New publication in Bio-based and Applied Economics

This paper explores the potential usefulness and possible pitfalls of using integrated choice and latent variable models (hybrid choice models) on stated choice data to inform policy. Using a series of Monte-Carlo simulations, we consider how model selection depends on the strength of relationship between the latent variable and preferences and the strength of relationship between the latent variable and the indicator. Our findings show that integrated choice and latent variable models are difficult to estimate, even when the data generating process is known.

October 15, 2020 Read
New publication in PLoS ONE

We report and interpret preferences of a sample of the Dutch adult population for different strategies to end the so-called ‘intelligent lockdown’ which their government had put in place in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a discrete choice experiment, we invited participants to make a series of choices between policy scenarios aimed at relaxing the lockdown, which were specified not in terms of their nature (e.g. whether or not to allow schools to re-open) but in terms of their effects along seven dimensions.

September 16, 2020 Read
New publication in Environmental and Resource Economics

The growth in global aquaculture production may address the lack of sustainability in wild fisheries, alleviate poverty in rural and coastal areas, and help meet the worldwide increase in demand for animal protein. However, there is an ongoing debate about the severity of the environmental impact of aquaculture production. Investing in new high-tech production systems can address both productivity growth and the environmental externalities, but high investment costs hinder adoption of high-tech production methods.

August 4, 2020 Read
Outstanding Paper Award in European Review of Agricultural Economics

I am thrilled to have received the Outstanding Paper Award 2019 in the European Review of Agricultural Economics together with Danny Campbell for our paper “Accommodating statisficing behavior in stated choice experiments”. The paper is freely available from the link at the bottom. Reference: Sandorf, E.D. & Campbell, D., 2019, Accommodating satisficing behavior in stated choice experiments, European Review of Agricultural Economics, 46:1, 133-162

July 16, 2020 Read
(Online) Presentation at EAERE

I gave a presentation titled “An information search approach to discrete choice experiments” at the EAERE conference in Berlin. Well, the conference was not in Berlin this year, but was hosted online because of COVID-19. The title of the presentation is the same as the one presented at ICMC in August last year, but new in this presentation is that we have the acual data, which was gathered in January.

June 25, 2020 Read
New publication in Resource and Energy Economics

Internet panels are increasingly used for stated preference research. Because members of such panels receive compensation for each completed survey, one concern is that over time this creates professional respondents who answer surveys solely for the monetary compensation. We identify professional respondents using data on panel tenure, survey response frequency, completion rate and total number of completed surveys. We find evidence of two types of professional respondents: “hyperactives” who answer surveys frequently and “experienced” who have long panel tenure and a large number of completed surveys.

May 31, 2020 Read
Persistent storage on Shinyapps.io: Storing your survey responses responsibly

In this post, I will outline how I set up persistent storage and transfer of data from a Shiny survey to a MariaDB using SSL certificates. How I set up the survey and how I handled URL redirects in and out of the survey are topics for future posts. Coming up with a satisfactory solution to this problem took a lot of trial and error (and Googleing…). It turned out that all of the challenges related to persistent storage, sending data to a database, preventing SQL injection attacks and securing the data traffic with SSL certificates had existing solutions.

March 6, 2020 Read
The Pursuit of Fellowship to the Higher Education Academy

As an early career academic with ambitions of a career in academia, I spend much of my time and energy on doing research and writing papers. This is what we are judged on. This is what matters. Or is it? When I entered academia as an undergraduate student, I did not find many of my teachers and lectures impressive. The classes were large and mostly consisted of covering the material on the blackboard, overhead (yeah - some still used that in the mid 00s) or PowerPoint.

February 28, 2020 Read
jekyll-pro-theme: A jekyll theme to use with Github Pages

As part of the INSPiRE project I have had to create and host a project website (a work in progress by any definition) and create and host an online survey. With no background in web design and only a vague idea of HTML, CSS and JavaScript, I got going. My first attempts was with Google Sites, but I have to admit, I found working with the templates a bit clunky. I was not happy with the way the website ended up looking.

January 20, 2020 Read
Presentation at ENVECHO in Verona

I gave a presentation at the Environmental Choice workshop in Verona, Italy. This post is copied with permission from ACRG. Abstract When we analyze how people make choices, we assume taht they are rational utility maximizers. This assumption implies that people have full knowledge of their preferences, complete information about all available alternatives and an infinite ability to make trade-offs between them. These basic assumptions of economics allow us to make consistent predictions and derive welafare estimates.

September 30, 2019 Read
New publication in Conservation Biology

There is increasing pressure to use currently untapped resources in the deep sea, raising questions regarding ecosystem service trade‐offs in these often unknown areas. We assessed the trade‐offs between protection of cold‐water coral reefs and economic activities, such as fisheries and petroleum extraction, through a survey of a representative sample of the populations of Norway and Ireland. Choice‐experiment surveys were conducted in workshop settings and through the internet. Both survey approaches provided some similar results, such as preferences for protection.

August 16, 2019 Read
obfuscatoR: Obfuscation Game Designs is now available on CRAN

Chorus et al. (2019) put forward the hypothesis that sometimes when people make choices they wish to hide their true motivation from a potential onlooker. The obfuscatoR package allows users to easily create obfuscation experiments to test the obfuscation hypothesis, i.e. when properly incentivized - are people able to obfuscate? The package has an easy to use interface and includes several options for the user to adjust the difficulty of the experiment for both the decision maker and observer.

August 1, 2019 Read