Abstract

Economists have long recognized that there is a multiplicity of values associated with the environment and have coined terms such as total economic value, direct-use value, indirect-use value, and non-use valued to help describe those concepts. A vast body of literature on different techniques for attempting to derive monetary estimates of those values now exists, and interested readers are directed to getzner. Suffice to say here, none of the valuation methodologies are flawless, and most are surrounded with at least some controversy, the accuracy of final estimates. Each requires different types of information as an input, and produces sometimes subtly different information as output