Margherita Turvani

Paying for Permanence: Public Preferences for Contaminated Site Cleanup

We use conjoint choice questions to investigate the preferences of people in four cities in Italy for income and future/permanent mortality risk reductions delivered by contaminated site remediation policies. The VSL is €5.6 million for an immediate risk reduction. If the risk reduction takes place 20 years from now, the implied VSL is €1.26 million. Respondents’ implicit discount rate is 7%. The VSL depends on respondent characteristics, familiarity with contaminated sites, concern about the health effects of exposure to toxicants, having a family member with cancer, perceived usefulness of public programs and beliefs about the goals of government remediation programs.

Institutions Meet Mind: The Way out of a Deadlock

The crucial importance of institutional analysis in economics and the social sciences in general is well understood. Yet, institutional economists have only a limited understanding of individual behavior in institutional settings, the emergence and spread of innovative behavior, and of how individual behavior influences the creation of norms, and vice versa. This paper elaborates on the work of Douglas North, who emphasized the importance of the connection between the evolution of the mind and the evolution of institutions, and highlights the need to investigate the cognitive mechanisms of individuals. We focus, therefore, on the field of modern cognitive science and discuss some of its findings. This approach should be given priority in the development of institutional analysis. Research results in the cognitive sciences, and in particular cognitivism and connectionism, are of vital interest here. In this context, the work of the Austrian school, especially Hayeks The Sensory Order, is extremely relevant and seems to foreshadow future developments. It thus deserves reappraisal.

Integrating adaptive governance and participatory multicriteria methods: a framework for climate adaptation governance

Climate adaptation is a dynamic social and institutional process where the governance dimension is receiving growing attention. Adaptive governance is an approach that promises to reduce uncertainty by improving the knowledge base for decision making. As uncertainty is an inherent feature of climate adaptation, adaptive governance seems to be a promising approach for improving climate adaptation governance. However, the adaptive governance literature has so far paid little attention to decision- making tools and methods, and the literature on the governance of adaptation is in its infancy in this regard. We argue that climate adaptation governance would benefit from systematic and yet flexible decision-making tools and methods such as participatory multicriteria methods for the evaluation of adaptation options, and that these methods can be linked to key adaptive governance principles. Moving from these premises, we propose a framework that integrates key adaptive governance features into participatory multicriteria methods for the governance of climate adaptation.

The value of reducing cancer risks at contaminated sites: are more knowledgeable people willing to pay more?

We use conjoint choice questions to investigate peoples tastes for cancer risk reductions and income in the context of public programs that would provide for remediation at abandoned industrial contaminated sites. Our survey was self-administered using the computer by persons living in the vicinity of an important contaminated site on the Italian National Priority List. The value of a prevented case of cancer is €2.6 million, but this figure does vary with income, perceived exposure to contaminants, and respondent opinions about priorities that should be pursued by cleanup programs.

Valuing Complex Natural Resource Systems

In complex natural resource systems, modifications or disruptions tend to affect many and diverse components of the ecological system, settlements and groups of people. This book uses the Lagoon of Venice – a unique natural resource, wildlife habitat, centre of cultural heritage and recreational site – as an example of one such system that has been heavily affected by human activities, including the harvesting of natural resources and industrial production. The contributors explore the Lagoon’s potential for regeneration, examining public policies currently under consideration. The aim of these policies is to restore island coastlines and marshes, fish stocks, habitat and environmental quality, defend morphology and landscape through the strict control of fishing practices, and to protect the islands from high tides.

Redeveloping industrial land: are contamination and remediation schemes affecting the price of industrial real estate properties?

Redeveloping industrial land may run across obstacles, even within the same land-use designation, because previous industrial activities jeopardised the quality of the site. Contamination of soil and water is an example. Using a hedonic price method, this paper explores the effect of contamination and alternative remediation schemes on the industrial real estate property market. We consider the case of Porto Marghera in the Lagoon of Venice, a large and complex contaminated site listed on the Italian National Priority List (NPL). Our results indicate that the industrial real estate market rewards properties with a complete and certified clean-up scheme, while proximity to properties remediated with the ‘permanent safety containment measures’ negatively affects the selling price of nearby industrial properties. Characteristics of the properties, such as size, location, accessibility and other relevant economic indicators, do matter in explaining price differentials.

Knowledge About, Importance of, and Attitudes Towards Industrial Brownfield Re-use

The aim of this paper is to investigate people’s attitudes towards and knowledge about the remediation and re-use of brownfield sites. In order to understand people’s opinions, we administered a questionnaire to 400 residents in the surroundings of Venice. We applied factor analysis to gain better understanding of the structure underlying the respondents’ answers to a set of Likert-scale questions on the possible effects of redeveloping abandoned and contaminated sites. We also conducted a multivariate stepwise regression analysis to define the social structure variables that can best explain people’s attitudes towards environmental issues. Results show that people are mostly motivated by environmental considerations when asked about brownfields reuse.

Brownfields Remediation and Reuse: An Opportunity for Urban Sustainable Development

This paper focuses on brownfields remediation and reuse strategies as opportunities to favour environmental protection, improvement of economic and social conditions and enhancement of human health and safety. The reuse of brownfield sites can also promote and encourage urban sustainable development practices. Land management and soil protection are common priorities for all the modern Governments and the experience achieved by Western countries in this field may be of some utility for a sustainable urban regeneration policy in China. Finally, an overview of the main costs and benefits of brownfield redevelopment and cleanup projects and a brief introduction to the issue related to the economic valuation methodology used to quantify them will be investigated and discussed.

Human capital, technology intensity, and growth in a regional context

In this article, we study the pattern of growth in one of the Italian best performing regions – the Veneto region – focusing on the role played by human capital and technology. Our aim is to verify the growth effect of human capital and technological intensity. The period considered is the pre-crisis period between 2001 and 2005. The results of the regressions clearly show how in the Veneto region the productive “specialization†, which has the greatest impact on growth, is the one in high-technology. However, human capital employed in high-technology intensive sectors does not explain growth significantly. This suggests an under-employment of human capital in the sectors at the frontier and the need to intervene with policies that develop high-technology industries.

Public policies for contaminated site cleanup: evidence from a survey of the Italian public

Cleaning up contaminated sites is currently considered one of the most important environmental policy priorities in many countries. Remediation of contaminated sites is attractive because it reduces risks to human health and ecological systems, and brings a host of potential social and economic benefits. Public programmes are deemed necessary by the law and in practice to address contamination at orphan site and to speed up the general processes of cleanups in most countries. Peoples opinion regarding these programmes in general and the priorities to be addressed is useful and pertinent given the large amount of resources to be devoted to the goal of remediation. In this work, we present the result of a national survey of the Italian public.