ILWS - Institute of Land, Water and Society
Researchers
Professor Mark Morrison
BEc Macquarie , PhD NSW
School of Marketing & Management, Bathurst
One of the University's youngest professors, Mark Morrison is an economist with a major interest in nonmarket valuation which includes valuing environmental quality. Other research interests include choice modelling, technology adoption, marketbased instruments, market segmentation, consumer decision states and marketing education.
Mark, who did his undergraduate studies in economics (Honours) at Macquarie University , worked as an economist for several years with the NSW Environment Protection Authority, before a desire to do more research had him return to university.
He did his PhD with the University of NSW in the area of nonmarket valuation and helped develop a new evaluation technique called choice modelling.
He joined CSU in 1999 where he now teaches in the areas of consumer behaviour, market research, microeconomics and economic evaluation. In 2002 he was a visiting professor at Georgia State University in the U.S. in its environmental policy program. Currently he is a Senior Research Fellow at CSIRO Land and Water.
Mark is working on a number of research projects including a large project funded by the U.S. Environment Protection Agency and a National Science Foundation/Star Grant involving experimental economics aimed at reducing hypothetical overstatement in surveys designed to understand community willingness to pay for improved environmental quality. The results from this study are already beginning to be adopted by practitioners of these surveys in several countries.
Two recent projects with environmental applications have been for the NSW Government with Professor Jeff Bennett (ANU) on community valuing of riverine health across NSW; and for South Australia with Dr Darla Hatton MacDonald (CSIRO), on biodiversity valuation. Mark has also written a number of papers on environmental offsets (where environmental impacts at one site are offset by paying for environmental improvements at a second site).