Benefit Transfer of Environmental and Resource Values A Guide for Researchers and Practitioners

This book provides a comprehensive review of environmental benefit transfer methods, issues and challenges, covering topics relevant to researchers and practitioners. Early chapters provide accessible introductory materials suitable for non-economists. These chapters also detail how benefit transfer is used within the policy process. Later chapters cover more advanced topics suited to valuation researchers, graduate students and those with similar knowledge of economic and statistical theory and methods. This book provides the most complete coverage of environmental benefit transfer methods available in a single location.

The book targets a wide audience, including undergraduate and graduate students, practitioners in economics and other disciplines looking for a one-stop handbook covering benefit transfer topics and those who wish to apply or evaluate benefit transfer methods. It is designed for those both with and without training in economics

Section 1: Introduction and Policy Perspectives.- Introduction: Benefit Transfer of Environmental and Resource Values.- Introduction to Benefit Transfer Methods.- The Use of Benefit Transfer in the United States.- The Use and Development of Benefit Transfer in Europe.- Applied Benefit Transfer: An Australian and New Zealand Policy Perspective.- Benefit Transfer for Water Quality Regulatory Rulemaking in the United States.- Section 2: Methods and Applications.- Benefit Transfers with the Contingent Valuation Method.- Applying Benefit Transfer with Limited Data: Unit Value Transfers in Practice.- Benefit Transfer Combining Revealed and Stated Preference Data.- Benefit Transfers:  Insights from Choice Experiments.- Frontiers in Modeling Discrete Choice Experiments: A Benefit Transfer Perspective.- Benefit Transfer for Ecosystem Service Valuation: An Introduction to Theory.- Ecosystem Services Assessment and Benefit Transfer.-Benefit Transfer Validity and Reliability.- Section 3: Meta-Analysis.- Meta-analysis: Statistical Methods.- Meta-analysis: Rationale, Issues and Applications.- Meta-analysis: Econometric Advances and New Perspectives toward Data Synthesis and Robustness.- Section 4: Spatial and Geographical Considerations.- Spatial and Geographical Aspects of Benefit Transfer.-   Reliability of Meta-analytic Benefit Transfers of International Value of Statistical Life Estimates: Tests and Illustrations.- GIS-Based Mapping of Ecosystem Services: The Case of Coral Reefs.- Section 5.  Bayesian Methods.- A Bayesian Model Averaging Approach to the Transfer of Subjective Well-Being Values of Air Quality.- Optimal Scope and Bayesian Model Search in Benefit Transfer.- Structural Benefits Transfer using Bayesian Econometrics.- Section 6.  Status and Prospects.-Benefit Transfer:  The Present State and Future Prospects.