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VALUING ACID MINE DRAINAGE REMEDIATION IN WEST VIRGINIA: BENEFIT TRANSFER WITH PREFERENCE CALIBRATION
Citation:
WILLIAMSON, J. M., H. W. THURSTON, AND MATTHEW T. HEBERLING. VALUING ACID MINE DRAINAGE REMEDIATION IN WEST VIRGINIA: BENEFIT TRANSFER WITH PREFERENCE CALIBRATION. DOI 10.1007/s10018-0, Eiji Hosoda (ed.), Environmental Economics and Policy Studies . Springer Japan KK, Tokyo, Japan, 8(4):271-293, (2007).
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Description:
Several thousand kilometers of West Virginia streams are degraded by acid mine drainage (AMD), and the estimates for cleanup range in the billions of dollars. Not enough money is available to restore all the affected streams, so some way to prioritize those streams is needed. Benefit-cost analysis is one way to prioritize streams for restoration. To conduct multiple valuation surveys and to use primary data for non-market valuation benefits estimations on such a large scale is not feasible. Rather, in the face of budget and time constraints, one practical solution is to use benefit transfer (BT). BT is a cost-effective valuation method that uses previous resource value estimates to make judgments about the value of resources at a policy site. There are well known problems with BT which is why we employ an approach recently recommended in the literature, the preference calibration method. We compare the results of using this improved method to other results.