A Primer on Nonmarket Valuation (The Economics of Non-Market Goods and Resources Book 3)

A Primer on Nonmarket Valuation is unique in its clear descriptions of the most commonly used nonmarket valuation techniques and their implementation. Individuals working for government agencies, attorneys involved with natural resource damage assessments, graduate students, and others will appreciate the non-technical and practical tone of this book. The first section of the book provides the context and theoretical foundation of nonmarket valuation, along with practical data issues. The middle two sections of the Primer describe the major stated and revealed nonmarket valuation techniques. For each technique, the steps involved in implementation are laid out and described. Both practitioners of nonmarket valuation and those who are new to the field will come away from these methods chapters with a thorough understanding of how to design, implement, and analyze a nonmarket valuation study. The concluding section takes stock of the usefulness of nonmarket valuation, highlighting chapters on benefit transfer, the role of nonmarket valuation in real decisions about natural resources, and where nonmarket valuation is headed in the future. As a companion to A Primer on Nonmarket Valuation, a website has been developed, http://www.fs.fed.us/nonmarketprimerdata/. This website includes downloadable datasets for each of the techniques described in the Primer, as well as links to published journal articles and reports based on the data. The website also provides an opportunity for students to estimate models using the data.

Resulting from a workshop organized by the Rocky Mountain Research State of the U.S. Forest Service where the authors and editors worked to define a consistent structure, presenting the theory, methodology, and analysis of nonmarket valuation of public preference in public policy, especially as related to the environment. Chapters on stated preference methods cover such widely used techniques as contingent valuation and attribute-based methods, as well as the emerging method of paired comparisons. A section on values as revealed through behaviors offers chapters on the travel cost, hedonic, defensive behavior, and damage cost methods. Final chapters look at the application of methods, including discussion of the transferring of values from existing studies to new situations. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Front Matter....Pages i-x Economic Valuation: What and Why....Pages 1-25 Conceptual Framework for Nonmarket Valuation....Pages 27-58 Collecting Survey Data for Nonmarket Valuation....Pages 59-98 Introduction to Stated Preference Methods....Pages 99-110 Contingent Valuation in Practice....Pages 111-169 Attribute-Based Methods....Pages 171-219 Multiple Good Valuation....Pages 221-258 Introduction to Revealed Preference Methods....Pages 259-267 The Travel Cost Model....Pages 269-329 The Hedonic Method....Pages 331-393 Defensive Behavior and Damage Cost Methods....Pages 395-444 Benefit Transfer....Pages 445-482 Nonmarket Valuation in Action....Pages 483-535 Where to from Here?....Pages 537-566 Back Matter....Pages 567-576