A Meta-Analysis of Contingent Valuation Studies in Coastal and Near-Shore Marine Ecosystems

The ecosystem services provided by coastal and nearshore marine systems contribute significantly to human welfare. However, studies that document values of these services are widely scattered in the peer-reviewed literature. We collected 39 contingent valuation papers with 120 observations to conduct the first meta-analysis of the ecosystem service values provided by the coastal and nearshore marine systems. Our results show that over ¾ of the variation in Willingness to Pay (WTP) for coastal ecosystem services could be explained by variables in commodity, methodology, and study quality. We also used the meta-regression model to predict out-of-sample WTPs and the benefit transfer result showed that the overall average transfer error was 24%, with 40% of the sample having transfer errors of 10% or less, and only 2.5% of predictions having transfer errors of over 100%. Based on such results, one could argue that such meta-analyses can provide useful guidance regarding at least the general magnitudes of welfare effects. However, we also caution against the application of such a result in a broader context of benefit transfer as it is derived from a limited amount of data, and it may suffer from some degree of measurement error, generalization error, and publication selection error. Lastly, we discuss possible ways of minimizing these errors.