Informed Consent For Eliciting Environmental Values

Abstract

Agreeing to participate in a study eliciting environmental values means agreeing to abide by the commitment implied by any proposal that one accepts or rejects in it. That might mean anything from addressing the gist of an issue to expressing an explicit willingness to pay for an environmental change. By soliciting such participation, investigators promise to provide the information that participants need in order to evaluate the proposals being presented. This paper proposes a standard for providing such information that must be met in order to conduct valid and ethical value-elicitation studies. Namely, investigators must secure the informed consent of participants. Drawing on research in risk analysis and communication, this approach allows setting priorities among the facts that could conceivably be conveyed. It also leads to two general strategies for increasing the capacity of the communication channel. The paper concludes by discussing how the policy relevance of value-elicitation studies depends on their ability to ensure informed consent.