Using Meta-Analysis for Large-Scale Ecosystem Service Valuation: Progress, Prospects, and Challenges

Abstract

This article discusses prospects and challenges related to the use of meta-regression models (MRMs) for ecosystem service benefit transfer, with an emphasis on validity criteria and post-estimation procedures given sparse attention in the ecosystem services literature. We illustrate these topics using a meta-analysis of willingness to pay for water quality changes that support aquatic ecosystem services and the application of this model to estimate water quality benefits under alternative riparian buffer restoration scenarios in New Hampshire's Great Bay Watershed. These illustrations highlight the advantages of MRM benefit transfers, together with the challenges and data needs encountered when quantifying ecosystem service values.

Property Values, Water Quality, and Benefit Transfer: A Nationwide Meta-analysis

“…As with any benefit transfer exercise, our results must be appropriately caveated. The Additionally, when using reduced-form meta-regression models like ours for benefit transfer, one must consider the tradeoffs between a potentially better model fit from a reducedform specification versus the theoretical consistency of a more structural meta-regression model (Johnston and Bauer 2020;Newbold et al 2018b). In the context of stated preference studies, Newbold et al (2018b) and Moeltner (2019) have argued for more theoretically consistent metaregression models, and in particular for models that satisfy the adding-up condition (Diamond 1996).…”

The economic value of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest ecosystem services: A meta-analysis of the Brazilian literature

“…Although it is common practice to combine ES and valuation methods in meta-regression models [e.g. 77 – 81 ], there may exist significant correlation between some of the ES and the methods used to value them. We therefore initially omitted the explanatory variables for the valuation methods in the first meta-regression model, and include them in the second and third model, together with the type of welfare measure (WTP or WTA).…”

Inducing the adoption of emerging technologies for sustainable intensification of food and renewable energy production: insights from applied economics*

“…Benefit transfer methods for ecosystem service valuation range from taking simple unit values or single-site benefit functions and applying them to other sites to more complex meta-analysis and Bayesian methods that can accommodate site and preference heterogeneity. Although the evidence to support the claim that sophisticated methods for benefit transfer are more accurate than simpler methods is mixed and context specific (Johnston et al, 2018), there is emerging consensus over the advantages of using meta-regression models (Johnston & Bauer, 2020). Chen, Debnath, et al (2021) apply the unit value approach to quantify the non-market benefits, in the form of greenhouse gas reduction and nitrogen leakage reduction, of advanced biofuels using energy crops and crop residues.…”