Estimation of the environmental value of recycled wood wastes: A conjoint analysis study

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the environmental value of recycled wood wastes using conjoint analysis. Conjoint analysis is one of many multi-attribute preference-elicitation techniques widely used in market research. A comparison of the pair-wise rating method and the choice experiment elicitation method is made. An empirical study estimates the value of recycled water cleaners using pair-wise rating and choice experiments. Water cleaners have many attributes, including their cleaning performance, replacement time, size, color, and price. Existing water-cleaning filters use propylene or polyethylene, which are made from petroleum resources. These filters become waste after being replaced. Another type of water-cleaning filter is being developed, known as a “recycled filter,” which is made from construction industry wood wastes and logs from thinning. This recycled filter can subsequently be dissolved by bacteria. An empirical study of recycled water-cleaning filters made from wood wastes shows that recycling has significant value as estimated by both pair-wise rating and choice experiments. However, the estimated marginal willingness to pay for recycling differs between the two methods. It may be that profile design effects appear in our survey.