Kentaro Yoshida

Development of weighting factors for G20 countries—explore the difference in environmental awareness between developed and emerging countries

PurposeWeighting is one of the steps involved in LCIA. This enables us to integrate various environmental impacts and facilitates the interpretation of environmental information. Many different weighting methodologies have already been proposed, and the results of many case studies with a single index have been published. LIME2 (Itsubo et al. Int J Life Cycle Assess 17(4):488-498, 2012) developed weighting factors for four different areas of protection that reflect environmental awareness among the Japanese public. This method has already been widely used in Japan, but difficulties exist universally using the Japanese weighting factors around the world. It is presumed that the weighting varies depending on economic, cultural, and social conditions, and there are still few cases in which weighting factors have been specifically invented or studied in consideration of variance in these elements. This study attempted to develop weighting factors applicable to the Group of Twenty (G20) countries with a view toward developing those that could be used in different countries. In the study, a survey was conducted with a uniform questionnaire in G20 countries to compare the weighting factors calculated for different countries, along with an investigation on development and utilization of global weighting factors.MethodsA conjoint analysis was conducted to give a weighting between the four areas of protection defined by LIME: human health, social assets, biodiversity, and primary production. The analysis is suitable for measuring the value of each of the multiple attributes of the environment. This study conducted a questionnaire in all the G20 member states. The survey puts priority on making the questions understood by the respondents and minimizing bias, adopting interviews, visiting surveys, and surveys in venues in the 11 emerging countries. In the developed countries, Internet surveys were conducted after confirming that their results are statistically significant from the pretest results in these states. In both surveys, random sampling was performed to take 200–250 samples (households) in each of the emerging countries and 500–600 samples in each of the developed countries. The surveys collected a total of 6400 responses. Statistical values based on this model can be considered to reflect the variability between each individual’s environmental thoughts. The calculated results can then be used to compare the variety of environmental thoughts in developed and emerging countries.Results and discussionThe study was able to obtain two different kinds of results: dimensionless weighting factors and economic indicators using the amount of willingness to pay. This paper solely presents the former. The weighting factors in the entire G20 community, in the group of developed countries (G8) and in the group of emerging countries (G20 states excluding the G8) and those in the individual G20 countries, were estimated. The calculated values were significant statistically at the 1xa0% level (all p values for the safeguard subject coefficients were less than 0.0001), with the exception of monetary attributes for several emerging countries. Converted into dimensionless values, so that the total sum for the four subjects equals 1, the weighting factor was the highest for human health in the entire G20 circles, at 0.34, followed by biodiversity at 0.29, and primary production at 0.23. The weighting for social assets was relatively poor, at 0.13. In the G8 developed states, the figures of biodiversity and primary production were relatively higher than those of the same two subjects in the full G20. Biodiversity had the highest value, at 0.34, and was followed by human health at 0.30. On the other hand, in emerging countries, the weighting of health impacts was particularly significant, at 0.44, whereas the three other subjects had almost equivalent weightings—biodiversity at 0.19, social assets at 0.18, and primary product at 0.18. The weighting factors by country and the variance of preference intensities by country showed minor differences among developed countries while they reflected considerable differences among emerging countries.ConclusionsAccurate weighting factors representing the environmental attitudes of the world and national public are needed in order to conduct general purpose LCA. This study is the world’s first to conduct surveys with the use of the same questionnaire not only in developed countries but also in emerging countries, and to compare the findings. A total of 6400 responses were obtained via interviews and Internet surveys. The survey thus gained a statistically significant result on all the environmental attributes including the weighting factors for the G20 circles, G8 states, emerging countries exclusive of the G8 states, and individual countries in which surveys took place. The results have revealed a relatively minor difference in weighting factors and variation coefficients between the areas of protection in the developed countries whereas a considerable difference was observed between those subjects in emerging countries.

