A New Strategy for Benefits Transfer

This paper calls for re-focusing the analysis of existing results to evaluate whether there are stable ratios of use value to total willingness to pay for improvements in different types of environmental resources. The objective is to develop a screening tool to determine if decisions about the assumed number of users versus nonusers of a resource are likely to be important to aggregate benefit measures for changes in the amount or quality of different environmental resources. Four sets of applications involving different aspects of water resources are considered: nutrients in the Neuse River affecting the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuary; nutrients in the Chesapeake Bay; whitewater rafting on the Colorado River; and the Deepwater Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The findings suggest a need to add the evaluation of these ratios to the research agenda in benefits transfer.