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The priority-evaluator technique

The concept

The priority evaluator simulates choices in a market place. Respondents are offered a set of items they could purchase including the environmental effect of interest, substitutes for it and market goods. Each item in the set is given a price and a hypothetical budget is defined. Respondents are then asked to spend the budget to choose items that they prefer. Values are then derived from the preferences.

When to use it

How will the community react to changes in the characteristics of its environment?
What is the best quantity of an environmental effect?
How large are use benefits relative to non-use benefits?

To resolve the last question, monetary values would need to be estimated for the benefits of use compared to the value of knowledge of species existence, the naturalness of recreation sites and the sight of wildlife.

The method was pioneered by Hoinville and Berthoud (1970) to value travel time, road safety, vehicle pollution and vehicle congestion in London. O'Hanlon and Sinden (1978) applied the procedure to value existence value, naturalness of the environment and option value in northern New South Wales. Existence value was defined as the benefit derived from the knowledge of the presence of a given number of species. Option value was derived from the probability of seeing given species.

Strengths and weaknesses

There are, as yet, surprisingly few applications of this technique. As Hufschmidt et al. (1983, p.251) say, 'it is an intriguing attempt to meld the economic theory...with survey techniques to value an unpriced environmental good'. The difficulties, which include the need for statistical analysis of the results and several sets of choices to obtain the values, perhaps explain the lack of use to date.