Is the income elasticity of environmental improvements less than one?

Abstract

We estimated the income elasticity of environmental improvements for a number of European data-sets. The value of this parameter is consistently found to be less than one, with few exceptions. Our findings are compared with state-of-the-art contingent valuation studies from other countries. We also compared our findings with those reported in the literature on charitable donations and corporate donations. These studies show a similar pattern; donations decrease as a percentage of income, as income increases. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1996