Goods, Services and Environmental Impacts Economic Valuation Methodologies

Abstract

All human activity causes impacts on the environment, and this generates changes or alterations in the ecosystem services that ecosystems provide us. However, it is difficult to know the price or the cost that these impacts generate in the economy of a place, since very few goods and services that are commercialized in a market. This paper provides a general framework for the economic valuation of goods, services and environmental impacts, which ranges from traditional forms of valuation such as the hedonic price method or contingent valuation, to some non-traditional ones such as the multicriteria method or the benefit transfer method.