ARCHIVE: Valuing Environmental Impacts: Practical Guidelines for the Use of Value Transfer in Policy and Project Appraisal
Introduction
These pages provide guidelines for valuing environmental impacts via value transfer. They augment guidance provided by Defra in An Introductory Guide to Valuing Ecosystem Services.
The guidelines will assist economists, policy analysts, scientists and other technical experts understand and present evidence on the environmental impacts of proposed policies and projects for decision-making.
The guidelines set out best practice for:
- Deciding if value transfer is appropriate for a given appraisal;
- Selecting the most appropriate approach to value transfer and applying an appropriate level of effort;
- Selecting the most suitable economic value evidence from the literature;
- Implementing the steps of value transfer; and
- Presenting the results of value transfer to inform decision-making.
The guidelines apply equally to policy and project appraisal or evaluation.
Non-technical summary
This document provides a non-technical summary of the guidelines for policy analysts, scientists and other technical experts and economists:
Guidelines
The main content of the guidelines can be accessed through these pages:
All material is also available for download:
- Summary of Value Transfer Steps (PDF 234KB)
- Guidelines - Introduction, Practical Steps, Checklist, References and Glossary (PDF 1.1MB)
- Annex 1: Protocol for Primary Valuation Studies (PDF 151KB)
- Annex 2: Assessing the Quality of Primary Valuation Studies (PDF 190KB)
- Annex 3: Glossary of Econometric Terminology (PDF 172KB)
- Case studies
Technical report
The Technical Report provides the basis for the guidelines, reviewing best practice principles and the state of the art of value transfer:
- Executive Summary (PDF 135KB)
- Technical Report (PDF 2.5MB)
Contact
For technical queries related to the value transfer guidelines please contact the Defra Natural Environment Economics team by emailing: nee@economics.defra.gov.uk
Acknowledgement
The guidelines and supporting material, technical report and webpages have been developed for Defra by Economics for the Environment Consultancy Ltd. (eftec).
Referencing
The suggested reference for these webpages is: Defra (2009) Valuing Environmental Impacts: Practical Guidelines for the Use of Value Transfer in Policy and Project Appraisal, Main Guidelines: Defra website
Page last modified: 25 February 2010
Page published: 25 February 2010