The present paper reviews activity in environmental valuation by examining trends in publication rates over the past three decades. It also provides an overview of the demand for environmental valuation by academic markets and by policy markets. The results of this historical analysis suggest that there is not as much use of environmental valuation in policy analysis as could be expected given ...

Financial feasibility of a rural water supply im­ provement is based on the ability of households to pay for it and economic feasibility on willing­ ness to pay, or benefit, compared to costs. A sim­ ple household budgeting methodology is presented which can be used to estimate the abil­ ity to pay of water users for a water supply im­ provement. The contingent valuation method and benefit tran...

Embedding is the widely-observed phenomenon that a good is assigned a higher value if evaluated on its own rather than as part of a more inclusive set. Embedding is considered a serious problem affecting the quality of many environmental management and health risk policy judgments. This paper presents the results of an experiment involving of a structured, small-group approach for conducting en...

Most structural and some nonstructural water projects require significant sunk costs and lead to uncertain economic and ecological outcomes. For instance, building irrigation or flood control dam requires sizable sunk cost, an investment that is difficult to recover later. The dam faces uncertainties in terms of future rainfall, the performance of the dam’s structures and downstream levees, the...

We have developed a social optimization model that integrates wastewater treatment cost function and ecosystem damage cost function. The social optimal abatement level of water pollution is determined by finding the tradeoff between pollution control cost and ecosystem damage. The model is applied to data from the Lake Taihu region in China to demonstrate this tradeoff. A wastewater treatment c...