Testing the stability of the Benefit Transfer Function for Discrete Choice Contingent Valuation Data

David I. Matthews (), Riccardo Scarpa () and W. George Hutchinson ()
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David I. Matthews: Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute, http://www.afbini.gov.uk
W. George Hutchinson: Queen’s University Belfast, http://www.qub.ac.uk/gibsoninstitute

Working Papers in Economics from University of Waikato, Department of Economics

Abstract: We examine the stability of the benefit transfer function across 42 recreational forests in the British Isles. A working definition of reliable function transfer is put forward, and a suitable statistical test is provided. The test is based on the sensitivity of the model log-likelihood to removal of individual forest recreation sites. We apply the proposed methodology on discrete choice contingent valuation data and find that a stable function improves our measure of transfer reliability, but not by much. We conclude that, in empirical studies on transferability, function stability considerations are secondary to the availability and quality of site attribute data. Modellers’ can study the advantages of transfer function stability vis-à-vis the value of additional information on recreation site attributes.

Keywords: Benefit function transfer; Function stability tests; Transfer reliability Forest recreation values; Contingent Valuation; Split sample (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q26 H41 C25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dcm, nep-env, nep-pbe and nep-tur
Date: 2007-05-25
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