Determinantes del error de generalización en la transferencia de la demanda recreativa: una aplicación en la Bahía de Santa Ponça (Mallorca)

Benefit transfer has gained importance in public policy evaluation. Indeed, it allows using results from one or more valuation exercises in a cost-benefit analysis context. However, there are still key methodological issues capturing the interest of researchers, relating to both the best way to transfer values from one study to another and the factors influencing the transfer error. This latter has been the focus of this paper. For this reason, the case study comprises two valuation exercises applied to two adjacent urban areas located in Santa Ponça Bay (Mallorca) not only presenting similar socioeconomic features but also sharing the coastline (choice set). Results show that similarity between both areas, although being a necessary condition, is not enough to guarantee an optimum transfer benefit, thus suggesting there exist factors other than the distance and the socioeconomic features to take into account.