Perceived Justice and the Economic Valuation of the Environment: A Role for Fair Decision-Making Procedures

Competing claims of fairness are often apparent in environmental planning decisions. With increasing awareness of pollution among various stakeholders, issues arise over appropriate and acceptable levels of service given finite public resources. The contingent valuation method has enabled economists to place environmental planning within a benefit– cost framework. However, justice issues have not been widely discussed in the CV literature despite evidence to suggest that survey participants scrutinize the fairness of the method, and its requirement that value be expressed in terms of WTP in particular. This chapter reviews some of the literature on fairness and suggests that a more deliberative decisionmaking framework might be required to account for the ethical beliefs about the environment, public institutions and the public interest. In providing citizens a greater opportunity to voice their views on environmental policies than the standard CV methodology allows, deliberative procedures and their outcomes are likely to be perceived to be more fair.