Ewa Zawojska

Ewa Zawojska

Ewa Zawojska, PhD Candidate in Economics, University of Warsaw, Poland

In 2013, I graduated with my Master's in economics at the University of Warsaw in Poland and at the University of Vienna in Austria. I then started my doctoral studies at the Faculty of Economic Sciences at the University of Warsaw. I joined the Department of Microeconomics where I am doing research on the use of stated preference surveys to estimate monetary values of public goods that are not traded in markets (such as clean air and water).

My doctoral research focuses on how content of stated preference surveys, such as the type of information provided and how questions are formulated, may incentivise truthful responding. Stated preference surveys play an important role in the cost-benefit analysis of public policies (as they allow to estimate the benefits), as well as in litigation over environmental damages (as they inform about the value of losses). Recent evidence, however, cast doubt on whether respondents truthfully reveal their preferences in these surveys as the surveys rarely provide economically based incentives for truthful preference disclosure. My doctoral research verifies if the lack of economically based incentives indeed results in biased estimates of respondents' preferences.

Currently I am leading a research project that aims at verifying the degree to which respondents' belief in the actual consequences of the survey affects truthfulness in their preference disclosure. In collaboration with researchers from the University of Nantes in France, I am working on another project where we are testing novel methods on how to incentivise respondents to answer truthfully in surveys. Besides this research on stated preference methods, I am also involved in other projects that investigate an individual's behaviour from the economic perspective, such as whether (and how) time pressure impacts an individual's risk attitudes.

During my doctoral studies, I undertook several stays at universities and research institutes abroad. I was granted a fellowship for a course on natural resource management at the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi in India. For three months I studied at the University of Glasgow in Scotland on a Junior Dekaban Scholarship, where I did research on the methodology of stated preference surveys. I developed my knowledge and skills on stated preference methods by attending international courses at the University Institute of Tourism and Economic Sustainable Development in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in Spain, at the University of Catania in Italy, and at the University of Southern Denmark.

Contact

E-mail: zawojska@ualberta.ca
Telephone: 780-492-6095
Address:
University of Alberta
Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies
Suite 300 G
Arts & Convocation Hall
Edmonton, Alberta
Canada T6G 2E6