Miljøprojekt, 1008 – Værdisætning af tabt herlighedsværdi ved deponering - et litteraturstudie

Værdisætning af tabt herlighedsværdi ved deponering - et litteraturstudie

Summary and conclusions

Land filling gives cause for a long list of external effects, which in the practical analytical work have shown difficult to quantify. Among these external effects we find global effects like global warming and destruction of the ozone layer. There are also regional and local effects like pollution of the aquatic environment (surface water and ground water), toxic gasses, odour, noise, windblown litter and dust, danger of explosion and fire, damage on vegetation and soil pollution. The extent of these effects depends on both the land fill site and the technique used at the site, and it can therefore be difficult to find general usable estimates that predict the extent of the effects and the costs people associate with being exposed to the effects.

This paper focuses on qualifying the estimates used for describing the extent of external effects of land filling. Furthermore, the purpose of this paper is giving a suggestion to perform a new empirical analysis of the external effects of land filling. This new analysis could improve the socio-economic analyses that are being carried out for different waste fractions (e.g. pressure-treated wood). The paper is delimited to focusing on the part of the external effects called »disamenity effects«. Disamenity effects are nuisances like odour, flies, seagulls, windblown litter, noise, landscape deterioration, risk of soil and water contamination and increased traffic. The disamenity effects are quantified from an altruistic point of view, according to how the welfare of the individual is affected. The welfare effect of the individual is not measurable like different sorts of pollution, but must be quantified according to how the individual experiences the effects and how the individual values the nuisance of the effects. The value of disamenity effects is therefore not necessarily directly linked to a physical measurable effect. The total costs of lost amenity (disamenity effect) coursed by land filling is an estimate for the sum of nuisance from a land fill experienced by a number of people, e.g. flies, odour and increased risk of contamination.

The costs have to be estimated in a valuation study, because these effects have no market price. Estimation of the costs of lost amenity values should include all individuals who could be exposed to the external effects of land filling at one or several sites.

The method of this paper is a literature study. I have carried out a comprehensive search, which resulted in a list of relevant literature with 111 articles concerning valuation of disamenity effects caused by land filling. The majority of these articles is American or dealing with American land filling sites. Appendix 2, 3 and 4 contain extracts of 40 selected articles. The selected articles are 28 hedonic studies, 5 contingent valuation studies and 7 other studies of external effects of land filling.

The main purpose of this paper has not been to come up with alternative estimates to those used at the moment in socio-economic studies in Denmark. But an interesting result of examining the before-mentioned articles is that the costs of land filling in terms of disamenity costs are very different from one site to another, depending on e.g. the type of site.

Also different valuation methods result in quite different disamenity costs. Among the largest estimated damage costs in terms of lost amenity value I find the estimates from the analysis in Defra (2003). This analysis estimates that houses within 0.25 miles of a land fill site are on average sold at £5,500 less than equivalent houses located further away from a land fill. Other analyses estimate quite smaller values for lost amenity and several analyses simply conclude that there cannot be estimated any significant difference in house prices for houses located nearby a land fill compared to houses located further away.

Since the estimated values apparently are very dependent on how the valuation study is carried out and in which context it has been done, I do not find basis for conducting a realistic benefit transfer of lost amenity values from the existing literature to Danish land fill sites.

This leads me to recommend that a future Danish study of disamenity effects from land filling should be organized very carefully, so that the estimates from the study also can be used in a broader context than the one in the study.

Such a future analysis could consist of a nationwide hedonic study of all houses within 5-6 km of a land filling site in Denmark. The optimal condition would be to combine the hedonic analysis with a questionnaire survey that should reveal the respondents'/house owners' perception of nuisances and risks related to living nearby a land fill. This way it would be possible to use a much more precise variable to describe how the disamenity effects actually affect the respondents, than the way most studies just use distance to a land fill site as a proxy for the nuisance experienced. Conducting a nationwide survey would give the possibility to use key numbers from such a study in future evaluations of land fill sites. A survey could be extended to include other waste treatment facilities like incineration trying to reveal differences in people's opinion about not only different ways to treat waste, but also differences in people's perception of nuisances related to waste treatment facilities.

Until such a study has been conducted, it is uncertain if it would do more harm to take land filling into account in socio economic analysis of waste treatment, than not taking this waste treatment method into consideration.