Valuation and transferability of the non-market benefits of river restoration in the Danube river basin using a choice experiment

The objective of this paper is to estimate the non-market benefits of ecological river restoration and test their transferability across the second largest river basin in Europe. River restoration reduces flood risk and improves water quality, the welfare impacts of which are measured in an identical choice experiment conducted in three Danube river basin countries: Austria, Hungary and Romania. The estimated choice models differ in preference and scale parameters. Distance-decay effects are detected for water quality improvements in Austria and Romania and for a reduction in flood risk in Austria. Public perception of current water quality affects the value people attach to further improvements in water quality levels in all three countries. Controlling for these influencing factors, the estimated non-market benefits of river restoration policy scenarios appear to be transferable between Hungary and Romania, but not between Austria and Hungary and Austria and Romania. Given the role of location specific factors such as differences in population density and degree of urbanization, the use of a generally applicable research design seems a necessary, but insufficient precondition to reduce transfer errors when applying existing estimates of the non-market benefits of river restoration from the international literature to new river restoration contexts.