Timber price forecasting is critical for production planning, contract design, and investment decisions across the construction and pulp and paper industries. The Polish timber market presents a distinctive institutional setting in which the State Forests (Lasy Państwowe) operate as a near-monopoly in timber supply, shaping auction outcomes and market dynamics to an extent unmatched elsewhere in Europe. This system amplifies both local constraints and macro-regional shocks transmitted through trade links with Germany and Finland. Timber prices in Poland are strongly influenced by macroeconomic and policy factors, including inflation, interest rates, energy costs, and EU climate initiatives such as the Fit-for-55 package, as well as by exogenous shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2022–2023 energy crisis. We construct weekly price series (2009–2025) for two major pine assortments — w_standard (sawlogs) and S_S2A (pulpwood) - from e-Drewno auction data and augment them with international timber prices, macro-financial indicators, and housing market variables. A hierarchical feature-selection pipeline combining ridge regression, LightGBM-based importance measures, recursive elimination, and forward selection identifies relevant autoregressive and exogenous predictors with lags of up to 52 weeks. Forecasts are generated using a direct multi-horizon LightGBM approach that trains separate models for each of 26 forecast weeks. Our results show that incorporating macroeconomic and international variables substantially improves medium-term forecast accuracy relative to autoregressive baselines. The importance of explanatory factors differs across assortments, reflecting their distinct industrial uses and sensitivity to economic cycles. The proposed pipeline provides an interpretable, operational framework for rolling updates of timber price forecasts in a quasi-monopolistic market shaped by domestic policy and European climate objectives.

This study explores how proactive personality and respondents' income influence preferences for urban air pollution mitigation programs in Poland. For this purpose, we conducted a choice experiment that elicited preferences for improving air quality, used a validated psychometric scale to measure proactivity, and collected information on individual income. To analyse the data, we employed a hybrid latent class model that accounts for heterogeneity in preferences. The model identified four distinct respondent classes: three supported public investments in air pollution mitigation, while one preferred maintaining the current situation. Our results indicate that proactive personality significantly increased the probability of belonging to the class that showed the strongest support for air quality improvement and had the highest willingness to pay for proposed changes. Interestingly, it also increased the probability of belonging to the class that preferred to keep the status quo. Individual income did not directly explain preference heterogeneity, but it was positively correlated with proactivity.

Coastal bathing delivers large welfare benefits but exposes recreationists to low-probability, high-salience microbial risks that are likely to become more frequent under climate change. Because these risks are largely invisible, behaviour and welfare depend on beliefs and the effectiveness of risk communication. We provide causal evidence on how pathogen-risk information affects preferences and recreation demand using a three-wave panel survey of users of the Gulf of Gdańsk and the Vistula Lagoon (Poland). A stratified national sample identified 3,312 active coastal users in Wave 1 (spring 2024); 2,588 respondents returned in Wave 2 (summer 2024), where they were randomly assigned to receive either minimal information or increasingly detailed pathogen-risk scripts, and then completed a repeated beach-site discrete choice experiment. Approximately one year later (spring 2025), 1,507 users completed a policy-referendum discrete choice experiment on programs combining water-quality improvements, monitoring frequency, and household costs, alongside a repeated travel-cost module capturing multi-day trips and beach outings. Information treatments significantly increased objective and self-assessed knowledge and selectively raised willingness to travel/pay for risk-relevant attributes – especially frequent water-quality monitoring and water-quality improvements – while leaving unrelated attributes largely unchanged. Travel-cost models indicate that information affects trip-taking behaviour, yet the marginal travel-cost sensitivity remains stable, consistent with a demand shift rather than a change in the “price” slope. The results imply that welfare estimates are information-dependent and that credible risk communication can function as a scalable, low-cost complement to traditional coastal health-risk management.

Volumetric Choice Experiments (VCE) offer a novel approach to studying individual behavior, traditionally explored through Discrete Choice Experiments. This study assesses the efficacy of VCE in understanding farmers' preferences regarding new results-based and practice-based agri-environmental contracts, using a comprehensive international stated preference survey. Recognizing that farmers often act as households maximizing utility rather than purely profit-driven producers, we provide justification for applying a utility-based framework in this context. The subsidy-driven nature of agri-environmental contracts poses a challenge for the use of multiple discrete-continuous choice models suited for VCE data. Conventionally, these models utilize an income-based budget equation, which would not be binding given the willingness-to-accept format of the experiment. To operationalize our model, we adopt a land-based budget equation, facilitating the development of a novel compensating variation measure for welfare analysis. Our findings reveal insightful contrasts between VCE-derived data and traditional DCE results, highlighting the complexities encountered and the comparability of outcomes. By delving into the distinct attributes of VCE and justifying the utility-based approach for farmers, this research not only bridges a critical gap in the literature but also enhances our understanding of farmer behavior, with significant implications for the design and implementation of future agri-environmental policies.

