Elsevier

Environmental Science & Policy

Volume 86, August 2018, Pages 64-71
Environmental Science & Policy

Review
Policy-oriented environmental research: What is it worth?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2018.05.005Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Evidence about the benefits to society from research is increasingly demanded.

  • Economic models to evaluate the benefits of research exist but have not been applied to environmental research.

  • We outline a framework for estimating the benefits of policy-oriented environmental research.

  • Key elements include defining the counterfactual, time lags and valuing the benefits.

  • Applications to environmental research are especially challenging when the research users are policymakers.

Abstract

Environmental and conservation scientists are increasingly being asked to justify their work in terms of benefits to society. This article describes economic theory for conceptualizing the benefits from environmental research, and provides a framework for estimating those benefits. In particular we discuss the evaluation of environmental science that is intended to benefit society through informing policy decisions. The chain between environmental research and its benefits through policy change includes at least four links: the research itself, policy change, behavior change and environmental change. Each of these four stages presents challenges and entails time lags. If any link fails, the chain breaks. The standard economic model of supply and demand, which is used to quantify benefits from research into market goods, can be adapted for application to environmental goods. Improved conceptualization and measurement of benefits from environmental research would assist environmental scientists to: (1) select research topics that are likely to deliver large environmental benefits; (2) design their research in a way that will increase its relevance, usefulness and potential impact on policy and, ultimately, the environment; and (3) make the case for funding particular research proposals. It could assist research agencies or research funders to: prioritize proposed research; make a case for increased funding for environmental research; and identify obstacles to the translation of research into environmental impacts, allowing attention to be focused on addressing these bottlenecks.

Introduction

Little is known about the returns to investments in environmental research. Governments are requiring greater accountability, and some research funders are requiring information about research benefits to be provided in research proposals, but a coherent framework for evaluating the benefits resulting from environmental research is lacking.

Literature on the economics of research provides detailed guidance on how to estimate the benefits generated by research, and shows that typical rates of return on research investments in some fields are high (e.g., Alston et al., 2000; Productivity Commission, 2007; Hurley et al., 2014). However, existing methods are best developed for research that leads to reduced cost and thereby increased profit for commercial firms, or benefits to buyers from improved products or lower purchase prices (e.g., Alston et al., 2010; Hall and Rosenberg, 2010), or both. Research that is intended to provide “non-market” benefits—through the provision of environmental goods that are not fully priced in market transactions—is more difficult to evaluate, particularly if the target audience is policymakers (e.g., see Pardey and Smith, 2004). Few publications on the evaluation or prioritization of environmental research (e.g., Guidotti 1995; Wu and Hobbs, 2002; Spilki and Tundisi, 2010; Bell et al., 2011; Sutherland et al., 2011) make use of the extensive literature on the economics of research (Ferraro and Pattanayak, 2006).

The main objective in this paper is to identify and discuss principles, concepts, and methodological approaches for estimating benefits from environmental research, with a particular focus on policy-oriented research. In doing so, we use theory and evidence from existing literature, particularly in agricultural economics; we describe conceptual models of the mechanisms through which benefits arise from policy-oriented environmental research; and we discuss the range of information required to estimate the benefits, and how that information can be combined to provide meaningful estimates of the benefits.

Section snippets

Challenges in valuing benefits from environmental research

That environmental research can generate benefits through improving policy seems obvious. Major environmental agencies around the world employ researchers, fund external researchers, and emphasize the importance of considering research results in policy. Examples of environmental issues where research appears to have played a role in prompting new policy or shaping changes in existing policy include global climate change (Manabe and Wetherald 1967), ozone pollution (Farman et al., 1985),

The role of research-based knowledge in the policy process

We envision a policy process in which research plays a role by generating information that can change public or policymaker perceptions about alternative policies and consequently can influence the policy choice. Our focus is on research that changes perceptions leading to altered policy decisions.

Suppose that various policy options are available for managing an environmental issue. The options may differ in their budgetary implications, policy mechanisms, spatial targeting, or approaches to

The chain from research to environmental changes

The links between environmental research and a policy decision are complex. We identify four stages in the process that may be thought of as forming a chain: research, policy decision, behavior and environmental conditions (Fig. 1). The influence of research needs to be traced through each link in the chain. The existence of multiple stages (and potentially feedbacks between them) means that benefits are not just difficult to estimate, but can be difficult to achieve. The process can fail at

Valuation of benefits from the improved environmental conditions

The analysis outlined in the previous section provides an assessment of the likely extent of change in environmental conditions or the quantity of an environmental good that will result from the research in question, potentially expressed probabilistically. The next step is to convert those changes into quantitative measures of benefit to the community.

