Benefit transfer of outdoor recreation demand studies, 1968–1988

Abstract

The accumulation of studies on outdoor recreation demand creates an opportunity to apply the growing science of reviewing research for purposes of benefit transfer. The process involves developing an understanding of the variables that explain the observed difference in estimates. This paper illustrates how the results of previous studies could be adjusted to develop some tentative estimates of nonmarket values for future policy analysis. Also, the evaluation of some potentially important variables should help improve statistical analysis and the allocation of resources to new studies. The challenge is to build each subsequent work on the knowledge gained from previous ones.In this experimental phase, there is a need to examine additional variables that might conceivably be more important than those considered in the past. 17-24, 1990b. White, H., A heteroscedasticity-consistent covariance matrix esti-mator and a direct test for heteroscedasticity, Econometrica, 48(4), 817-838, 1980.

The Value of Forest Conservation for Water Quality Protection

“…In the field of forest resource and environmental valuation, meta-analyses and the BT approach have focused on a range of environmental issues, including the economic benefits of endangered species [42], outdoor recreation [57,64,65], wetland ecosystem services [56,63], forest product certification [54], non-timber forest benefits [60], and water quality improvements [48,67]. The focus of this study is the value of protecting unimpaired aquatic systems, where the policy action (e.g., forest conservation) would help dampen an increase in pollution due to factors like population growth [68] or increased mining activity [44,51].…”

“…An example of a benefit function transfer would be through the use of a meta-analysis of previous studies and quantitatively calculating a variable mean or coefficient based on relevant characteristics of the research methods and study site (e.g., biophysical and socioeconomic variables). Given the importance of socioeconomic variables and methodological approaches (e.g., type of stated preference method) on value estimation [42,[63][64][65], the benefit function approach is preferred to the unit-value transfer approach.…”

“…Site characteristics, study and methodology attributes, and socioeconomic variables are typically included in meta-analyses of economic values [63,69]. Site characteristics provide a description of the resource (e.g., lake) [48,56,63], the geographic scale of the protection program [48,63,67] and the study area [48,64,65].…”

Intra-respondent Heterogeneity in a Stated Choice Survey on Wetland Conservation in Belarus: First Steps Towards Creating a Link with Uncertainty in Contingent Valuation

“…In order to be able to compare estimates from the CV exercise with the SC results, we calculate for the latter the Hicksian welfare measure for a change from SQ to the programme of 2 000 ha/year of mechanical mowing and 4 000 ha of the reserve enlargement which is based on the compensating variation log-sum formula described by Hanemann (1984) 16 . This gives us higher mean and median values than for the CV, but this is to be expected given the evidence from contingent valuation studies that mean WTP estimated using the dichotomous choice question format in most studies substantially exceeds mean WTP obtained using the open-ended question format (Walsh et al 1992;16 We acknowledge a degree of simplification in this comparison, not least as we're combining evidence from multiple parameters estimated on the SC data, each with their own estimation error, and compare this to a single measure from CV. Johnson et al 1990;Schulze et al 1996) 17 .…”

Economic analysis of the Florida Everglades restoration

“…Net economic values, i.e., nonmarket values, per recreation day for the relevant IRLS recreation activities as given by Walsh et al (1992) adjusted for inflation, replace total average daily expenditure given in the above formulas to generate the missing IRLS nonmarket updated baseline values.…”