Assessing cost-effectiveness when environmental benefits are bundled Agricultural water management in Great Barrier Reef catchments CQU.pdf (698.02 kB)
Assessing cost-effectiveness when environmental benefits are bundled: Agricultural water management in Great Barrier Reef catchments
Version 2 2022-08-16, 00:20Version 2 2022-08-16, 00:20
Version 1 2021-01-16, 18:05Version 1 2021-01-16, 18:05
journal contribution
posted on 2022-08-16, 00:20 authored by John RolfeJohn Rolfe, Jill Windle, K McCosker, A NortheyUsing economic analysis to prioritise improvements in environmental conditions is particularly difficult when multiple benefits are involved. This includes ‘bundling’ issues in agricultural pollution management, where a change in management action or farming systems generates multiple improvements, such as reductions in more than one pollutant. In this study, we conceptualise and compare two different approaches to analysing cost-effectiveness when varying bundles of benefits are generated for a single project investment. Each approach requires data to be transformed in some way to allow the analysis to proceed. The index approach requires the transformation on the benefits side so that the effects of multiple pollutant changes can be combined into a measure for each project which can then be compared to costs. By comparison, the disaggregation approach requires the transformation on the costs side where costs for each project have to be apportioned across the different pollutants involved. The paper provides novel insights with an application to agricultural water quality improvements into the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, demonstrating that while both approaches are effective in prioritising projects by cost-effectiveness, the disaggregation approach provides more insightful results and values that may be relevant for use as upper value guidelines in future project selection. © 2018 The Authors. The Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of Australasian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society Inc
History
Volume
62Issue
3Start Page
373End Page
393Number of Pages
21eISSN
1467-8489ISSN
1364-985XPublisher
Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Asia, AustraliaPublisher DOI
Additional Rights
CC BY 4.0Peer Reviewed
- Yes
Open Access
- Yes
External Author Affiliations
Queensland Department of Agriculture and FisheriesEra Eligible
- Yes
Journal
Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource EconomicsUsage metrics
Categories
Keywords
Licence
Exports
RefWorksRefWorks
BibTeXBibTeX
Ref. managerRef. manager
EndnoteEndnote
DataCiteDataCite
NLMNLM
DCDC