Scale Effects and Their Importance for Benefit Transfers of Natural Resource Values in the Fitzroy Basin, Research Report No. 6

Policy makers are often interested in how values for an environmental asset may be disaggregated into component pieces and transferred from one site to another. This issue can be described in relation to environmental values for the Fitzroy basin in Central Queensland. It comprises several smaller catchments that share similar development opportunities, environmental issues and water resource constraints. This paper describes the application of a choice modelling experiment to estimate values for the basin as a whole and two of the smaller catchments. The results of the application allow the analysts to determine how the values Calculated at different times may be related. If there are no significant differences in values according to the scale at which they have been estimated, it implies that benefit transfer may be undertaken to different sites at different scales without results being adjusted. Comparisons of experiment results are undertaken to assess the validity of the choice modelling approach to benefit transfer in environmental valuation studies where issues of scale may be present.