Valuing rural territory specific attributes: the case of environmental amenities in the European context

Abstract

The question of how to assess demand for environmental goods and services has been for several years one of the principal subject in environmental economics. Multifonctionnality of land activity replaces social demand assessments for various rural amenities as an important input to debate for the ongoing work on instruments of public intervention as agri-environmental policies. In this article, we present applications of conventional methods based on individual preference to estimate rural amenities values in Europe. Conventional methods face several problems and fail to assess the multifonctionnality of agricultural policy. We then argue the need for future researches to focus on methodologies that describe differences in public preferences and address non-marketed multiple outputs from agriculture assessment in a general form.