Measuring marginal willingness to pay using conjoint analysis and developing benefit transfer functions in various Asian cities

ABSTRACT We need a consistent methodology to measure the co-benefits of climate change mitigation across Asian countries. This study chose a strategy of modifying the Japan-specific life-cycle impact assessment method based on endpoint modeling (LIME) for wider application across countries. LIME has two dimensions. First, it is an environmental science that links the cause-and-effect chain. Second, it is an environmental valuation that weighs four endpoint damages in monetary terms through a conjoint analysis that is derived from an Internet-based questionnaire survey. This article describes the modification of the methodology for application of the conjoint analysis to weigh environmental impacts. We approached the investigation as follows. First, we conducted Internet surveys to measure marginal willingness-to-pay (MWTP). We used a sample of 112 respondents in their 20 s to 40 s, divided equally between men and women, in 11 cities across China, India, and Southeast Asia. The results obtained showed clear statistical significance and were comparable across the cities. Second, we attempted to develop functions (called benefit transfer functions) to simplify the measured MWTP in order to apply it across different Asian countries. The functions were derived through a stepwise meta-analytic method, a type of multiple regression analysis whose independent variable was MWTP and dependent variables were attributes of both respondents and surveyed cities. The functions showed that coal consumption and percentage of nature reserve were dependent variables. Then, the MWTPs estimated from the functions were compared with the measured MWTP for transfer error, which is calculated by the absolute value of the difference between the estimated value and the measured value divided by the latter. The transfer error was below 50% in about 90% of the 44 results (a combination of four endpoints and 11 cities), implying that the developed functions were statistically significant.

Development of weighting factors for G20 countries. Part 2: estimation of willingness to pay and annual global damage cost

PurposeThis paper is the second part of a series of articles presenting the results of research on monetary weighting factors (MWFs) for the G20 countries, which together account for approximately 90% of the global GDP. We developed their MWFs with regard to Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) and evaluated them via a large-scale questionnaire survey. We estimated the economic value of one unit of damage caused by human activities.MethodsTo ensure that the MWFs covered all areas of protection as defined by the LCIA method based on Endpoint Modeling (human health, social assets, biodiversity, and primary production), we conducted a choice experiment in all G20 countries. We conducted face-to-face interviews to minimize survey bias and ensure that the questions were understood by the emerging G20 countries’ respondents. Internet surveys were adopted to collect samples from the developed G20 countries’ respondents, where Internet diffusion rates are generally high. We obtained response data from 200 to 250 and 500 to 600 households of all the emerging and all the developed G20 countries, respectively. We gathered 6400 responses in all. We estimated preference intensities using the random parameter logit model. We calculated MWFs based on each respondent’s willingness to pay.Results and discussionWe devised MWFs providing the costs of damage to four safeguard subjects. All the estimated values are statistically significant at the 1% level, with the exception of monetary attributes from Mexico. The MWFs for the G20 are 23,000 USD for human health (per year), 2.5 USD for social assets (per USD of resources), 11 billion USD for biodiversity (per species), and 5.6 billion USD for primary production (per 100 million tons). The differences between the developed and emerging G20 countries are considerable, with the values generally being smaller for the latter in purchasing power parity (USD) terms. The estimated global total economic annual impact was approximately 5.1 trillion USD (6.7% of the world’s total GDP).ConclusionsWe obtained reasonable and conservative global-scale MWFs compared with previous studies. Moreover, the cross-country heterogeneity in this study potentially helps extrapolate future/global value developments from current/local estimates. The variations in human health and social asset MWFs are small enough within developed countries to allow international transfers among them, while significant variations in biodiversity and primary production MWFs are a caveat to up-front international transfers even within developed countries.

Economics and Economic Valuation of Ecosystems and Biodiversity in Japan

The United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) warned that human activities have induced dramatic degradation in biodiversity and serious loss of ecosystem services. It stated that biodiversity needed to be addressed at the global level. Considering the significance of the relation between biodiversity and socioeconomic systems, recent studies have scaled up the economic approach to biodiversity. One of the events that pushed the intertwined issues of biodiversity and economy onto the global agenda of international environmental policy was the G8 Environment Ministers Meeting held in 2007 where reference was made to the economic significance of the global loss of biological diversity. In response, the European Union (EU) and the German government-led “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB): An Interim Report” (TEEB 2008) was announced in May 2008, drawing global attention as the “Stern Review” of biodiversity. It had been intensively compiling economic findings worldwide for the final synthesis report to be presented at the Tenth Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD-COP10) in 2010.