Assessing Preferences for Environmental Decisions With Long-Term Consequences. Thomas Eppel, Decision Insights, Inc., Irvine, CA; and Jeffery Guyse and L. Robin Keller, University of California at Irvine, Irvine, CA
In a time of shrinking budgets and increased scrutiny of environmental policies and regulations, it is important that decisions about large-scale projects involving long-term consequences (such as nuclear waste clean-up or environmental policies mitigating potential effects of global warming) are made with the utmost care and analytical support. Models and procedures of multi-attribute utility theory can provide an explicit and consistent framework to assess risk- and time-sensitive preferences. These models provide a convincing normative framework to assess preferences and have led to several well-established assessment methods. Empirical validation studies gave important insights on various advantages and disadvantages of these assessment procedures depending on situational characteristics. For example, several studies have shown that different methods lead to different discount factors for different situations. A series of experiments will be described which systematically vary the conditions that have been identified as potential contributors to how people express preferences for consequences that occur at different points in time. We describe how one can cross-validate and generalize the findings of experimental studies with field observations using professional analysts who are involved in making the types of decisions that are the target of this study.
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