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PhD defense: Morten Raun Mørkbak,

Tuesday 20 October 2009 at 13:00 p.m. in Lecture Hall 1-01, Bülowsvej 17, Ground Floor, 1870 Frederiksberg C

Subject Area:

Food Economics - Consumer Behaviour and Food Safety

Title of PhD Thesis:

Methodological Aspects of Choice Experiments in Relation to Food Safety Valuation

Title of Lecture:

Methodological Aspects of Choice Experiments in Relation to Food Safety Valuation

 

Summary:

The Danish government initiated in 2005 the research program "A food sector in a future perspective". The present PhD thesis is based on three research projects within this program and concerns food safety related to food-borne zoonotic infections. The objective of PhD thesis is to apply and validate stated preference methods in valuation of food safety in meat products. The dissertation includes five papers. The first two papers analyse and discuss previous studies of consumers'

willingness-to-pay for increased food safety, and further investigate Danish consumers' willingness-to-pay for increased food safety relative to other quality characteristics in the products minced pork and chicken breast filet. The elicitation of willingness-to-pay estimates was carried out by completing three different questionnaires, where the stated preferences method Choice Experiments (CE) was applied. The motivation for using the CE method should be found in its ability to elicit values of individual attributes rather than compounded products.

The third paper focuses on a methodological issue of particular relevance for food safety characteristics that may act as a barrier for providing valid input to policy makers - the embedding effect. The last two papers focus on validation of the choice experiment method with regards to understanding the importance of the price attribute.

 

Principal Supervisor:

Professor Peter Sandøe, Department of Food and Resource Economics, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen

Project supervisor:

Senior Researcher Tove Christensen, Department of Food and Resource Economics, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen

Co-Supervisors:

Professor Dorte Gyrd-Hansen, University of Southern Denmark and Danish Institute for Health Services Research

Professor Torben Martinussen, University of Southern Denmark

Examination Committee:

Professor Mickael Bech, University of Southern Denmark

Professor Fredrik Carlsson, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Senior Researcher Jørgen Dejgaard Jensen (chair), Department of Food and Resource Economics, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen

 

 

 

 

PhD defense: Søren Bøye Olsen,

Monday 26 October 2009 at 2 p,m. in Lecture Hall 3-13, Thorvaldsensvej 40, 1871 Frederiksberg C

 

Subject Area:

Environmental Economics

Title of PhD Thesis:

Further Development and Validation of the Choice Experiment Method with a Special Focus on Improving the Data Collection Process - Applications to Economic Valuation of Non-marketed Environmental Goods

Title of Lecture:

Further Development and Validation of the Choice Experiment Method with a Special Focus on Improving the Data Collection Process - Applications to Economic Valuation of Non-marketed Environmental Goods

 

Summary:

The subject of this thesis is Choice Experiments (CE) applied to economic valuation of non-marketed environmental goods. For any economic valuation survey to be useful in terms of policy advice regarding a specific good, it is imperative that the obtained value estimates as closely as possible reflect the true values associated with that good. in order to improve the usefulness of the CE method as a tool for policy advice, the aim of the thesis is to disentangle some of the problematic issues associated with obtaining such trustworthy value estimates. In the literature, much attention has been given to the econometric modeling of choices. In the past decade, marked improvements have been made in the ability to correctly model the preferences stated through choices, and this has certainly increased the precision of value estimates as well as the reliability of the method as such. While correct modeling of choices is of course important, it is also obvious that the quality of the data available is of great importance. The issue of collecting high-quality data, which has received less attention in the CE literature than the modeling issue, is the main focus of this thesis. The thesis consists of four papers which can be divided into two main parts. The first part concerns potential survey mode effects associated with the choice of mode for administering a survey questionnaire, while the second part focuses on improving the construction of survey questionnaires. Results in the first part of the thesis suggest that internet-based questionnaires can serve as a suitable alternative to paper-and-pencil questionnaires, especially when the focus is on estimation of Willingness-To-Pay. The second part underlines the importance of facilitation of learning effects which might cause increased certainty in respondents' choices and consequently perhaps decreased impact of starting point bias and hypothetical bias.

 

Principal Supervisor:

Professor Eirik Amundsen, Institute of Food and Resource Economics, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen

 

Project supervisor:

Professor Eirik Amundsen, Institute of Food and Resource Economics, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen

 

Co-Supervisor:

Research Chief Bo Jellesmark Thorsen, Danish Centre for Forest and Landscape, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen

 

Examination Committee:

Senior Researcher Lars Gårn Hansen, Institute of Food and Resource Economics, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen (chairman)

Professor Nick Hanley, University of Stirling, Division of Economics, Stirling Management School, United Kingdom

Professor Fredrik Carlsson, University of Gothenburg, School of Business, Economics and Law, Department of Economics, Gothenburg, Sweden