Benefit transfer and spatial heterogeneity of preferences for water quality improvements

The improvement in the water quality resulting from the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive is expected to generate substantial non-market benefits. A wide spread estimation of these benefits across Europe will require the application of benefit transfer. We use a spatially explicit valuation design to account for the spatial heterogeneity of preferences to help generate lower transfer errors. A map-based choice experiment is applied in the Guadalquivir River Basin (Spain), accounting simultaneously for the spatial distribution of water quality improvements and beneficiaries. Our results show that accounting for the spatial heterogeneity of preferences generally produces lower transfer errors.

Análisis multicriterio de preferencias sociales en gestión hídrica bajo la Directiva Marco del Agua

This work aims to contribute to the implementation of the WFD with regard to the selection of the measures for a sustainable and socially accepted water management. A multicriteria decision support exercise is applied to the Guadalquivir River Basin in order to test the applicability of the Analytic Hierarchy Process in the new WFD context. A survey was carried out in the context of a future enlargement of La Breña reservoir (Córdoba). This analysis aims to obtain the public’s weight of the criteria in water management, in order to assess the legitimacy of the reservoir enlargement, as well as other management measures. Results suggest that the AHP is an adequate tool for the WFD purposes and a useful complement for the cost-effectiveness analysis.