Inequality; environmental valuation; WTP; local public good; spatial distribution; benefit transfer; forest ecosystem services; Graue Literatur
I study how the distribution of environmental goods and income affect the economic valuation of local public goods. I find that how environmental inequality affects societal willingness to pay (WTP) for environmental local public goods is determined by their substitutability as well as by how their provision is correlated with income. Specifically, environmental inequality decreases societal (WTP) for substitutes, but this effect is reversed if environmental goods are complements or distributed strongly in favour of richer households. Moreover, I show that sorting of richer households into places where environmental good endowment is high increases (decreases) societal WTP if and only if it is a substitute for (complement to) consumption goods. I propose novel adjustment factors for structural benefit transfer to control for differences in the spatial distribution of environmental local public goods. Using forest preservation in Poland as an empirical example, I find that societal WTP is up to 4 percent higher for equal access to forests and up to 8 percent higher for an equal distribution of both income and access to forests.
Oldenburg discussion papers in economics
Oldenburg discussion papers in economics ; V-416-18 (December 2018)
environmental valuation; income inequality; benefit transfer; policy appraisal; transfer errors; Graue Literatur
How the valuation of environmental goods is related to income is a key question for economics, but the role of income inequality is often neglected. We study how income inequality affects the international transfer of the estimated value of environmental goods from a study to a policy site - a practice called value or benefit transfer. Specifically, we apply theory-driven, structural transfer factors to examine whether adjusting for income inequality affects errors made in benefit transfer, drawing on a multi-country valuation study on water quality improvement. Our convergent validity analysis shows that the structural income inequality adjustment reduces benefit transfer errors by more than 1.5 percentage points on average across all transfers. The adjustment for inequality is particularly important when income is distributed more unequally at the policy site relative to the study site, yielding reductions in transfer errors of up to 33 percentage points. Our results highlight the importance of taking the effects of economic inequality into account and are relevant for environmental valuation as well as public policy appraisal.
Economics working paper / Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel, Department of Economics
Economics working paper / Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel, Department of Economics ; no 2017, 03 [rev.]
"We consider how ecosystem services can be incorporated into water infrastructure planning by studying the projected deepening of the Lower Weser river channel in Germany. We recalculate the project’s benefitcost ratio by integrating the monetary value of changes in different ecosystem services, as follows: (1) the restoration costs of a mitigation measure for a loss in fresh water supply for agricultural production in the estuary region, (2) the costs of a loss in habitat services, transferring the willingness to pay from a contingent valuation study to the area assessed in the environmental impact assessment, and (3) the benefits of emissions savings induced by more efficient shipping, taking a marginal abatement cost approach. We find that including monetary values for ecosystem service changes leads to a substantial drop in the benefitcost ratio. On this basis, we argue for a reform of the standard costbenefit analysis to facilitate more complete welfare assessments." (Abstract)
Journal of environmental planning and management London : Taylor & Francis, 1992 60(2017), 2, Seite 231-248 Online-Ressource
Heading Towards Sustainable Energy Systems [Cleveland] : IAEE (International Association for Energy Economics), 2017 2017, insges. 53 Seiten 1 Online-Ressource
