Many stated preference studies have shown that individuals’ attitudes play an important role in explaining their behaviour and helping to disentangle preference heterogeneity. When responses to attitudinal questions are introduced into discrete choice models, a suitable approach that corrects for potential endogeneity must be adopted. We use a discrete choice experiment to analyse the preferences of residents regarding the use of agri-environmental practices in the peri-urban area of Milan (Italy). A detailed analysis of these preferences is relevant for policymakers as farmers on the peri-urban fringe are often asked to provide environmental services to urban-dwellers. We apply a latent class model that we extend to include indicators of individuals’ attitudes towards the relationship between agriculture and the environment. Besides the application of the control function approach to deal with endogeneity, our main contribution is the use of a refutability test to check the exogeneity of the instruments in the agri-environmental setting. Our results show that attitudinal indicators help to disentangle the preference heterogeneity and that the respondents’ willingness-to-pay distribution differs according to the indicators’ values.

中文翻译：

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将态度纳入对农业环境实践偏好的评估

许多陈述的偏好研究表明，个人的态度在解释他们的行为和帮助解开偏好异质性方面发挥着重要作用。当对态度问题的回答被引入离散选择模型时，必须采用一种合适的方法来纠正潜在的内生性。我们使用离散选择实验来分析居民对米兰（意大利）城郊地区使用农业环境实践的偏好。对这些偏好的详细分析与政策制定者相关，因为经常要求城郊边缘的农民为城市居民提供环境服务。我们应用了一个潜在类别模型，我们将其扩展到包括个人对农业与环境之间关系的态度指标。除了应用控制函数方法处理内生性外，我们的主要贡献是使用可反驳性测试来检查农业环境环境中仪器的外生性。我们的研究结果表明，态度指标有助于解开偏好异质性，并且受访者的支付意愿分布因指标值而异。