The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is one of the most important European policies. Since its inception, the CAP has been reformed in response to high budgetary costs, international trade pressures and socio-economic changes. Despite the reforms, this policy did not always serve the best...

Consumers’ potential reactions towards genetically modified (GM) foods influence their commercial feasibility and determine the decisions of economic agents. This paper studies the underlying factors involved in determining consumers’ choice behaviour towards GM foods in order to develop an...

The EU imports both bioethanol and the raw material needed to produce it. Thirty percent of bioethanol is produced from sugar beets in the EU. However, sugar beet cultivated area and yields have fallen due to the 2006 sugar regime reform. Given the potential uncertainty about the future for...

In contingent valuation, despite the fact that many externalities manifest themselves as costs to some and benefits to others, most studies restrict willingness to pay to being non-negative. In this paper, we investigate the impact of allowing for negative, zero and positive preferences for...

Choice experiments have become an important tool to provide guidance about the value of environmental goods and services. Several evidences, however, are pointing toward an important mismatch between the rationality principles assumed by this methodology and real respondents’ behaviour,...

Gains from the incorporation of monetary values for changes in environmental goods and services within cost-benefit analysis depend on how well researchers can estimate these values. One key problem in both stated and revealed preference approaches is how best to model preference heterogeneity....

The agenda towards greenhouse gas mitigation within agriculture implies changes in farm management practices. Based on a survey of Scottish dairy farmers, this study investigates farmers' perceptions of how different GHG mitigation practices affect the economic and environmental performance of...

The impact of the approach used to describe preference heterogeneity on welfare measures has been widely studied by the academic community. However, the question as to the degree of error in welfare estimation from an inappropriate choice of empirical approach has not been addressed yet. In this...

This paper uses the choice experiment method to analyse social preferences towards a set of agricultural policy instruments that are likely to play a key role in the post-2013 design of the EU Common Agricultural Policy. It contributes to the choice experiment literature by incorporating...