International Public Preferences and Provision of Public Goods: Assessment of Passive Use Values in Large Oil Spills Maria L. Loureiro and John B. Loomis With global media reporting major environmental disasters, environmental damages linked to large oil spills may go well beyond the territorial limits of affected countries, particularly in the case of passive use values. Given international maritime law and foreign registration of many oil tankers there may be some basis for collecting these international damages as well. This may be particularly true now days for member countries of the European Union. In this analysis, we compare environmental damages linked to the Prestige oil spill using an online survey in three different European countries: Spain, UK, and Austria. Both, Spain and UK have suffered various oil spills of different magnitudes over the last twenty years, whereas Austria is located inland. The surveys have been conducted in winter 2008 simultaneously in the three countries and 500 completed responses were collected per country. Comparability of sampling techniques in the three countries was assured by employing an international online marketing company with representative panels in the countries of study. Research hypotheses are WTP values are sensitive to the distance to the spill and linked to citizen’s perceptions and probability of future oil spill occurrence in their own countries. In terms of our hypotheses we find that WTP falls off with distance. Conclusions and implications of our results make us reflect upon the potential importance of passive use values in the compensation process of environmental damages caused by large international oil spills. Keywords: passive use values, oil spills, Europe