Gelso, Brett R.Peterson, Jeffrey M.2013-07-092013-07-092013-07-09http://hdl.handle.net/2097/15960This article examines the relationships between different ethical attitudes toward environmental quality and the ‘use’ values obtained from the environment. In particular, we consider individuals who have duty-based ethical attitudes that lead to lexicographic preferences for environmental quality. We show that individuals with duty-based ethical attitudes have recreation demand functions that are ‘kinked,’ exhibiting perfectly inelastic behavior over some range of income. However, the kinks cannot be identified from typical cross-sectional data, and to the extent that observed recreation demand for these individuals differs from those with neoclassical preferences, such differences could be captured empirically through a proxy variable that measures ethical attitudes. A more fundamental issue is that changes in welfare for duty-based individuals cannot be determined from their estimated demand function: while an exogenous rise in environmental quality is likely to increase their demand for recreation by these individuals, additional recreation is not the reason for an improvement in well-being. An empirical model to identify the effect of ethical attitudes on recreation is illustrated using survey data on stated preferences for visits to urban parks.en-USEnvironmental ethicsProtest bidsUse valuesLexicographic preferencesArticle (author version)