Accident costs are an important component of external costs of traffic, a substantial part is related to fatal accidents. The evaluation of fatal accident costs crucially depends on the availability of an estimate for the economic value of a statistical life. The aim of the current paper is to present an overview of estimates contained in the empirical literature on the economic valuation of statistical life in road safety. Meta-analysis is used to determine which variables are appropriate to explain the variance of the value of statistical life (VOSL) estimates. The analysis shows, among other things, that the magnitude of estimates of the VOSL depends on the research method, as there is a significant difference between stated and revealed preference studies. It also shows that VOSL estimates cannot simply be averaged over studies, as the magnitude of a VOSL estimate is directly related to the initial level of risk to be caught up in a fatal traffic accident as well as the risk decline implied by the research setup .

Conservation and environmental management are principal countermeasures to the degradation of marine ecosystems and their services. However, in many cases, current practices are insufficient to reverse ecosystem declines. We suggest that restoration ecology, the science underlying the concepts and tools needed to restore ecosystems, must be recognized as an integral element for marine conservation and environmental management. Marine restoration ecology is a young scientific discipline, often with gaps between its application and the supporting science. Bridging these gaps is essential to using restoration as an effective management tool and reversing the decline of marine ecosystems and their services. Ecological restoration should address objectives that include improved ecosystem services, and it therefore should encompass social–ecological elements rather than focusing solely on ecological parameters. We recommend using existing management frameworks to identify clear restoration targets, to apply quantitative tools for assessment, and to make the re-establishment of ecosystem services a criterion for success.

No abstract

No abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractIn this paper we study the risk perception of traffic participants. Firstly, we give an overview of previously used methodologies for the monetary valuation of transport safety. These methodologies do not distinguish between the individual's assessment of probabilities and her valuation of possible outcomes. A great disadvantage of these approaches is therefore that one has to make the assumption that people correctly perceive the probabilities. Prospect theory does not make this assumption. Our procedure, which is based on this methodology, consists of three steps. The first step is to determine the certainty equivalent for avoiding road accidents. The second step is the elicitation of the utility function. The final step is the elicitation of the probability weighting function. With this information we directly obtain the perceived value of the probability for accident A i . The first, tentative, results show that the valuation of losses is well represented by a utility function that is concave in shape. Secondly, our preliminary results show that when people have to choose whether or not to participate in a potentially risky activity with a low probability of the "bad outcome" (say 1/100), they base their decision on the possible outcomes of the activity rather than on the probabilities involved. The empirical conclusion is therefore that people base their final decision mainly on the possible outcomes and not so much on probabilities whenever there are very small probabilities involved.2