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Abstract
Environmental research has been increasing due to growing diverse environmental
concerns regarding sustainability, climate change, natural resource depletion, waste
management, and air and noise pollution. Economic valuation of environmental
research can assist in guiding research planning and expenditure. Yet environmental
research is difficult to evaluate due to the dominance of non-market benefits and
difficulties identifying tangible outputs and outcomes from research. This paper
attempts to apply an existing valuation framework to an empirical case study to
examine the difficulties and limitations of economic valuations of environmental
research.
In the empirical case study environmental research and other technical and
managerial inputs were used to develop a policy output. Policy implementation will
result in environmental outcomes with subsequent economic benefits. The primary
purpose of this paper is to explore the complexities and limitations of valuing
environmental research, in particular the counterfactual and uncertainty.
Section 2 outlines the generic framework for valuing environmental research.
Section 3 describes the valuation method used in this empirical analysis. Section 4
provides background to the case study and applies the chosen method to value the
environmental research. The limitations encountered during the assessment are
highlighted in Section 5, and Section 6 concludes with final comments regarding
economic valuations of environmental research.