全球智库信息集成服务系统

We develop the concept of virtual experiments and consider theirapplication to environmental policy. A virtual experiment combines insights from virtual reality in computer science, naturalistic decision-making from psychology, and field experiments from economics. The environmental policy applications of interest to us include traditional valuation tasks and less traditional normative decision-making. The methodological objective of virtual experiments is to bridge the gap between the artefactual controls of laboratory experiments and the naturalistic domain of field experiments or direct field studies. This should provide tools for policy analysis that combine the inferential power of replicable experimental treatments with the natural “look and feel” of a field domain.