One innovative way to solve water pollution problems is through water quality trading programs. However, participation levels and the price of offsets/credits tend to be low, which raises questions about the effectiveness of the policy. To offer more tools for policymakers, this paper provides a method for predicting participation in performance-based water quality trading programs, which accounts

Increasing dryland degradation and expansion shows that attempts to strengthen dryland resilience in the face of land degradation and climate change have not been successful. If current development pathways do not change, future prospects for the drylands are worrisome: potential large-scale migration, increasing water scarcity and land degradation, growing poverty, along with significant losses of

Many Stated Preference studies conducted in developing countries provide estimates of a low willingness to pay (WTP) for a wide range of goods and services. However, recent studies in these countries indicate that this may partly be a result of the choice of payment vehicle, not the preference for the good. Thus, low WTP may not indicate a low welfare effect for public projects in developing countries

Modern liberal societies appear ill-prepared to meet the paramount challenges of the Anthropocene. While liberalism has been the winning modern ideology since 1990, dominating both political and economic institutions in most countries worldwide, it has been forced onto the defensive. This is shown symptomatically by the international ascent of the extreme right, and substantially by its inability to

Unanticipated environmental shocks impact the livelihoods of many resource users around the world. These shocks are likely to be more unpredictable as the effects of climate change continue to mount. Yet how households adapt to these changing climatic conditions especially in the context of rapidly changing market conditions in most areas of the world, is poorly understood. These interactions have

Blue carbon in mangroves represents one of highest values of carbon stocks per hectare, and could play an important role in climate change mitigation. In this study we estimated the carbon prices needed to promote mangrove conservation and restoration under mechanisms of payment for ecosystem services (PES). We mapped the remaining and deforested mangroves across the globe in 2017, and crossed this

The Paddy Land-to-Dry Land (PLDL) program, implemented in the upstream area of the Miyun Reservoir in China for 10 years, faces sustainability challenges. The issues stem from negative household responses due to the gradual weakening of its positive effects on household livelihoods. This study conducted a field survey based on a quasi-experimental method in the Luanping and Fengning Counties, Hebei

This article investigates the effect of digitalization on energy consumption. Using an analytical model, we investigate four effects: (1) direct effects from the production, usage and disposal of information and communication technologies (ICT), (2) energy efficiency increases from digitalization, (3) economic growth from increases in labor and energy productivities and (4) sectoral change/tertiarization

Understanding the cultural contributions of ecosystems is essential for recognising how environmental policy impacts on human well-being. We developed an integrated cultural ecosystem services (CES) valuation approach involving non-monetary valuation through a eudaemonic well-being questionnaire and monetary valuation through hedonic pricing. This approach was applied to assess CES values on the west

This paper analyses the performance of a multi-attribute auction for securing agri-environmental outcomes and cost-effective agri-environmental payments (AEPs). We set up a discriminatory price auction model in which farmers make an offer based on two attributes (i.e. the AEP and a proxy of environmental outcome). We provide a numerical simulation for a hypothetical agri-environmental scheme (AES)

Recent years have seen a sharp increase in the production of indices of vulnerability to climate change. Most of these indices of vulnerability to climate change have been primarily used for awareness-raising purposes rather than for guiding international policy. The Physical Vulnerability to Climate Change Index (PVCCI) proposed in this paper has been designed as an index of exogenous vulnerability

Economic welfare measures (EWM) such as the ISEW and the GPI are often argued to lack a sound theoretical foundation. However, we observe that the initial EWM were jointly inspired by Hicksian and Fisherian income. Welfare's experiential nature is Fisherian-inspired, whereas seeing the consumption of community capital (e.g. the ecosystem) as a cost is Hicksian-inspired. As most scholars do not recognize

The long-term management of natural capital is essential for the stable and resilient flow of ecosystem services for future generations facing climatic uncertainty. Understanding its resilience to extreme natural events, using biological principles, and integrating them into more holistic systems-wide modelling techniques is crucial to evaluate and design the wider economic impacts from alternative

This study presents a meta-analysis of contract attributes for the adoption of agrienvironmental practices. We use a data set of 290 observations drawn from 79 studies reported in empirical studies using the Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) method. The present meta-analysis explores the impact of methodological choices related to the timing of the DCE (design stage, implementation stage, and analysis

