Environmental cost assessment model based on ecosystem services, environmental pollution indicators and DEA

Abstract

This paper establishes an environmental cost assessment model and uses the losses of ecosystem services to estimate the environmental degradation. Non-monetary estimates of ecosystem services (ESC) are made to determine ecosystem service indicators. Ecosystem services are integrated into three categories: direct services (DV), indirect services (IV), and existential services (EV). The small indicators of direct services, indirect services and existential services are respectively weighted by entropy weight method. Further the coefficient of variation method is used to weight three services, and finally we can obtain a linear combination of ecosystem services. Environmental pollution indicators (EPI) are used to assess the losses of biodiversity and ecotourism values. The linear function is used to indicate the reduction trend of ecotourism benefits due to environmental pollution. The sigmoid function is used to indicate the decreasing trend of biodiversity due to environmental pollution. Finally, the DEA model is established to evaluate the real benefits of land use projects.