3.5.5 Stated preferences: Choice experiment

Choice experiment may help to reveal people preferences for ecosystem services.

Choice experiment successively presents a number of choice sets to respondents and asks them to choose their preferred scenario.

Each choice set consists of two or three scenarios related to the good under valuation. This good is defined by its key attributes (or characteristics) and the levels that these attributes take, where one attribute is price.

For more information see:
In French: www.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/ED49.pdf
In English: www.ecosystemvaluation.org/contingent_choice.htm

Example

This choice experiment method was used in the Golfe du Morbihan  in order to estimate the preferences for seagrass conservation. Due to persistent knowledge uncertainties, the choice experiment applied to a very broad view of seagrass ecosystem services: comparing the ecological status of the ecosystem, considering various levels of constraints on activities and associated public expenditures.

Each of the 611 respondents was asked 8 times to select one among three scenarios made of three attributes, the first scenario being always the ‘business as usual’ projection. The answers to the questionnaires are then processed with econometric models. In the Golfe du Morbihan, the preference of the interviewees goes to an improvement of the seagrass ecological status through increased constraints on activities but without additional money devoted to this management policy.

Figure: Scenarios on seagrass evoluation used for the choice experiment in the Golfe du Morbihan