This paper provides an evidence-based contribution to understanding coastal governance in response to hurricane hazards. It uses the five-part conceptual framework for coastal governance, which includes 1) complexity, 2) vulnerability, 3) adaptive management, 4) stakeholder participation, and 5) the integration of technical knowledge in decision-making. A case study of the Harvey-impacted Texas communities

All 193 UN member states have pledged to achieve 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), following the guiding principle to leave no one behind. At the same time, rising populist movements increasingly influence the political debate in many countries by challenging multilateral cooperation and liberal democracy. This paper contains the first empirical study of the relationship between the SDGs and

We assess the effect of vintage differentiation of regulations (VDRs) regarding air pollution emission limit values on the survival of coal-fired power plants. We apply survival analysis techniques on a sample of generating units across 31 OECD and non-member countries between 1962 and 2012. We find that greater vintage differentiation is associated with significantly higher age at exit of a plant

Transdisciplinary research is a well-recognised approach to address complex real-world problems. However, the literature on a central aspect of transdisciplinarity, namely stakeholder involvement, largely lacks a reflection on its objectives. In response, we present a framework defining four general rationales for stakeholder involvement: normative, substantive, social-learning, and implementation

Although past literature has suggested experience with the effects of climate change can affect people's belief in climate change, there is limited research on the duration of this outcome. If extreme events only update beliefs in the short term, there is a risk that long term investments and planning are only made in narrow windows around the events. Using a national survey of New Zealand farmers

This article develops a quantile regression model to measure the magnitude of the direct rebound effect for residential electricity demand based on micro-level data from an original survey of a representative sample of 2356 French households. We explore the rebound effect for different groups of residents. Traditionally, debate has focused on decreased prices for energy services due to efficiency improvements

Ecological economics is at a sharp crossroads today, mostly due to the unprecedented scale of the intertwined social and ecological crises we face. We argue that the discipline should engage with the thinking and practices around alternatives to capitalism more substantially, as this is essential and invaluable for the discipline's ability to contribute to a just and sustainable future. We outline

Clive Spash proposes a classification of ecological economists in three camps, “social ecological economists” (SEE), “new resource economists” (NRE), and “new environmental pragmatists” (NEP). Even if this classification describes the communities of the field and their main scientific strategies with an intuitive perspective, we have three concerns with it. First, this classification is more a normative

Protected areas (PAs) are a widely used strategy for conserving forests and ecosystem services. When PAs succeed in deterring economic activities that degrade forests, the impacts include more forest yet less economic gain. These economic opportunity costs of conservation lead actors with economic interests to resist new PAs, driving their sites away from profitable market centers and towards areas

Climate impacts disproportionately affect people that are most vulnerable and least able to adapt. The extent to which these equity impacts extend to fishing communities in the developed world is a question that has received surprisingly little attention. Here we explore the distributional impacts of a climate shock in one of the largest and most valuable fisheries on the West Coast of the United States

We estimate the effect of lake water quality on residential housing prices using cross-sectional data on water clarity from 113 lakes across the United States. An instrumental-variables approach is developed to address potential endogeneity bias in the water-clarity variable. Three lake-based physical variables serve as instrumental variables: total nitrogen concentration in lake water, total phosphorus

Insights from behavioral economics have proven to be relevant for designing and analyzing stated preference (SP) studies. In this paper, we propose an empirical strategy in SP research that (1) evaluates what are arguably the key behavioral assumptions, (2) interprets the responses strictly in light of the outcomes of that evaluation, and (3) reports a broader set of potentially relevant results. The

It is often assumed that voluntary sustainability standards – such as Fairtrade – could not only improve the socioeconomic wellbeing of smallholder farmers in developing countries but could also help to reduce negative health and environmental impacts of agricultural production. The empirical evidence is thin, as most previous studies on the impact of sustainability standards only focused on economic

Mozambique is among the most disaster-prone countries in the world. A bigger than usual, and mostly unexpected, flood occurred in the central-northern region of the country in the first few months of 2015, causing huge damage to infrastructures. In this paper, we use a nationally representative household budget survey that was being carried out in the field during those months to assess the short-term

At the core of ecological economics is the image of the economy as an open system embedded in the natural environment whose carrying capacity is limited. The present paper revisits this image by drawing upon the constructivist implications of Luhmann's social systems theory. To Luhmann, the modern society consists of a multitude of social systems each bringing forth and observing their own environments

Many isolated and indigenous Arctic and Subarctic communities are mixed-subsistence-cash economies. In the 20th century, the integration of motorized transport expanded access to harvestable resources but created energy dependence intricately linking food with energy security. As remote communities became more vulnerable to fossil fuel price fluctuations, they also face new challenges related to climate

