Essays on the market for sustainability

Date

2021-08

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Abstract

Essay 1: The increasing growth of consumption needs puts pressure on the natural systems, harming the climate, biodiversity, and water. This has induced a growing recognition that action should be taken to mitigate irreversible damage to the environment and climate (OECD, 2008, 2012a). Consequently, the sustainability of the environment can be impacted through a change in consumer’s and producer’s behavior (OECD, 2012a), which can be primarily done through the transformation of our agricultural system using alternative farming approaches that are based on ecological principles (Riar et al., 2017). By exploring past studies, this research assesses the literature on sustainable agriculture adoption. The major findings of peer-reviewed works provide a list of significant methodological factors affecting the elicitation of producer’s preferences for sustainable farming practices which are used to examine Willingness to Accept values across different studies by way of meta-analysis. Essay 2: The United States is the largest importer of cotton apparel in the world and the largest supplier is China. The U.S. State Department among others has charged China with the exploitation of the Uighur Muslim minority in forced labor in cotton farms and textile mills in Xingjian China. We examine the impact that information about this potential exploitation has on consumer WTP for denim jeans by country of origin (China, US, and ROW) using data collected from an online nationwide survey and a discrete-choice experiment. Random utility theory is the basis for the survey’s responses analysis to obtain the WTP space (Scarpa et al., 2008) that is estimated by using simulated maximum likelihood procedures (Train, 2003). Results show that consumers express an increased relative WTP for US C.O.O than ROW C.O.O, and a negative premium to C.O.O China after exposure to the information regarding potential labor exploitation.

Description

Keywords

WTA, Meta-Analysis, Farmers, WTP, Sustainability, Consumer Preferences, Choice Experiments, Mixed Logit Model

Citation