RC 4.2

The Welfare Economics of Environmental and Resource Costs in the Water Framework Directive

Project description

The objective of this Ph.D. project is to increase the understanding of the environmental and resource costs in the implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) from a welfare economic viewpoint. The aim is to get a better understanding of how the general public value water quality and quantity. Environmental and resource costs have a central role in both the assessments of disproportionate costs of obtaining good water quality and in the inclusion of environmental and resource costs in the price of water.

This projects aims at qualifying the attributes used to describe water quality in economic valuation studies. By qualifying the attributes to match the perception of the respondents the bias of the welfare economic estimates of environmental and resource costs will be reduced. Moreover the projects aims a getting a better understanding of how the preferences for environmental quality in general are formed by external factors such as information and experience with environmental goods. Through the use of a questionnaire to the general public and econometric modelling, this project will undertake a primary economic valuation study in the Limfjorden region of Denmark to estimate the benefits of good water quality in a region with significant costs of meeting the objectives of the Water Framework Directive. This will act as a supplement to the existing valuation studies of water quality in Denmark. These estimates should act as the basis for transferring values across catchment areas in Denmark. The project will furthermore approach how the status of the regional water quality and the level of knowledge affect the environmental attitude and willingness to pay for these environmental and resource costs of water use.

Ph.D. student Anne Kejser Jensen