Abstract

Understanding and estimating the climate change costs has been in focus of the scientific community in the last years, whereas several studies are dealing with this challenging issue. In this context, the present paper aims at valuating the climate change mitigation and adaptation measures in Greece. To achieve that, we carried out a contingent valuation survey. In addition it explores the coexistence of ethically motivated values and self-interested values held by Greek climate experts, a condition in economics underlying the existence of the “Bergson-Tintner-Samuelson (BTS) value formulation effect”. This is an experimental attempt in recent valuation literature and carries significant implications for the valuation issue and its policy implications. The results indicate that ethically motivated values of crucial environmental functions such as climate far exceed the individualistic ones. Furthermore, the coexistence of public ethically-based values alongside self-interested ones supports earlier findings in the literature and indicates that solely self-interested individual values do not reflect the real welfare contribution of crucial environmental functions and, therefore, should not form the exclusive guide for environmental policy.

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