Browsing by Author "Martinsson, Peter"

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Anyone for Higher Speed Limits? - Self-Interested and Adaptive Political Preferences
(2003) Martinsson, Peter; Johansson-Stenman, Olof; Department of Economics
Swedish survey-evidence indicates that variables reflecting self-interest are important in explaining people’s preferred speed limits, and that political preferences adapt to technological development. Drivers of cars that are newer (and hence safer), bigger, and with better high-speed characteristics, prefer higher speed limits, as do those who believe they drive better than average, whereas elderly people prefer lower limits. Furthermore, people report that they themselves vote more sociotropically than they believe others to vote, on average. Self-serving biases are proposed as a bridge between subjectively perceived expressive and sociotropic voting behavior, versus objectively self-interested voting behavior.
Are Commercial Fishers Risk Lovers?
(2003) Martinsson, Peter; Eggert, Håkan; Department of Economics
Empirical studies of fishers’ preferences have found that most fishers are risk-averse, while expected-utility theory predicts risk neutrality even for sizable stakes. We test this prediction using data from a stated choice experiment with Swedish commercial fishers. Our results show that almost 90% of the respondents do not behave as expected-utility maximizers. 48% of the fishers can be broadly characterized as risk-neutral, 26% as modestly risk-averse, while 26% are strongly risk-averse. Fishers are more risk-neutral the higher the fraction of their household’s income comes from fishing, while fishers with a positive attitude to individual quotas are more risk-averse. Sensitivity testing implies that decisions with modest stakes like a few days of fishing are not influenced by wealth level.
Are Some Lives More Valuable?
(2003) Martinsson, Peter; Johansson-Stenman, Olof; Department of Economics
A theoretical model of the ethical preferences of individuals is tested by conducting a choice experiment on safety-enhancing road investments. The relative value of a saved life is found to decrease with age, such that the present value of a saved year of life is almost independent of age at a pure rate of time preference of a few percent, and a saved car driver is valued 17-31% lower than a pedestrian of the same age. Moreover, individuals’ ethical preferences seem to be fairly homogenous.
Are They Watching You and Does It Matter? - Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment
(2010-06) Alpízar, Francisco; Martinsson, Peter
In a natural field experiment, we tested whether being alone or in a group had an effect on prosocial behavior as expressed in donations to a recreational park. We also explored whether the presence of people exogenous to the group at the time of the donation had any behavioral effect. Our first treatment aimed at identifying peer effects, whereas our second treatment was similar to being in the public eye. We found that being in a group significantly increases the share of people acting prosocially. Moreover, we found that only individuals who are part of a group are positively affected by the presence of a third party.
Are Vietnamese Farmers Concerned with their Relative Position in Society?
(2005) Martinsson, Peter; Linde-Rahr, Martin; Nam, Pham Khanh; Carlsson, Fredrik; Department of Economics
This paper examines the attitude towards relative position or status among rural households in Vietnam. On average, the respondents show weaker preferences for relative position than in comparable studies in Western countries. Possible explanations are the emphasis on the importance of equality and that villagers are very concerned with how the local community perceives their actions. We also investigate what influences the concern for relative position and find, among other things, that if anyone from the household is a member of the Peoples Committee then the respondent is more concerned with the relative position.
Can we do policy recommendations from a framed field experiment? The case of coca cultivation in Colombia
(2008-05-27T13:09:02Z) Ibanez, Marcela; Martinsson, Peter
Laboratory experiments are potentially effective tools for studying behavior in settings where little or no information would otherwise exist such as participation in illicit activities. However, using laboratory experiments to draw policy recommendations is highly debatable. We investigate the external validity of a framed field experiment that mimics coca cultivation and find evidence that behavior in the experiment is consistent with self-reported behavior. We use the experiment to discuss the effectiveness of carrot and stick policies on coca investments. The experiment indicates that subjects are more responsive to changes in the relative profit of cattle farming than to changes in the probability of coca eradication.
Conditional Cooperation and Disclosure in Developing Countries
(2012-09) Martinsson, Peter; Pham-Khanh, Nam; Villegas-Palacio, Clara; Dept of Economics, University of Gothenburg
Understanding the motivations behind people’s voluntary contributions to public goods is crucial for the broader issues of economic and social development. By using the experimental design of Fischbacher et al. (2001), we investigate the distribution of contribution types in two developing countries with very high collectivism rating – Colombia and Vietnam – and compare our findings with those previously found in developed countries. We also investigate the effect of introducing disclosure of contribution on the distribution of contribution types and on the contribution itself. Overall, our experiments show that the distribution of contribution types remains unaffected by the disclosure of contributions and, on average, is similar both in the two countries and when compared with previous findings with the exception of proportion of free-riders.
