Non-market valuation in France. An overview of the research activity Introduction

Abstract

A selection of articles presented in Nantes (France) at the first edition of WONV (Workshop on Non-Market Valuation) will be published in a special issue of Revue d'Economie Politique. In this introductory article, we provide an overview of the articles involving French institutions that were published between 2002 and 2013. We find that (a) the number of published articles tends to increase, (b) stated preferences preference methods are more often employed than revealed preference methods and (c) recreational/landscape goods are the most valued goods. JEL classification: Q51We would like to thank Guillaume Hollard, Tarik Tazdaït and the other members of the editorial committee of "Revue d'Economie Politique". We would also like to thank the participants of the workshop on non-market valuation (WONV) that was organized in Nantes on 24-25th June 2013, the members of the scientific and organizing committees (especially Dorothée Brecard and Frédéric Salladaré) as well as the sponsors, including LEMNA and EAERE. We are also grateful to Olivier Chanel, Emmanuel Flachaire and Pascal Gastineau for helpful comments. We would like to thank Philippe Puydarrieux who works at the French Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy for helpful discussions.A few "workshops" 1 have been organized in France. Some focused on a specific method. For instance, the Contingent Valuation (CV) was the main focus of the workshops organized in Marseille in 1997 2 and 2003, and Paris in 2007 in memory of Brigitte Desaigues who greatly contributed to the use and development of this method in France. On the other hand, some workshops focused on a specific good, like the workshop in Nancy in 2006 on forestry valuation. Finally, some workshops focused on policy applications. The French Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy organizes annual workshops on non-market valuation, which involves a large audience, including policy makers and people working in the private sector. The first edition was organized in 2010 shortly after the principle of "ecological prejudice" ("prejudice écologique") was recognized. The third issue was devoted to the use of these methods by policy makers and highlighted the need to improve the reliability of these methods 3 .A series of annual Workshops On Non-Market Valuation (WONV) will be conducted in France in an attempt to (i) create a network of researchers that will meet every year (including worldwide experts) and (ii) provide a forum for dissemination of high quality papers presenting recent developments in theoretical and empirical analysis in the field of nonmarket valuation. This series of workshops will involve both stated preference methods, including the CV and the Choice Experiment (CE) methods, and revealed preference methods, including the Travel Cost (TC) and the Hedonic Pricing (HP) methods. In addition, it will not focus on a specific type of non-market good

Stated preferences: a unique database composed of 1657 recent published articles in journals related to agriculture, environment, or health

“…Murphy et al (2005) explored the determinants of hypothetical bias. Mahieu et al (2015) surveyed valuation studies involving authors affiliated in French institutions. Smith (2000) explored whether the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management had an impact on the development and applications of the methods used to estimate economic values for non-marketed environmental resources.…”

Smart Mobility Providing Smart Cities

“…These aim to calculate the individual's willingness to pay, "that is, how much the individuals would be prepared to pay to benefit from an increase in the supply of a non-market commodity" (Meunier and Marsden 2009, p. 6). Two groups of methods are traditionally contrasted: the stated preference and the revealed preference methods (Mahieu et al 2015). In these two groups, there are applications specific to transport projects, or to transport externalities for the local authority.…”