Benefit Transfer for Environmental Improvements in Coastal Areas: General versus Best‐Fitting Models

Recognizing the important policy task of securing the benefits from marine coastal waters subject to time and funding constraints has increased interest in benefit transfer (BT). However, many of the advances in BT recommended by researchers would be too costly to implement. This paper presents two choice experiment (CE) studies on marine areas in Sweden where respondents from local and distant populations were surveyed. BT for attributes relevant to the European Union's Water Framework Directive and the implementation of special consideration zones in marine areas were evaluated by equivalence tests. A comparison of the performance between a “general” BT model including only easily available socio‐economic information and a statistically “best‐fitting” model that requires the collection of more detailed information shows very similar results. Using a general model saves money and time since the information needed can be easily obtained from public databases and it does not lead to any significant reductions in accuracy or reliability. The issue of including socio‐economic information in CE modeling for BT is important, since the model specification will determine the type of information that must be collected at the policy site; however, the results are inconclusive as to whether it improves BT or not.