 The importance of social learning for non-market valuationDaniel Grainger and Natalie Stoeckl Ecological Economics, 2019, vol. 164, issue C, - Abstract: Neoclassical valuation methods often measure the contribution that non-market goods make to utility as income compensations. This circumvents Arrow's impossibility (AI) –a theoretical proof establishing the impossibility of social preferences – but those methods cannot be used in all settings. We build on Arrow's original proof, showing that with two additional axioms that allow for social learning, a second round of preference elicitation with a social announcement after the first, generates logically consistent social preferences. In short: deliberation leads to convergence. A ‘web-game’ aligning with this is trialed to select real world projects, in a deliberative way, with the board of an Australian Aboriginal Corporation. Analysis of the data collected in the trial validates our theory; our test for convergence is statistically significant at the 1% level. Our results also suggest complex social goods are relatively undervalued without deliberation. Most non-market valuation methods could be easily adapted to facilitate social learning. Keywords: Social welfare; Non-market valuation; Deliberative valuation; Deliberative institutions; Cost benefit analysis; Arrow's impossibility (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:164:y:2019:i:c:36 DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.05.019 Access Statistics for this article Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier |
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