Forests across Europe are undergoing rapid transformation as biodiversity loss and climate change reshape priorities for forest management. Strategies that promote biodiverse and structurally complex forests are increasingly advocated to enhance ecological resilience, yet they are often assumed to conflict with societal preferences, potentially limiting public support for conservation and restoration. We examined whether forest characteristics associated with biodiversity conservation and climate adaptation are consistently valued by society across Europe. We combined a visual discrete choice experiment involving 11,622 respondents from twelve European countries with a travel cost model to evaluate whether stated societal preferences were reflected in observed recreational behaviour. We then integrated harmonized preference estimates with continental forest inventory and remote-sensing data to map the spatial distribution of societal values associated with forest ecosystem condition. Across all countries, respondents consistently preferred forests characterized by taller canopies, greater tree-species richness, heterogeneous age structures, and more deadwood. These preferences closely aligned with observed visitation behaviour despite substantial differences in geography, accessibility, and recreational traditions. Spatial analyses further showed that forests with greater structural complexity consistently exhibited higher societal value. Our findings demonstrate that biodiversity-oriented forest management and societal values largely converge across Europe, suggesting that many interventions promoting ecological resilience can simultaneously strengthen public support for forest conservation and restoration, providing a stronger foundation for adaptive, multifunctional forest governance under global environmental change.

Distributive justice is an important but often overlooked factor in policy evaluation. We thus examine how people's attitudes towards distributive justice affect their preferences for programmes aimed at reducing ambient air pollution resulting from the combustion of fossil fuels for residential heating. To do so, we carried out two multifactorial survey experiments that allowed us to incorporate justice attitudes into non-market valuation. The first experiment focused on recording justice attitudes towards payment distribution for air quality improvement, while the second experiment measured the willingness to pay for air pollution reduction programmes. Both experiments were conducted with the same respondents, from four cities in Poland, and were conducted separately one to two weeks apart. As a modelling approach, we employ a hybrid choice model. Our findings indicate that people strongly support an equity-based cost distribution and that those with a stronger equity-based distributive justice attitude are more willing to pay for air quality improvement programmes.

This study examines the cointegration of timber prices across key sales channels in the Polish timber market, with a focus on competitive dynamics and international integration. Poland's State Forests National Forest Holding, managing 82% of the country's forested areas and providing over 95% industrial timber, has a nearmonopoly structure. Timber sales are facilitated through three main channels: PL-D, the e-Drewno System, and e-Drewno Individual Auctions. Using cointegration analysis, we assess the connection between these channels and European timber markets. Our findings show limited cointegration in the PL-D and e-Drewno System channels, suggesting they are insulated from international price fluctuations due to restricted access requirements based on purchase history. Conversely, e-Drewno Individual Auctions - open to all without entry restrictions - demonstrate substantial cointegration with other European markets, indicating a higher level of competitiveness and responsiveness to external price trends. In addition, aggregate prices across all channels exhibit moderate cointegration with international markets, reflecting both price stability and adaptation to broader market trends. These findings reveal structural limitations in the Polish timber market: established firms benefit from stable pricing in restricted channels, while new entrants face higher costs in the more volatile, open channels. Policy implications suggest the need for reforms to enhance market inclusivity and prepare for potential supply constraints under changing environmental and regulatory conditions. This research highlights the critical role of channel-specific structures in shaping market behavior and influencing international integration in the timber industry.

Rewilding is increasingly recognized in Europe as a strategy for ecological restoration. However, there has been limited study of the socio-political dimensions of rewilding projects, particularly how political affiliation may influence preferences for rewilding. Given the turbulent European political landscape and significant new environmental legislation, such as the European Green Deal and Nature Restoration Regulation, understanding the interaction between politics and rewilding preferences is critical. We employed a discrete choice experiment approach to assess the impact of political ideology on respondents' willingness to pay for rewilding interventions in the Oder Delta, which spans evenly across Germany and Poland. Our findings indicate that politics is a major driver of rewilding preferences in both countries, and while rewilding is favored across party lines, the extent of preference is often aligned with the left-right political spectrum.

