Resource

Time-use Studies Factsheet

Author/Contact:

Eszter Kelemen
Senior research fellow at ESSRG Ltd. and senior lecturer at Corvinus University of Budapest
kelemen.eszter@essrg.hu 
OPPLA username: ekelemen

Publication date:

Resource description:

Time use study is an innovation of the conventional stated preference techniques, in particular taken from the contingent valuation approach. In this case, the payment vehicle is expressed in labour hours rather than monetary units (use in the classical willingness to pay studies) (Kenter et al. 2011). Willingness to give up time (WTT) creates a hypothetical scenario using surveys to estimate the value of ecosystem services by directly asking people how much time they would willing to invest for a change in the quantity or quality of a given ecosystem service or conservation plan. This approach is also useful in areas with income constrains where money is basically used for essential goods (Higuera et al. 2012).

Requirements:

  • Need to collect lots of new data
  • Advanced statistical knowledge and econometric modelling skills are necessary

Advantages:

  • Useful in contexts where severe income constrains makes WTP studies inappropriate (Higuera et al., 2012
  • Kenter et al., 2011).
  • Avoids incommensurability issues resulted from the assignation of monetary value to service properties that could not be monetarily measured (e.g. Garcia-Llorente et al., 2011).

Constraints:

  • WTT is unsuitable for application to cases in which the respondents have little time availability.
  • Modeling WTT processes requires the inclusion of the time availability as an explanatory variable. Therefore, a daily time analysis should be included in the questionnaire, which is however time consuming and often tiring for respondents.
  • Classical methodological biases from conventional stated preference methods could occur.

Licence:

  • Free, no licence

Development stage:

  • Full, working product
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