Would developing country commitments affect US households' support for a modified Kyoto Protocol?

Abstract Would US households be willing to pay more to support a modified Kyoto Protocol (MKP) if developing countries had binding future limits on greenhouse gas production? We explore this question using data from a unique set of national Internet samples and web-based surveys. Using an advisory referendum format, the contingent valuation method is applied to estimate annual household willingness-to-pay (WTP) for US Senate ratification of the Kyoto Protocol for a split-sample treatment: the basic Kyoto Protocol (BKP) (control group) versus a MKP that includes limits on future greenhouse gas production for major developing countries (treatment group). The results indicate that the treatment significantly increases the probability of a Yes vote on the advisory referendum; econometric modeling results provide evidence that the MKP significantly increases US households' median WTP to support the treaty.

[1]  A. Löschel,et al.  The economic and environmental implications of the US repudiation of the kyoto protocol and the subsequent deals in Bonn and Marrakech , 2002 .

[2]  Robert Cameron Mitchell,et al.  Using Surveys to Value Public Goods: The Contingent Valuation Method , 1989 .

[3]  Barbara Kanninen,et al.  Bias in Discrete Response Contingent Valuation , 1995 .

[4]  I. Bateman,et al.  Budget-Constraint, Temporal, and Question-Ordering Effects in Contingent Valuation Studies , 1997 .

[5]  R. Ready,et al.  Statistical Approaches to the Fat Tail Problem for Dichotomous Choice Contingent Valuation , 1995 .

[6]  M. Couper.  A REVIEW OF ISSUES AND APPROACHES , 2000 .

[7]  Robert P. Berrens,et al.  Information and effort in contingent valuation surveys: application to global climate change using national internet samples ☆ , 2004 .

[8]  Richard C. Bishop,et al.  Using Donation Mechanisms to Value Nonuse Benefits from Public Goods , 1997 .

[9]  Michael Obersteiner,et al.  How to Go From Today's Kyoto Protocol to a Post-Kyoto Future that Adheres to the Principles of Full Carbon Accounting and Global-scale Verification? A Discussion Based on Greenhouse Gas Accounting, Uncertainty and Verification , 2000 .

[10]  Achieving the Kyoto Protocol in the U.S.: How Great are the Needed Changes? , 2000 .

[11]  Robert P. Berrens,et al.  Further Investigation of Voluntary Contribution Contingent Valuation: Fair Share, Time of Contribution, and Respondent Uncertainty , 2002 .

[12]  W. Jaeger.  Carbon Taxation When Climate Affects Productivity , 2002, Land Economics.

[13]  John B. Loomis,et al.  Alternative approaches for incorporating respondent uncertainty when estimating willingness to pay: the case of the Mexican spotted owl , 1998 .

[14]  Gary G. Koch,et al.  Mantel–Haenszel Methods , 2005 .

[15]  J. Bennett,et al.  Yea-Saying in Contingent Valuation Surveys , 1999 .

[16]  Leif Mattsson,et al.  Discrete choice under preference uncertainty: an improved structural model for contingent valuation. , 1995 .

[17]  Trudy Ann Cameron,et al.  Efficient Estimation Methods for "Closed-ended' Contingent Valuation Surveys , 1987 .

[18]  Robert P. Berrens,et al.  The Advent of Internet Surveys for Political Research: A Comparison of Telephone and Internet Samples , 2003, Political Analysis.

[19]  D. Rubin,et al.  The central role of the propensity score in observational studies for causal effects , 1983 .

[20]  Carlo Carraro,et al.  Back to Kyoto? Us Participation and the Linkage between R&D and Climate Cooperation , 2002 .

[21]  J. Dixon,et al.  Information Disclosure and Endangered Species Valuation , 1985 .

[22]  George W. Bush.  Letter from the President George W. Bush to Senators Hagel, Helms, Craig, and Roberts: , 2001 .

[23]  The Ethics of Burden-Sharing in the Global Greenhouse , 1999 .

[24]  Richard S.J. Tol,et al.  The marginal damage costs of carbon-dioxide emissions’ , 2005 .

[25]  W. Deming,et al.  On a Least Squares Adjustment of a Sampled Frequency Table When the Expected Marginal Totals are Known , 1940 .