Conditional Cooperation and Social Group - Experimental results from Colombia
(2009-08-05T14:04:27Z) Martinsson, Peter; Villegas-Palacio, Clara; Wollbrant, Conny
In contrast to previous studies on cross-group comparisons of conditional cooperation, this study keeps cross- and within-country dimensions constant. The results reveal significantly different cooperation behavior between social groups in the same location.
Conditional Cooperation: Evidence for the Role of Self-Control
(2010-07) Martinsson, Peter; Myrseth, Kristian Ove R.; Wollbrant, Conny
When facing the opportunity to allocate resources between oneself and others, individuals may experience a self-control conflict between urges to act selfishly and preferences to act pro-socially. We explore the domain of conditional cooperation, and we test the hypothesis that increased expectations about others’ average contribution increases own contributions to public goods more when self-control is high than when it is low. We pair a subtle framing technique with a public goods experiment. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find that conditionally cooperative behavior is stronger (i.e., less imperfect) when expectations of high contributions are accompanied by high levels of self-control.
Cooperation under risk and ambiguity
(2016-12) Björk, Lisa; Kocher, Martin; Martinsson, Peter; Nam Khanh, Pham; Dept. of Economics, University of Gothenburg
The return from investments in public goods is almost always uncertain, in contrast to the most common setup in the existing empirical literature. We study the impact of natural uncertainty on cooperation in a social dilemma by conducting a public goods experiment in the laboratory in which the marginal return to contributions is either deterministic, risky (known probabilities) or ambiguous (unknown probabilities). Our design allows us to make inferences on differences in cooperative attitudes, beliefs, and one-shot as well as repeated contributions to the public good under the three regimes. Interestingly, we do not find that natural uncertainty has a significant impact on the inclination to cooperate, neither on the beliefs of others nor on actual contribution decisions. Our results support the generalizability of previous experimental results based on deterministic settings. From a behavioural point of view, it appears that strategic uncertainty overshadows natural uncertainty in social dilemmas.
Cost of Power Outages for Manufacturing Firms in Ethiopia: A Stated Preference Study
(2018-05) Carlsson, Fredrik; Demeke, Eyoual; Martinsson, Peter; Tesemma, Tewodros; Dept. of Economics, University of Gothenburg
Having a reliable supply of electricity is essential for the operation of any firm. In most developing countries, however, electricity supply is highly unreliable. In this study, we estimate the cost of power outages for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, using a stated preference survey. We find that the willingness to pay, and thus the cost of power outages, is substantial. The estimated willingness to pay for a reduction of one power outage corresponds to a tariff increase of 16 percent. The willingness to pay for reducing the average length of a power outage by one hour corresponds to a 33 percent increase. The compensating variation for a zero-outage situation corresponds to about three times the current electricity cost. There is, however, considerable heterogeneity in costs across sectors, firm sizes, and levels of electricity consumption. Policy makers could consider this observed heterogeneity when it comes to aspects such as where to invest to improve reliability and different types of electricity contracts.
Do Experience and Cheap Talk influence Willingness to Pay in an Open-Ended Contingent Valuation Survey?
(2006) Martinsson, Peter; Carlsson, Fredrik; Department of Economics
In this paper we analyze the effect of information on respondents’ willingness to pay to avoid power outages in Sweden, by employing an open-ended contingent valuation survey. Two aspects of information are tested; (i) if increased experience from power outages manifested by one of the worst hurricanes ever in Sweden with long power outages as a result and (ii) if a cheap talk script affect the respondents’ WTP. The results indicate that experience increases the proportion of respondents with a zero WTP significantly, which is consistent with the view presented in media in the backwash of the hurricane stressing the right to access power without outages. On the other hand, the cheap talk script decreased the proportion of respondents with zero WTP. In both cases, however, there is no significant effect on the stated WTP conditional on reporting a positive WTP. Thus, information seems to affect the proportion of respondents with a zero WTP, and implications of this on future applications of open-ended contingent valuation surveys are discussed.
Do Hypothetical and Actual Willingness to Pay Differ in Choice Experiments? - Application to the Valuation of the Environment
(1999) Martinsson, Peter; Carlsson, Fredrik; Department of Economics
In this paper we test the validity of choice experiments with donations for environmental projects. In particular, we test whether or not willingness to pay for projects differs between a hypothetical and an actual choice experiment. Our results do not indicate that choice experiments suffer from overstatement in hypothetical willingness to pay; and this contrasts the results found in external tests of validity in Contingent Valuation. In addition, internal tests of validity indicate transitive and stable preferences in both experiments
Do people avoid opportunities to donate? A natural field experiment on recycling and charitable giving
(2012-09) Knutsson, M.; Martinsson, Peter; Wollbrant, Conny; Dept of Economics, University of Gothenburg
We use a natural field experiment to investigate the hypothesis that generosity is partly involuntary, by examining whether individuals tend to avoid opportunities to act generously. In Sweden, new recycling machines for bottles and cans with an option of donating the returned deposit to charity were gradually introduced in one of the largest store chains. We find a substantial decline in recycling the month these new machines were introduced and a further decline in the following months. These results indicate that individuals avoid opportunities to act generously and corroborate findings from both lab and field studies supporting the claim that generous behavior is partly involuntary.
