| dc.description.abstract | Are fairness concerns of relevance to environmental economics and, if so, are they sufficiently
structured to improve analysis in this field? On both of these questions, we answer in the
affirmative, arguing that people’s fairness views are based on both general rules and the context,
where context refers to the set of variables and persons employed to interpret and apply the
principles. The fairness rules analyzed are accountability (i.e., rewards that are proportional to
contributions individuals control), efficiency, need and equality. We conclude that stakeholders
typically exhibit a “fairness bias”, i.e., they tend, consciously or not, to interpret and apply
fairness principles in a self-serving manner, whereas the views of spectators, or impartial third
parties, tend to converge significantly more. Further, we argue that fairness considerations are
relevant to both descriptive and prescriptive analysis in environmental economics. These fairness
concerns are reflected in the behavior of private and public decision-makers and have potentially
important policy implications through the overall social objective function. | en |
