Economic and Participatory Approaches to Environmental Evaluation

Economic and participatory methods of project appraisal have traditionally been viewed as mutually exclusive alternatives, as they address different decision making criteria. Participatory methods such citizens' juries (or value juries) have been suggested as a means of better coping with some of the problems associated with economic evaluation methods such as contingent valuation. However, participatory methods have not offered the quantitative outputs of economic methods, nor have they addressed the issue of efficiency in resource allocation. In this paper we compare results from the use of contingent valuation and citizens' juries to appraise a woodland restoration project in Southern Scotland. We also investigate the potential of a third alternative which seeks to combine the strengths of contingent valuation and citizens' juries, the valuation workshop.