Do You Enjoy Having More Than Others? Survey Evidence of Positional Goods
(2003) Martinsson, Peter; Johansson-Stenman, Olof; Carlsson, Fredrik; Department of Economics
Although conventional economic theory proposes that only the absolute levels of income and consumption matter for people’s utility, there is much evidence that relative concerns are often important. This paper uses a survey-experimental method to measure people’s perceptions of the degree to which such concerns matter, i.e. the degree of positionality. Based on a representative sample in Sweden, income and cars are found to be highly positional, on average. This is in contrast to leisure and car safety, which may even be completely non-positional.
Does age matter for the value of life? - Evidence from a choice experiment in rural Bangladesh
(2009-10-19T14:07:48Z) Johansson-Stenman, Olof; Mahmud, Minhaj; Martinsson, Peter
Using a random sample of individuals in rural Bangladesh, this paper investigates people’s preferences regarding relative values of lives when it comes to different ages of the individuals being saved. By assuming that an individual has preferences concerning different states of the world, and that these preferences can be described by an individual social welfare function, the individuals’ preferences for life-saving programs are elicited using a pair-wise choice experiment between different life-saving programs. In the analyses, we calculate the social marginal rates of substitution between saved lives of people of different ages. We also test whether people have preferences for saving more life-years rather than only saving lives. In particular, we test and compare the two hypotheses that only lives matter and that only life-years matter. The results indicate that the value of a saved life decreases rapidly with age and that people have strong preferences for saving life-years rather than lives per se. Overall, the results clearly show the importance of the number of life-years saved in the valuation of life.
Does disclosure crowd out cooperation?
(2010-05-18T10:54:47Z) Martinsson, Peter; Villegas-Palacio, Clara
This paper investigates whether disclosure crowds out pro-social behavior using a public goods experiment. In a between-subject design, we investigate different degrees of disclosure. We find a small positive but insignificant effect of disclosure treatments on contributions to the public good. Thus, our empirical findings are consistent with crowding theory.
Does experience eliminate the effect of a default option? - A field experiment on CO2-offsetting for air transport
(2009-10-23T12:49:21Z) Löfgren, Åsa; Martinsson, Peter; Hennlock, Magnus; Sterner, Thomas
Earlier research has shown that using a default option has a decisive effect on individuals’ choices. In many cases, however, the low proportion of subjects who switch from the pre-set default option might partly explained by inexperience with the goods or services offered, and high transaction costs for switching. By conducting a natural field experiment when environmental economists registered on the web to a conference, the default option to offset CO2 emissions was randomly pre-set. Either the participants had to opt-in to offset, opt-out to offset or there was no default option, i.e. an active choice had to be made with no implicit “guidance” from the default. We used experienced subjects and had low transaction costs of switching. Our findings show that the default has no significant effect on the decision to offset.
Does it Matter When a Power Outage Occurs? - A Choice Experiment Study on the Willingness to Pay to Avoid Power Outages
(2009-03-17T10:26:42Z) Carlsson, Fredrik; Martinsson, Peter; Department of Economics, Göteborg University, Box 640, 405 30 Göteborg, Sweden
Using a choice experiment survey, the marginal willingness to pay (WTP) among Swedish households for reductions in power outages is estimated. The results from the random parameter logit estimation indicate that the marginal WTP increases with the duration of the outages, and is higher if the outages occur during weekends and during winter months. The random parameter logit model allows us to estimate a sample distribution of WTP. We find a significant unobserved heterogeneity in some of the outage attributes but not all. Furthermore we show that the sample distribution of WTP does not to any large extent suffer from the problem of reverse sign of the WTP. Therefore, choosing an unconstrained normal distribution might not be as problematic as one would think. Given that households have negative welfare effects from outages, which differ in timing and duration, and are rarely compensated for them, it is important that policy makers consider these negative impacts on households utility when regulating the electricity market.
Does it matter when a power outage occurs? — A choice experiment study on the willingness to pay to avoid power outages
(Elsevier, 2008) Carlsson, Fredrik; Martinsson, Peter
Using a choice experiment survey, the marginal willingness to pay (WTP) among Swedish households for reductions in power outages is estimated. The results from the random parameter logit estimation indicate that the marginal WTP increases with the duration of the outages, and is higher if the outages occur during weekends and during winter months. Moreover, the random parameter logit model allows us to estimate a sample distribution of WTP and we find a significant unobserved heterogeneity in some of the outage attributes. Given that households have negative welfare effects from outages, it is important that policy makers consider these negative impacts on household utility when regulating the Swedish electricity market.