Objective: This study investigates preferences for family resource allocation on health in three-generation families and examines whether reciprocity attitudes influence preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) for reducing lifetime health risk. Background: Empirical results of nonmarket valuation studies suggest that adults value improving their children's health more than their own. Such results are often explained by parental altruism, but self-interest may also be involved. Method: A choice experiment valuation survey elicited respondents' preferences for lifetime risk reduction in coronary artery disease (CAD) and a psychometric scale assessed their reciprocal attitudes. Respondents were middle-generation members of three-generation households. To conduct the analysis a hybrid mixed logit model was used that enabled including psychological factors into a utility function derived from respondents' survey choices. Results: Reciprocal attitudes had distinct effects on the middle-generation preferences for reducing family members' risk of CAD. The latent attitudes concerning reciprocity significantly affected the WTP for the health risk reduction for all family members. The impact of reciprocity on the valuation of CAD risk reduction for the respondent and the elderly parent was similar, but for the child, it was significantly higher. Conclusions: Parents' higher WTP for improving children's health, at least partially, reflects strategic decisions related to reciprocal beliefs. Reciprocity also affects the evaluation of health benefits for elderly parents and middle-aged respondents themselves. Implications: These findings may have implications regarding the degree to which the so-called "sandwich generation" can substitute for the government in the area of health and social care for the elderly.

World Scientific Handbook of Global Migration, pp. 165-175 (2024) No AccessChapter 7: An Integrated Theory of Relative Deprivation and Risk-Laden MigrationOded Stark and Wiktor BudzinskiOded Stark and Wiktor Budzinskihttps://doi.org/10.1142/9789811248139_0007Cited by:0 (Source: Crossref) PreviousNext AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsRecommend to Library ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail Abstract: The following sections are included: Introduction An integrated model of relative deprivation and risk-laden migration Measures of robustness At destination the individual experiences relative deprivation only when unemployed In the utility representation, relative deprivation is entered non-linearly A numerical illustration Conclusion References FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Recommended World Scientific Handbook of Global MigrationMetrics History PDF download

The merger of populations expands the comparison space of incomes. As a result, measures of the income-based social stress and of the income inequality of the constituent populations need to be replaced by new measures. To this end, we develop a procedure for calculating the aggregate social stress and the Gini coefficient of the merged population. We show that to calculate the aggregate social stress when the income distributions of the constituent populations do not overlap, it is sufficient to utilize just three characteristics of the constituent populations: their size, the levels of their aggregate income-based social stress, and their mean income. This result carries over to the calculation of the Gini coefficient of the merged population. We also analyze the extent to which the procedure, applied to cases where the constituent populations do not overlap, can be extended to cases where the income distributions of the constituent populations overlap.

In this study, we employ a choice experiment to study individual preferences for COVID-19 vaccines in the US. A unique characteristic of the microdata (N = 5671) is that the survey was conducted in five distinct waves from October 2020 to October 2021. Because of this dynamic feature, it is possible to control for evolving pandemic conditions such as the number of COVID-19 active cases, vaccination uptake, and the frequency of Google searches related to the vaccines. Furthermore, we employ a hybrid choice model to incorporate respondents' attitudes related to their perceived vulnerability to diseases, as well as their perceived health status. The hybrid choice model was extended to incorporate latent classes as well as random effects. We find that the rate of vaccinated individuals in the population actually increases the probability of vaccine hesitancy, and therefore may discourage people to get vaccinated. This may be evidence of free-riding behavior. On the other hand, the number of COVID-19 cases has a positive effect on the probability of getting vaccinated, suggesting that individuals react to the pandemic conditions by taking some protective measures. Google trend data do not seem to have a straightforward effect on the vaccination demand, but it increases consumers' willingness to pay for several vaccine characteristics. With respect to the analyzed attitudes, we find that perceived uninfectability is a significant driver of vaccine hesitancy, probably related to the frequent "natural immunity" argument. In turn, germ aversion has a positive effect on the probability of getting vaccinated as well as on the marginal willingness to pay. Finally, health status has a limited effect on whether the individual will decide to vaccinate or not.

We study a parent's demand for gratitude from his child. We view this demand as an intervening variable between the parent's earnings and the incidence of child labor. The demand for gratitude arises from the desire of a parent to receive care and support from his child late in life, while the inclination of the child to provide this support during his adulthood is determined by how the child was treated by his parent during childhood. Specifically, we model the child's gratitude as an inverse function of the intensity of his labor in childhood. We show that when we keep the child's (imputed) wage constant, the intensity of child labor decreases with the parent's earnings. However, when we make the child's (imputed) wage a function of the parent's earnings, then the outcome can be different. With the help of a numerical example, we show that the pattern of child labor related to the parent's earnings can be U-shaped.

