Economic valuation of ecosystem services in New Zealand winegrowing regions: Testing for benefit transfer

Abstract

Benefit transfer (BT) is a pragmatic way of estimating values by transferring values from existing valuation studies to a target area of interest. BT using choice modeling (CM) is a potentially cost-effective method for valuing differences in improvements in environmental quality. After taking into account a range of policy options, ecosystem service attributes, socioeconomic characteristics and attitudinal variables for two winegrowing regions and populations, this study uses CM to value the marginal benefits of improvement in selected ecosystem services associated with winegrowing. This study tests the transferability of willingness-to-pay or welfare measures of equivalence across two sites to check the suitability of the estimates to be transferred between the sites. Policy implications conclude the paper.