deployment of large RES projects has already started and new installations are planned for the immediate future. As
the primary income sources in the island come from activities related to tourism and other environmentally sensitive
sectors as agriculture, there are serious concerns in local communities regarding the likely impacts of RES
installation mixtures on the quality of the environment, as well as on the local economy. This paper aims to assess
the economic valuations of these impacts made by urban and rural residents of the island of Crete employing a
choice experiment design. Previous similar studies in Greece include the work of [2] and [3], who studied
respectively the willingness to pay (a) of urban dwellers and tourists in Crete for the deployment of RES, and (b) of
tourists for staying at hotels in Crete that use RES. These, and other studies of RES energy production in Greece,
have used the contingent valuation method. An exception is [4] who used a choice experiment to estimate
households’ willingness to accept compensation for wind farm installations in the Aegean. In the following sections
we present the methodology, the choice modeling results, assess the impact of measured variables on welfare
estimates, and finally conclude with a discussion of the findings.