40% reduction in loads, the costs of a Baltic Sea-wide target is nearly three times lower than targets set at the smallest level of spatial scale (grid square). These results have important implications for both domestic and international policy design for achieving water quality improvements where non-point pollution is a key stressor of water quality.