In developed regions worldwide, so-called anti-consumers are increasingly resisting high-level consumption lifestyles or shifting to alternative forms of consumption. A general reduction in consumption levels is considered necessary to attain global sustainability goals. However, knowledge regarding the factors driving people to deliberately consume less and how anti-consumption affects individuals'

While shrimp is the most important farmed seafood product worldwide, its production often induces negative externalities as discharge of nutrients to the aquatic environment. If farmers have an incentive to maintain good farm-level water quality, it may also positively affect the surrounding environment, reducing the risk of eutrophication in downstream river systems. If this is done, then the need

Women greatly contribute to fisheries worldwide, representing 47% of the global fisheries' workforce. Yet female fishing roles often go unrecognized. In the Brazilian Amazonia, arapaima (Arapaima spp.) co-management, which began in the 2000s, may represent a significant change in this scenario. To assess the impact of arapaima co-management on women recognition in fisheries, we conducted a comprehensive

Recent papers argue that the energy return on energy invested (EROI) for renewable electricity technologies and systems may be so low that the transition from fossil fuelled to renewable electricity may displace investment in other important economic sectors. For the case of large-scale electricity supply, we draw upon insights from Net Energy Analysis and renewable energy engineering to examine critically

The low observed uptake of non-subsidised index-based insurance policies in developing countries has been puzzling researchers for about a decade. This paper analyses the role of drought frequency in farmers' demand for index-based insurance in developing countries. While it is typically assumed that an increase in exposure to risk would result in higher demand for index insurance, this paper finds

This paper studies the impact of Internet use on life satisfaction, and the channel through which this impact occurs by using data from the 2016 China Family Panel Studies. Employing seemingly unrelated regression to estimate mediation models, we find that in China, Internet use makes people significantly less satisfied with the environmental quality and their living conditions; meanwhile, the dissatisfaction

Result- and multi-actor-oriented agri-environmental payment schemes are considered more cost-effective than action-oriented schemes in providing environmental public goods. This study analysed socio-economic determinants influencing the implementation of three types of agri-environmental scheme: action-, result- and multi-actor-oriented payment schemes. We relied on farm-level data from 2015 to 2017

Air pollution is a vexing problem for emerging countries that strike a delicate balance between environmental protection, health, and energy for growth. We examine these difficulties in a study of disparate levels of exposure to pollution from coal-fired power generation in India, a country with high levels of air pollution and large, marginalized populations. With data on coal plant locations, atmospheric

Based on Rawls's Veil, one may question the legitimacy of many decisions made by the currently living where burdens are shifted onto future generations. For Rawls, this is normatively unacceptable: knowing their place in the generational sequence, the current generation fails to decide from an impartial perspective. Starting from this, we conducted a laboratory experiment on intergenerational resource

We investigate the factors that affect airlines' choice of fleet fuel economy using aircraft-level data for 1267 airlines in 174 countries. Larger and newer aircraft are usually more fuel-efficient. Controlling for the effect of aircraft size and age, we find that the technically achievable fleet fuel economy improves with the size of airlines and the price of fuel and worsens with higher capital costs

Energy is essentially consumed to support residents' productive and consumptive activities arranged in their timeline. Hence, analyzing residential energy consumption from the perspective of how people use their time for participating different activities would provide more underlying insights. However, the relationship between time-use behavior and energy consumption has not been comprehensively and

Pastoral households are faced with making migration decisions under increasing uncertainty about resource availability and limited coping strategies due to mounting socioeconomic and climatic stressors. We assess the potential of providing vegetation condition maps to support the migration decisions of pastoralists in Ethiopia and Tanzania and the impact of map usage on their herd condition and size

To allow for the production of timber while preserving conservation values, forestry regulations in the Congo Basin have made Forest Management Plans (FMP) mandatory in logging concessions. This paper uses original high-resolution maps of forest-cover changes and official records on the activities of logging concessions to analyze the impact of FMP on deforestation in this region. We apply quasi-experimental

In community-supported agriculture (CSA), consumers face a tradeoff between (i.) the desire to support a CSA farmer and obtain environmentally-friendly goods and (ii.) the risk associated with a long-term commitment. We elicit inequality aversion and risk preferences of a sample of 162 French CSA consumers using incentivized field experiments. We find that CSA consumers are concerned about payoff inequalities

