Non-market valuation methods and their applications

Romain Crastes dit Sourd (University of Leeds, Leeds University Business School, UK) Pierre-Alexandre Mahieu (University of Nantes, LEMNA, IAE, France) Ewa Zawojska (University of Warsaw, Faculty of Economic Sciences, Poland)

Motivation

Non-market valuation methods are applied in a wide range of policy and decision-making contexts. Fields of application range from environment and transportation, through culture, to health and marketing. With the use of these methods, researchers and practitioners seek to understand people’s preferences towards various goods and policy projects, and to measure the values that people assign to them. The value estimates provide necessary inputs to efficiency assessments (such as benefit-cost analysis) of public policy projects and to predictions of consumers’ market choices, among others. Although undoubtedly there is a need for knowing values of goods and services that are not traded in markets, the non-market valuation methods are not free from challenges and controversies. Researchers and practitioners need practical approaches that will help address the challenges and controversies to provide valid and reliable value estimates for various policy- and decision-making situations. With this call for papers, we invite studies that examine or apply non-market valuation methods. We welcome both empirical and methodological research that contributes to the existing literature by providing new value estimates or helping gain new knowledge about the methods.