Conference Agenda

This study examines individual preferences for different supply chain laws using a stated choice experiment. Participants choose between the currently implemented supply chain law in Germany, which aims to protect human rights and the environment within supply chains, and alternative designs of this law. The alternative designs differ in terms of the attributes scope of the law, scope of the prevention measures, possibility for civil damage claims, and additional monthly costs that a household might incur due to a stricter law. Thus, this experiment allows us to analyze preferences and the willingness to pay (WTP) for those attributes of supply chain laws. In addition, a broad set of survey questions allows us to explore whether the WTP for different attributes of supply chain laws depends on the individual characteristics of participants, such as socio-demographics. The study is based on a sample of 507 individuals from Germany that is stratified for age, gender, and the federal state in which the participants reside based on quotas for the general German population. Our results reveal a significant WTP for a stricter supply chain law, with participants considering the possibility of civil damage claims to be particularly important. Prior knowledge of the law as well as ecological and social political orientation significantly influence the willingness to pay for stricter regulations, while socio-demographic and socio-economic factors of individuals play a smaller role. The findings of this study shed light on the priorities and trade-offs individuals consider when selecting alternative legal frameworks that govern supply chains. Thereby, we shed light on the current political discussions on the implementation of stricter supply chain laws on the European level and thus on the creation of a law that is widely accepted by the general public.

Recreational demand models based on revealed preference data from travel cost surveys have been broadly used to estimate welfare from non-market goods, including many environmental goods. Collecting travel cost data requires respondents to recall their past behavior, which leads to recall bias issues, including rounding bias and telescoping effects. While these problems are common in travel cost data, available empirical approaches aimed at reducing these issues are limited. To contribute to this underexplored area, we conduct an empirical study aimed at developing targeted approaches to help reduce recall bias issues. Data for the study comes from a field survey, with designated split-sample treatments, concerning trips to the Baltic seaside in Poland conducted on a representative sample of more than 3,400 Polish residents. Our findings indicate that a drop-down list response format reduces the tendency to provide a rounded number of recreational trips made (compared to an open-ended question), and the provision of timeline graphs leads to more respondents reporting zero trips in the analyzed periods. This suggests that the drop-down list response format limits rounding bias, and timeline graphs help reduce the telescoping effect. Furthermore, we observe these two approaches aiding recall yield lower consumer surplus (CS) estimates than typically used approaches.

Although there is ample empirical evidence that congestion charges can effectively reduce congestion and its detrimental effects, this instrument has only been implemented in a handful European cities so far. Embedding an information treatment experiment in a survey across seven European countries, this paper empirically investigates whether information on the effectiveness of congestion charges may increase the support for congestion charges. According to our estimation results and depending on the type of information given, it can raise acceptance by 6.4% to 8.8% . Attributing a concrete price level to the charge lowers acceptance and diminishes the effect of the information treatments to between 4.8% and 5.2%. We also observe heterogeneities as consequences of nationality and previous policy knowledge. Based on these results, we conclude that information campaigns on congestion charges and their benefits for commuters and city-dwellers are essential for securing public support for this instrument.

While the use of sub-marine disposal of mine tailings used to be common on a global scale, nowadays this is rather the exception. As one of few countries still making concessions of sub-marine tailings disposals (STD), Norway has recently given concession to two new plans for mining operations using STD. The two concessions have provoked negative public reactions materialized as demonstrations and civil disobedience organized by national ENGOs. These reactions can be attributed

to the fact that such disposals will impact surrounding marine ecosystems negatively. On the other hand, the mines are located in rural areas characterized by few jobs and outmigration of young people.

There is a lack of knowledge about preferences for mining activities with STD in the general population. In this paper we use one of the two newly concessed mining plans to analyse citizens’ preferences for protecting marine ecosystems and their services that are threatened by mining activities. To this end we use data from a discrete choice experiment in Norway eliciting inhabitants’ willingnessto pay (WTP) for environmental and economic attributes connected to new mining activities. A mixed MNL model

confirms that there is significant willingness to pay (WTP) to reduce the detrimental effects to marine ecosystems from mining activities. At the same time, there is also significant WTP to pay for jobs for locals connected to mining activities. Applying a hybrid mixed MNL model to explore drivers of the significant preference heterogeneity shows that those ranking environmental policies higher than other policy areas are willing to pay more to reduce detrimental environmental effects from mining activities. On the other hand, those ranking rural or industrial policies higher are not willing to pay more for securing jobs for locals. Other drivers of preferences for mining activities are recreational use of the area, conditioned acceptance of mining activities given environmental impacts, and to a lesser extent beliefs about environmental and societal impacts of mining activities.

Decarbonizing industries to mitigate climate change requires technological change. For road passenger transportation, the transition from fossil-fuel powered to zero-emission vehicles, mostly electric vehicles (EVs), has already begun, and it seems to be driven by environmental policies. In this paper, I study the effect of a unilateral increase in the stringency of the European CO2 emission standard for cars on the global innovation outcomes of automotive suppliers. Variation in the stringency of the standard is introduced by a substantial decrease in the market share of diesel vehicles in response to the 2015 diesel scandal. Automotive suppliers are indirectly exposed to the regulation via the manufacturers they supply. Linking patent data with novel data on manufacturer-supplier relationships, I find that exposure to an unanticipated increase in the stringency of the standard by 1 g CO2 per km increases the number of patents applications related to electric vehicle technologies by 7.9 % (1.03 patents) in the four years following the diesel scandal.

Flexible electricity demand is crucial for the future of the electricity grid, especially as the use of variable renewable generation grows. One important area of focus is residential flexibility, which aims to better align household electricity consumption with production. However, there is limited understanding of how willing households are to participate in flexibility programs that involve turning off certain appliances during peak hours. This article presents findings from a field experiment which studies the interplay between human behavior and a flexible use of heat pumps for heating well-insulated homes. By leveraging the flexibility potential of eight residential heat pumps around Ghent (Belgium) through 160 flexibility events where we remotely deactivate the heating, we show that substantial flexibility can be achieved, with minimal comfort impacts. On average, the flexibility events blocked the dwellings' heat pumps for a duration of 12.2h and shifted 3.3 kWh of electricity consumption. This resulted in a negligible reduction in ambient temperature of approximately 0.08 °C on average, while delivering a flexibility potential up to approximately 200 W. We show that the biggest constraint on this potential may be the sanitary water heating. Further, households were given the means to stop interventions. We show that most of households' stopping behavior is explained by thermal discomfort due to the slightly lowered ambient heating. Our research provides evidence that, amongst well-insulated dwellings, large amounts of flexibility can be achieved with minimal comfort impact on occupants, thereby facilitating the penetration of renewables in the electricity mix and saving the occupants money on their electricity bill.