Conjoint analysis for environmental evaluation--a review of methods and applications

Area of Science:

• Environmental Science and Management
• Ecosystem Management
• Natural Resource Management

Background:

• Conjoint analysis and choice-modelling methods are established in marketing research.
• Applications in environmental science and management are rapidly expanding.
• These methods evaluate trade-offs by jointly considering product or environmental attributes.

Purpose of the Study:

• Review environmental applications of conjoint analysis.
• Assess the success of conjoint analysis in various environmental areas.
• Examine the methods and study designs employed in environmental conjoint analysis.

Main Methods:

• Literature review of 84 environmental conjoint analysis studies.
• Analysis of study designs and methodologies.
• Assessment of application areas and success rates.

Main Results:

• Conjoint analysis applied to agriculture, ecosystem management, energy, forestry, land management, pollution, products, recreation, environmental risk analysis, and waste management.
• Choice experiments show a strong position in environmental studies, especially for ecosystem management and evaluations.
• Traditional conjoint analysis is favored for agriculture, forestry, energy, and product evaluations.

Conclusions:

• Conjoint analysis is effective for eliciting preferences on environmental issues, with a growing number of studies.
• Choice experiments are prevalent in ecosystem management and environmental evaluations.
• Emerging applications in environmental communication and expert elicitation offer potential for risk governance.