Testing the stability of environmental preferences and willingness to pay through the Covid-19 pandemic
This study tested the stability of environmental preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) values using a discrete choice experiment (DCE) across three countries pre and post the peak of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. A DCE examining the public’s preferences for alternative environmental management plans on the high seas, in the area of the Flemish Cap, was carried out in Canada, Scotland and Norway in late 2019 and was rerun in early May 2020 shortly after the Covid-19 pandemic had officially peaked in the three countries. The same choice set sequence was tested across the two periods, using different but nationally representative samples in each case. Entropy balancing, a multivariate reweighting method, was used to achieve covariate balance between the pre and post Covid samples in the analysis. The multi-country assessment provides a much broader test than a single-country survey could. It increases the potential robustness of the conclusions drawn on the stability of environmental preferences and WTP during a global shock.