The benefits derived from particular goods and services (including environmental goods and services) are context-sensitive. Relevant contexts

Conclusion

Estimation of the benefits from policy-oriented environmental research requires judgements about a range of variables, including: (1) the new information generated; (2) the likely extent of policy change resulting from the new information; (3) the likely extent of environmentally beneficial behavior change resulting from the policy change; (4) the likely environmental changes and other changes that will result from the predicted behavior change; (5) the value or importance of the anticipated

Authors’ contributions

All authors contributed to the ideas, concepts and frameworks presented. SJ collected and analyzed existing literature. DP and JA led the writing of the manuscript. All authors contributed critically to the drafts and gave final approval for publication.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions (grant number CE1101014) for funding support.

References (67)

  • L. McCann et al.

    Transaction cost measurement for evaluating environmental policies

    Ecol. Econ.

    (2005)
  • J.P. Mitchell et al.

    A history of tillage in California’s Central Valley

    Soil Tillage Res.

    (2016)
  • A.M. Roberts et al.

    Agricultural land management strategies to reduce phosphorus loads in the Gippsland Lakes, Australia

    Agric. Syst.

    (2012)
  • A.D.M. Smith et al.

    Experience in implementing harvest strategies in Australia’s south-eastern fisheries

    Fish. Res.

    (2008)
  • P.A. Vesk et al.

    Time lags in provision of habitat resources through revegetation

    Biol. Conserv.

    (2008)
  • K. Yamada et al.

    Eliciting and integrating expert knowledge for wildlife habitat modelling

    Ecol. Model.

    (2003)
  • W.L. Adamowicz et al.

    Choice modelling research in environmental and resource economics

  • J.M. Alston et al.

    Persistence Pays: U.S. Agricultural Productivity Growth and the Benefits from Public R&D Spending

    (2010)
  • J.M. Alston et al.

    A Meta-Analysis of the Rates of Return to Agricultural R&D: Ex Pede Herculem. IFPRI Research Report No. 113

    (2000)
  • J.M. Alston et al.

    Science Under Scarcity: Principles and Practice for Agricultural Research Evaluation and Priority Setting

    (1995)
  • J.R. Anderson et al.

    Agricultural Decision Analysis

    (1977)
  • J. Assunção et al.

    Deforestation slowdown in the Brazilian amazon: prices or policies?

    Environ. Dev. Econ.

    (2015)
  • N.C. Ban et al.

    A social–ecological approach to conservation planning: embedding social considerations

    Front. Ecol. Environ.

    (2013)
  • I.J. Bateman et al.

    Economic valuation of policies for managing acidity in remote mountain lakes: examining validity through scope sensitivity testing

    Aquat. Sci.

    (2005)
  • S. Bell et al.

    Real-world approaches to assessing the impact of environmental research on policy

    Res. Eval.

    (2011)
  • Q. Beresford et al.

    The Salinity Crisis: Landscapes, Communities and Politics

    (2001)
  • S. Canessa et al.

    When do we need more data? A primer on calculating the value of information for applied ecologists

    Methods Ecol. Evol.

    (2015)
  • R.N. Clark et al.

    Integrating Science and Policy in Natural Resource Management: Lessons and Opportunities from North America. General Technical Report PNW-GTR-441

    (1998)
  • G. Doole et al.

    Cost-effective strategies to mitigate multiple pollutants in an agricultural catchment in north-central Victoria, Australia

    Aust. J. Agric. Resour. Econ.

    (2013)
  • R.E. Dunlap et al.

    Politics and environment in America: partisan and ideological cleavages in public support for environmentalism

    Environ. Politics

    (2001)
  • Cited by (14)

    • The economics of agricultural innovation

      2021, Handbook of Agricultural Economics
    • Models and frameworks for assessing the value of disaster research

      2020, Progress in Disaster Science
      Citation Excerpt :

      In the short term, process measures may be included as research impacts – that is, steps leading toward a measurable or demonstrable outcome. A policy decision is one demonstrable outcome [31], but longer term measures may be needed to account for changes in population health, behaviour change, socioeconomic change or environmental change arising from the policy impact, or from the research findings in other ways [9,32]. Using expert judgement Handmer et al. [33] have defined short term impacts as those accruing within five years of the broad availability of research outputs while long term impacts are those experienced after fifteen years.

    • Making science more effective for agriculture

      2020, Advances in Agronomy
      Citation Excerpt :

      Of course, it is a considerable challenge to get all of these policy aspects of agricultural science right given the time lag of decades between initiating research and observing its impacts, and the inherent uncertainty about the utility (Kauffman, 2008; Osmond, 1995) and adoption (Kuehne et al., 2017) of research products. These challenges are even greater for research that is less directly applicable, or for which the resulting knowledge is not embodied in inputs like seeds or simple management practices, including policy-oriented social science or research related to environmental externalities (Pannell et al., 2018). Here we sample scientific and technological efforts to advance production, environmental and social outcomes, seeking to learn from both success and failure.

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text