Testing different types of benefit transfer in valuation of ecosystem services: New Zealand winegrowing case studies
Abstract
Most ecosystem services (ES) are neither priced nor marketed. Resource managers may fail to take into
account degradation of unpriced services in their resource management decisions. Being able to estimate values
for ES is fundamental to designing policies to induce resource users to provide (or improve) ES at levels that
are acceptable to society. Conducting ecosystem valuation via non-market methods is costly and time
consuming. Benefit Transfer (BT) using choice modeling (CM) is a potentially cost-effective method for
valuing ES by transferring information from existing valuation studies (and study sites) to a target area of
interest (policy sites). The prime objective of this paper is to examine the validity of BT and hence whether it is
feasible to conduct the transfer process and assist policy making. The paper focuses on the environmental
impact of winegrowing practices in two New Zealand winegrowing regions. The two sites, Hawke’s Bay and
Marlborough, have similar environmental issues and attributes but are geographically separated. The study
estimates WTP and Compensating Surplus (CS) for ES applying CM and, subsequently, given the preferences
of respondents across sites and populations, tests the transferability of unadjusted value transfer (WTP) and
benefits function (CS) assessing four different types of BT.
