In a democratic system, policy makers have to take the preferences of the citizens into account. Since we live in a world with scarce resources, one is asked to make choices regarding the use and management of these resources. In this context, if policy makers decide to invest in the protection...

The approach of using existing data on economic values of local ecosystem services for an assessment of these values at a larger geographical scale can be called “scaling up”. In a scaling-up exercise, economic values from a particular study site are transferred to another geographical...

Safeguarding the future of Venice is a globally recognised challenge of urban sustainability. We propose a sustainable management model, alternative to the current strategy, that primarily focuses on the built heritage and which interprets the city together with its encircling lagoon as a matrix...

We adopted the state-of-the-art methodologies to quantify the total carbon stocked by Natura 2000 habitats as well as to project the future changes of carbon stocks influenced by alternative policy options for the management of Natura 2000 habitats by 2020. Our results show that the N2K network...

The paper focuses on the economic assessment of damages caused by high water in the city of Venice. In particular, we focus our attention on a valuation exercise that addresses the estimation of monetary, short period, on-site damages due to high water events on the different business activities...

This article focuses on the economic valuation of alternative clam management practices in the Venice Lagoon. The proposed valuation method is characterized by the design of a survey questionnaire next to the fishermen population. In each questionnaire two fishing alternatives are described. The...

This paper provides an assessment of the economic value of the oceanographic services provided by the Mediterranean operational forecasting system, MFSTEP. The main purpose of this exploratory study is to carry out a cost-benefit analysis for different development scenarios, by comparing the...

The paper focuses on the ongoing debate on non-market valuation, including the valuation environmental goods, and the opportunity to use contingent valuation for policy guidance. In fact, contingent valuation critics argue that reported willingness to pay answers do not reflect real economic...

The paper examines the use of choice experiments (CE) to assess the economic value of alternative rail noise reduction interventions on the so-called Brennero railway, Italy. The novelty of this paper is threefold. To our knowledge, this is the first study on the valuation of noise conducted in...

This paper explores the use of a micro-economic model to analyse the provisions and parties of bioprospecting contracts. It focuses on the pharmaceutical industry as the representative biodiversity buyer, presenting an original theoretical framework that explains the main contract...