The legacy of the inequitable water policy under apartheid continues to impact water services in economically less developed and rural areas in South Africa. Previous studies typically examine this relationship either by using aggregated data at the national level for large-scale research or by using data collected at the provincial or municipal level only for a specific locality. This study attempts

The circular economy is argued to hold great promise for achieving sustainability. Yet, there is a dearth of research about what a circular future may look like. To address this gap, this paper proposes different plausible scenarios for a circular future, using a 2 × 2 scenario matrix method developed through a thought experiment and a focus group. Key drivers of change in this matrix are the nature

Environmental pollution levels are still high in most developing and emerging countries. However, substantial variations exist across and within countries. We investigate the impact of spatial spillovers, a factor that has received very little attention in explaining why variations occur. Spatial spillovers imply that the likelihood of implementing an environmental measure in a specific region is positively

Agricultural specialization has disconnected crop and livestock production in many farms and regions. As a result, crop farms are deficient in nitrogen to fertilize their crops, while livestock farms are deficient in proteins to feed their animals. The increased consumption of nitrogen rich input raised economics and environmental questions. In this study, we tested two mechanisms to reconnect crop

Provisions for regionalization in the case of infectious diseases were included in the World Trade Organization in 1995, but after >20 years it has seen little uptake, primarily because importing countries have not accepted exporting countries' assurances regarding disease-free zones. Given the potential trade benefits, the failure to achieve acceptance for disease-free zones suggests revisiting regionalization

Peatlands provide habitats for many species and a variety of ecosystem services worldwide. In this study we used an integrated biophysical-economic modeling approach with multi-objective optimization to investigate how alternative land-use and land-management (LULM) options jointly affect economic returns from marketed (timber, energy peat, restoration costs) and non-marketed public goods (water quality

This paper develops a choice experiment method to assess the potential for sustainable management of a freshwater system, the Danda River, in Nepal. We use a primary survey data from 637 households, and the empirical analysis is conducted using the Generalized Multinomial Logit (GMNL) model. The findings indicate substantial demand for restoration of the Danda River, and it is indicative of the local

Economic theory has invoked moral motivation as an explanation for the voluntary provision of public goods but is vague with regard to the specific moral concerns involved. Focusing on climate change as a case study, this paper relates morally-motivated public good provision to the six moral foundations (MFs) identified by moral psychologists: Care, Fairness and Liberty (individual-focused), and Loyalty

Environmental studies regularly use the net present value (NPV) to value benefits and costs of projects. However, the NPV disregards whether the stream of net benefits is steady or volatile and ignores the distribution of net benefits among different groups of people. Here we test alternatives to NPV, building on two example cases: 1) We use discounted utility (DU) to evaluate land-use projects and

A socio-hydrological model is used to forecast future conditions in a river basin arising from changes in climate and the economy in order to learn about macroeconomic conditions that would yield pathways for sustainable development and how they may be affected by changes in climate and the economy. The study uses a system dynamics model with endogenous social values and preferences and exogenous climate

The Rainy River Watershed on the Superior National Forest is home to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW). It also contains deposits of copper, nickel, and trace metals, and copper-nickel mining has been proposed adjacent to and upstream of the BWCAW. In 2017, the US Department of Agriculture proposed withdrawing land in the Rainy River Watershed within the Superior National Forest from

Two social feedbacks critical for redressing decline in organizational performance are exit (changing membership to a better performing organization) and voice (members' expression of discontent). In self-governing organizations of common-pool resources (CPRs) experiencing decline from poor rule conformance, the exit option is often unavailable due to a closed membership policy. Thus, members should

Previous studies revealed that preferences for environmental policies differ among individuals, and the practice of pro-environmental activities varies considerably. If such heterogeneities exist, one natural question arises. How are preferences for environmental policies characterized? To answer this question, we analyze micro-level data from the 2002 Japanese General Social Survey (JGSS). JGSS is

The present paper focuses on green defaults as demand-side policies supporting the uptake of renewable energy in Germany. It sets out to gain a better understanding of whether and for whom green electricity defaults work. The present study is one of the first to use a large-scale data set to investigate this question. We combine micro-level data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) covering

An Agent-Based Model comprising a fish stock, a fishing fleet and a fish market is used to investigate the combined effects of environmental and market variability on the structure of a fishery. Over 15-year simulations, agents make daily fishing decisions and annual entry, exit, and investment decisions based on the fishery's past economic outcomes and their individual risk preferences and opportunity