In this paper, we investigate the effect of respondents’ attitudes concerning distributive justice in payments on their stated preferences for programmes reducing ambient air pollution in four cities in Poland. By combining two multi-factorial survey experiments, we propose a novel approach of incorporating justice attitudes into non-market valuation. In the first experiment – a factorial survey experiment (FSE) – we record justice attitudes towards payments. In the second experiment – a choice experiment (CE) – we elicit stated preferences for air pollution reduction programmes. As a modelling framework, we employ a hybrid choice model. The same respondents undertook both experiments in separate surveys one to two weeks apart, minimising the likelihood of biased estimates of the effect of justice attitudes on stated preferences. The results indicate a substantial effect of the justice attitude on the stated willingness to pay. The proposed approach could be used for joint modelling of justice attitudes and preferences in a wide range of fields, contributing further insights into their interactions.

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This paper examines the impact of health status, and of experienced disutility caused by air pollution, on individuals' preferences regarding the health risk reductions resulting from air quality improvement. We investigate if changes in the level of experienced disutility due to air pollution mediate the relationship between individuals' respiratory health status and their preferences regarding health risk reductions. For this purpose, we conducted a choice experiment study among inhabitants of four big Polish cities that have varying levels of particulate matter pollution. To obtain information about respondents' health status, we used the modified Medical Research Council breathlessness scale, which has been verified in clinical trials and is usually applied as a measure in environmental stated preferences surveys. We do not find any direct impact of health status (apart from smoking) on willingness to pay for air quality improvement. Our results indicate, however, that individuals who self-reported a respiratory diagnosis, as well as those who scored high on the breathlessness scale, are more likely to display a latent trait indicating experienced disutility due to air pollution, and that those who experience this disutility are, in general, more in favour of air quality improvement programmes.

In this study, we employ a choice experiment to analyze New York City residents’ preferences for online grocery shopping at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. We employ a latent class specification to identify three market segments and estimate consumers’ willingness to pay for a variety of attributes of online grocery services related to the quality of the stock, delivery characteristics, and the cost of the online order. We characterize consumers in each segment by their observed characteristics as well as fear-related latent variables. On the one hand, we find that individuals who are actively protecting themselves against COVID-19 have a higher willingness to pay for almost all attributes. On the other hand, consumers who avoid crowds have a lower willingness to pay, but they assign relatively higher importance to no-contact delivery.

The coast plays a significant recreational role in the nine countries around the Baltic Sea. More than 70% of the population of these countries visit the coast, representing some 80 million recreational visits annually. Understanding the values associated with coastal recreation, and the potential welfare changes resulting from improvements in the state of environmental and infrastructure conditions of the Baltic Sea coast is important for marine environment management in the region. We estimate a spatially explicit travel cost model for Baltic coast recreation to assess the welfare of accessing individual sites, identify recreational hot spots and simulate the welfare changes resulting from improvements in environmental and infrastructure conditions. The total benefits associated with Baltic Sea coast-based recreation amount to 27.5 billion EUR per year with significant variation across sites. Improving water quality and infrastructure boost the recreational value by nearly 6.2 billion EUR, an increase of about a fifth of the existing recreational benefits.

Outdoor advertising (OA) produces externalities, such as access to information and visual pollution, that have to be considered in cityscape planning. We propose a theoretical model of demand for OA that considers positive and negative externalities, as well as consumers income and advertising space they can rent. We then present the results of a stated preference study aimed at estimating the value that people attach to the reductions of OA in Warsaw, the capital of Poland. We considered two types of OA mediums: free-standing ads and on-building ads, alongside five levels of advertising reduction. We find that inhabitants of Warsaw prefer regulating and limiting the amount of OA and we quantify their willingness to pay for such a policy. In total, the people of Warsaw were willing to pay from 1.7 to 4.1 million EUR per year for limiting the number of free-standing ads and 5.5–9.3 million EUR per year for limiting of advertising on buildings, depending on the scope of reductions. The results are used for validating the theoretical model. They also serve as input for a benefit-cost analysis of optimal regulation and provide a basis for designing market-based instruments (e.g., Pigouvian tax) to adjust the amount of advertising to socially optimal level. Overall, our study demonstrates how stated preference methods can be used for informing urban landscape policies and adds to the ongoing debate surrounding OA.