| 1. |
- Carlsson, Fredrik, 1968, et al.
(author)
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Funding a New Bridge in Rural Vietnam: A field experiment on conditional cooperation and default contributions
- 2011
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Reports (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The ability to provide public goods is essential for economic and social development, yet there is very limited empirical evidence regarding contributions to a real local public good in developing countries. This paper analyzes a field experiment where 200 households in rural Vietnam could make real contributions to an archetypical public good, a bridge. In particular, we study the role of two kinds of social influence: i) conditional cooperation, i.e., that people may be more willing to cooperate if others do, and ii) the effects of the default alternative, i.e., that people are influenced by the default alternative presented to them in the choice situation. We find significant and substantial effects of both kinds of influence. For example, by either giving the subjects the additional information that one of the most common contributions by others is 100,000 dong (a relatively low contribution) or introducing a zero-contribution default alternative, the average contribution decreases by about 20% compared to the baseline case.
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| 2. |
- Carlsson, Fredrik, 1968, et al.
(author)
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Doing good with other people’s money: A charitable giving experiment with students in environmental sciences and economics
- 2011
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Reports (other academic/artistic)abstract
- We augment a standard dictator game to investigate how preferences for an environmental project relate to willingness to limit others’ choices. We explore this issue by distinguishing three student groups: economists, environmental economists, and environmental social scientists. We find that people are generally disposed to grant freedom of choice, but only within certain limits. In addition, our results are in line with the widely held belief that economists are more selfish than other people. Yet, against the notion of consumer sovereignty, economists are not less likely to restrict others’ choices and impose restrictions closer to their own preferences than the other student groups.
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| 3. |
- Carlsson, Fredrik, 1968, et al.
(author)
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A Fair Share : Burden-Sharing Preferences in the United States and China
- 2010
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Reports (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Using a choice experiment, we investigated preferences for distributing the economic burden of decreasing CO2 emissions in the two largest CO2-emitting countries: the United States and China. We asked respondents about their preferences for four burden-sharing rules to reduce CO2 emissions according to their country’s 1) historical emissions, 2) income level, 3) equal right to emit per person, and 4) current emissions. We found that U.S. respondents preferred the rule based on current emissions, while the equal right to emit rule was clearly least preferred. The Chinese respondents, on the other hand, preferred the historical rule, while the current emissions rule was the least preferred. Respondents overall favored the rule that was least costly for their country. These marked differences may explain the difficulties countries face in agreeing how to share costs, presenting a tough hurdle to overcome in future negotiations. We also found that the strength of the preferences was much stronger in China, suggesting that how mitigation costs are shared across countries is more important there.
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| 4. |
- Carlsson, Fredrik, 1968, et al.
(author)
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Household Decision Making in Rural China: Using Experiments to Estimate the Influences of Spouses
- 2010
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Reports (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Many economic decisions are made jointly within households. This raises the question about spouses’ relative influence on joint decisions and the determinants of relative influence. Using a controlled experiment (on inter-temporal choice), we let each spouse first make individual decisions and then make joint decisions with the other spouse. We use a random parameter probit model to measure the relative influence of spouses on joint decisions. In general, husbands have a stronger influence than wives. However, in richer households and when the wife is older than the husband, we find a significantly stronger influence of the wife on joint decisions.
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| 5. |
- Carlsson, Fredrik, 1968, et al.
(author)
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Is Fairness Blind? - The effect of framing on preferences for effort-sharing rules
- 2010
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Reports (other academic/artistic)abstract
- By using a choice experiment, this paper focuses on citizens’ preferences for effort-sharing rules of how carbon abatement should be shared among countries. We find that Swedes do not rank the rule favoring their own country highest. Instead, they prefer the rule where all countries are allowed to emit an equal amount per person, a rule that favors Africa at the expense of high emitters such as the U.S. The least preferred rule is reduction proportional to historical emissions. Using two different treatments, one where the respondents were informed about the country names and one where the country names were replaced with anonymous labels A-D, we also test whether people’s preferences for effort-sharing rules depend on the framing of the problem. We find that while the ranking of the principles is the same in both treatments, the strength of the preferences is significantly increased when the actual names of the countries are used.
