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Resource description:
Benefits transfer (BT), or more generally - value transfer (VT) - refers to applying quantitative estimates of ecosystem service values from existing studies to another context. You take value estimates from a study site, and apply them with adjustments to a policy site where time or resource constraints preclude the possibility of doing a primary valuation study. In the VT literature values have generally been understood to be monetary estimates of benefits or costs (Johnston et al., 2015). Often VT is used for screening in a benefit-cost analysis of project or policy alternatives. Value transfer is not one specific method, but a continuum of approaches depending on the information available
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Requirements:
- Need to collect some new data
- Short-term (less than 1 year)
- Low-demanding (less than 6 PMs)
Advantages:
- ease of use, available valuation databases
- draws on existing data
- low cost
Constraints:
- transfer errors cannot be predicted
- not participatory
- existing valuation studies often do not provide site context
Licence:
- Free, no licence
Development stage:
- Full, working product
Resource download:
- methodfactsheetvalue-transfer-method.pdf (951.71 KB)