Framing Decisions in Uncertain Scenarios: An Analysis of Tourist Preferences in the Face of Global Warming

Abstract This paper presents the results of a choice experiment survey of tourists in Mallorca, Spain, to elicit preferences for designed policies aimed at addressing the attractiveness losses of the destination in the face of global warming. The study is novel in two main ways. First, it introduces the uncertainty deriving from the stochastic nature of global warming, not as a policy attribute but as an inherent feature of the valuation scenario. For this reason, the expected temperature change and its probability of occurrence were kept constant across alternatives but not across different choice tasks. Second, it measures the willingness-to-pay for a set of pro-environmental policies under different framings. Results show that the inclusion of uncertainty shapes individuals' decisions.