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| 6. |
- Carlsson, Fredrik, 1968
(author)
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Non-market valuation: Stated preference methods
- 2011
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In: Lusk, J., J. Roosen and J. Shogren (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Food Consumption and Policy. - Oxford : Oxford University Press. ; , s. 181-214
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Book chapter (other academic/artistic)
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| 7. |
- Carlsson, Fredrik, 1968, et al.
(author)
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Paying for Mitigation: A Multiple Country Study
- 2010
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Reports (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Unique survey data from a contingent valuation study conducted in three different countries (China, Sweden, and the United States) were used to investigate the ordinary citizen’s willingness to pay (WTP) for reducing CO2 emissions. We find that a large majority of the respondents in all three countries believe that the mean global temperature has increased over the last 100 years and that humans are responsible for the increase. A smaller share of Americans, however, believes these statements, when compared to the Chinese and Swedes. A larger share of Americans is also pessimistic and believes that nothing can be done to stop climate change. We also find that Sweden has the highest WTP for reductions of CO2, while China has the lowest. Thus, even though the Swedes and Chinese are similar to each other in their attitudes toward climate change, they differ considerably in their WTP. When WTP is measured as a share of household income, the willingness to pay is the same for Americans and Chinese, while again higher for the Swedes.
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| 8. |
- Carlsson, Fredrik, 1968, et al.
(author)
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Subjective well-being among preadolescents - Evidence from urban China
- 2011
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Reports (other academic/artistic)abstract
- We examine what factors are correlated with subjective well-being among Chinese preadolescents. In particular, we investigate whether preadolescents’ subjective well-being is correlated with their parents’ subjective well-being. Interestingly, we find that the factors that affect parents’ subjective well-being do not influence their preadolescents’ subjective well-being, nor is there a significant correlation between the preadolescents’ subjective well-being and the well-being of their parents. Instead, we find that factors such as number of close friends, not being bullied, and spending time and conversing with parents are positively correlated with preadolescents´ subjective well-being. Another interesting finding is that preadolescents´ well-being does not seem to be correlated with their school performance.
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| 9. |
- Carlsson, Fredrik, 1968, et al.
(author)
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The first time is the hardest: A test of ordering effects in choice experiments
- 2010
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Reports (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This paper addresses the issue of ordering effects in choice experiments, and in particular how learning processes potentially affect respondents’ stated preferences in a sequence of choice sets. In a case study concerning food quality attributes of chicken breast filets, we find evidence of ordering effects in a sequence of 16 choice sets, where the last 8 choice sets are identical to the first 8. The overall preference structure is found to differ significantly between the two identical sequences of choice sets, and significant increases in marginal WTP are found for two out of four attributes. We find a reduction in the error variance for the last 8 choice sets relative to the first 8 choice sets. In particular, this difference is ascribed to the first choice set obtaining a significantly higher error variance than all succeeding choice sets, suggesting institutional learning rather than preference learning effects underlying the observed ordering effect. This is further supported by the fact that the differences in WTP become insignificant when removing the first choice set from the analysis. We find no evidence of fatigue, and we argue that our findings cannot be explained by starting point or strategic behavior effects.
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| 10. |
- Carlsson, Fredrik, 1968, et al.
(author)
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The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth - A Multiple Country Test of an Oath Script
- 2010
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Reports (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Hypothetical bias is one of the main issues bedeviling the field of nonmarket valuation. The general criticism is that survey responses reflect how people would like to behave, rather than how they actually behave. In our study of climate change and emissions reductions, we took advantage of the increasing bulk of evidence from psychology and economics that addresses the effects of making promises, in order to investigate the effect of an oath script in a contingent valuation survey. The survey was conducted in Sweden and China, and its results indicate that an oath script has significant effects on respondent behavior in answering willingness-to-pay (WTP) questions, some of which vary by country. In both countries, the share of zero WTP responses and extremely high WTP responses decreases when an oath script is used, which also results in lower variance. In China, the oath script also reduces the average WTP, cutting it by half in certain instances. We also found that the oath script has different impacts on various respondent groups. For example, without the oath script, Communist party members in China are more likely than others to have a positive WTP for emissions reductions, but with the oath script, there is no longer any difference between the groups.
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