Consumers and citizens: Identity salience in choice settings focusing on local wind turbines

We explore and illustrate the potential consequences of identity salience on stated choice valuation outcomes. The dual role of individuals as citizens and as consumers is brought to the foreground when considering investments in wind energy. To this end, we use two different settings in a stated choice experiment to elicit household preferences: one based on the decision to buy a home with particular characteristics in the neigh-bourhood of a wind farm and one based on the decision to support a policy to locate a wind farm in the respondent's municipality. By including a shared set of attributes to describe the wind farm in both settings, we are able to analyse the impact of identity salience on stated preferences. In the home setting, identity salience has no significant effect. In the policy setting, the consumer framing mitigates (when positive) or reinforces (when negative) the identity effect of the setting for the preferences regarding the number of wind turbines, the visibility of the wind turbines and the noise levels associated with the wind park. This finding suggests that it may be easier to shift a respondent's focus from public to private than vice versa. Our results illustrate that valuation exercises triggering a different role at the individual level will likely result in different valuation outcomes. By doing so, we issue a warning to researchers and policy makers to reflect about the objectives and set-up of valuation studies when using them for policy evaluation purposes. If the context of such a study is not adequately taken into account, potentially misleading messages and policy conclusions can emerge.

Automated summary

The study reveals that consumer framing in wind energy investments may mitigate or reinforce the effects of identity salience on preferences, particularly regarding preferences for the number of wind turbines, visibility, and noise levels. Additionally, the results suggest that shifting a respondent's focus from public to private may be easier.