Valuing Environmental Preferences

"Just as individuals have preferences regarding the various goods and services they purchase every day, so they also hold preferences regarding public goods such as those provided by the natural environment. However, unlike private goods, environmental goods often cannot be valued by direct reference to any market price. This makes economic analysis of the costs and benefits of environmental change problematic. Over the past few decades a number of methods have developed to address this problem by attempting to value environmental preferences. Principal amongst these has been the contingent valuation (CV) method which uses surveys to ask individuals how much they would be willing to pay or willing to accept in compensation for gains or losses of environmental goods." "This volume, has been written at a time of heated debate over the CV method. It contains specially written papers from both sides of that debate, as well as from commentators who see it as an interesting experimental tool regardless of the question of absolute validity of estimates. The book embraces the theoretical, methodological, empirical, and institutional aspects of the current debate. It covers US, European, and developing country applications, and the institutional frameworks within which CV studies are applied."--Jacket.