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A team of researchers from the School of Agricultural and Resource Economics at The University of Western Australia has won the 2013 AARES Quality of Research Communications Award.  This award is conferred by the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society (AARES) to recognise superior communication of topics in agricultural and resource economics.

Researchers Abbie Rogers, Marit Kragt, Fiona Gibson, Michael Burton, David Pannell and Elizabeth Petersen conducted a study about the influence of nonmarket valuation research on environmental decision making in Australia.  They were interested in whether nonmarket valuation studies are actually being used by environmental policy makers.

Nonmarket valuation is an economic technique to estimate the intangible values of the environment through hypothetical markets.  Often, nonmarket valuation researchers claim that their studies are important for decision making.  But the results of the UWA study showed that there is a lack of knowledge on both the side of the researchers and the side of policy makers.  On the one hand, researchers overestimate their impact and may need to increase their engagement with policy makers to increase impact.  On the other hand, decision makers were found to have limited understanding about the benefits that nonmarket valuation techniques can have for policy development.

The team published a suite of articles based on their research.  David Pannell discusses the research in his Pannell Discussions blog.  A working paper was published on the School of Agricultural and Resource Economics website, and an article was published in Decision Point magazine issue number 75.  The researchers also published an article in the Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics , which includes recommendations on how to increase the use of non-market valuation in policy.

Media references

Assistant Professor Marit Kragt , (School of Agricultural and Resource Economics) (+61 8) 6488 4653