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Spatial effects in willingness to pay for avoiding nuclear risks

Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics volume 149, pages 357–379 (2013)Cite this article

Summary

How to deal with the risks associated with nuclear energy is a major policy issue. This paper investigates the effect of an individual’s distance from nuclear power plants on willingness to pay for increased insurance coverage against nuclear accidents (MWP C ) as well as on willingness to pay for solving the nuclear waste disposal problem (MWP W ). Using data from a discrete choice experiment conducted in Switzerland, we find evidence that MWP C values decrease with distance from plant once attitudes influencing choice of residential location are controlled for. However, distance from plant has no effect on MWP W values.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Lucerne and Polynomics, Baslerstrasse 44, 4600, Olten, Switzerland

    Yves Schneider

  2. Emeritus, Department of Economics, University of Zurich, Switzerland

    Peter Zweifel

Authors
  1. Yves Schneider
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  2. Peter Zweifel
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yves Schneider.

Additional information

We want to thank Michael Breuer, Patrick Eugster, Charles Holt, Harry Telser, Christian Wyss, participants at the ASTIN conference and at the annual meeting of the Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, seminar participants at the Universities of Virginia and Zurich and at the Curtin Business School (Perth, Australia) for valuable comments. Financial support came from the Swiss Federal Office of Energy and the Swiss Institute of Technology Yves Schneider acknowledges financial support by the Swiss National Science Foundation via grant PBZH1-117037. Any errors and omissions are ours.

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Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Schneider, Y., Zweifel, P. Spatial effects in willingness to pay for avoiding nuclear risks. Swiss J Economics Statistics 149, 357–379 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03399395

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