• Corpus ID: 198906030

Introduction to Non-Market Valuation Methods and Critical Review of Their Application in the Czech Republic

@inproceedings{Melichar2005IntroductionTN,
  title={Introduction to Non-Market Valuation Methods and Critical Review of Their Application in the Czech Republic},
  author={Jan K. Melichar and Milan {\vS}{\vc}asn{\'y}},
  year={2005}
}

• J. Melichar, Milan Ščasný
• Published 2005
• Economics

The primary objective of the paper is to provide a summary and critical review of the non-market valuation studies that have been carried out in the Czech Republic so far. In addition to that, we also briefly review non-market valuation studies that have been applied in Poland and Hungary. In total we have identified 39 such studies carried out in these three countries. In our paper we first discuss the various approaches and methods of assessment of policy options for environmental regulation. We pay special attention to benefit-cost analysis that allows to consistently treat and compare the costs and the benefits involved by a policy in the same unit, that is money. Then the taxonomy of various valuation methods is provided and the market and non-market valuation methods are briefly described. The core part of the paper presents our summary of non-market valuation carried out in the Czech Republic. We identify a total of 13 such studies that have been carried out and five new or ongoing research activities. Most of them apply contingent valuation surveys. Our paper analyzes and characterizes all the Czech applications according to various criteria such as: research area and contingent product, method used, date of survey, research design, data collection, sampling strategy and sample size, contingent market situation, elicitation question format and treatment of protest bids, payment vehicle as well as source of funding, results and intensiveness of statistical analysis. As we compare three analyzed countries, the most examined research area in the Czech Republic is landscape amenities provided by agriculture and forestry (6 studies out of 16), whereas it is water-related benefit/damage in Poland (7/12) and Hungary (5/11). Nature conservation also presents an often considered area in Hungary (4/11). Valuation of human health does present a relatively new area, however, with the most dynamic progress in the Czech Republic (5/16). The first non-market valuation study in all the three countries was carried out in 1994. Three-quarters of all the studies have applied CVM, either exclusively or in combination with another method (30/39). We identified only six TCM, three BT and HPM applications, and one application of the ABM and CA methods.