International Benefit Transfer Related to Coastal Zones: Evidence from Northeast Asia

Abstract

Abstract International benefit transfer from developed countries is often used to evaluate international aid projects due to the lack of primary study in the policy country, particularly when the policy country is a developing one. Three surveys with the same protocol were carried out around the same time in a coastal city in China, Japan, and South Korea to determine which benefits can be most readily transferred and how much uncertainty accompanies transfers from one country to another. The mean transfer errors were in the range of 97 to 243%. The benefits of economic promotion seem to have more transferability than those of environmental improvement and risk reduction. The benefit transfers from the developed country (Japan) to the developing one (China) had fewer transfer errors than vice versa. These results suggest that more attention needs to be paid to the effect of environmental settings on international benefit transfer. JEL Classification Codes: Q5, R5