Cost benefit analysis of peri-urban land use policy - Plurel

Costs and benefits
A scoping of potential costs and benefits of the proposed development is given in Table 1.
Some impacts can be valued using market-based methods. For example, the lost grape
production can be valued using the market price of grapes (assuming that the impact on yield
in the region is marginal – otherwise some adjustment would be needed). For climate
regulation, the social cost of carbon can be used (e.g. ref). For recreational values, contingent
valuation could be used. For amenity, hedonic pricing methods allow for the estimation of the
benefits of living nearer to golf courses – and later we apply benefit transfer to attempt to
isolate these values. In what follows, we assume that the golf course management will be to
the best environmental standards 1 ..
Costs
Physical land cost
The land price for agricultural land ranges at 10-15 €/m 2 in the selected area, according to the
information provided by the stakeholder. Hence the total land cost of claiming the vineyard is
estimated at between 15,000,000 and 22,500,000 €. Considering forest land as a type of
agricultural land, we estimate the cost of claiming 66 hectares of forest at between 6,600,000
and 9,900,000 €. The cost of claiming private settlement will be discussed later in the section
of compensation costs as a result of converting private settlement.
1 In what follows we have ignored impacts of fertilisers and pesticides. This may be added in a later
version. Water use of golf courses can also be significant and we will further examine this.
Page 11 • PLUREL report No 4.4.3 • December 2010