Pesticide risk evaluation in empirical economics: a comparative approach

Pesticide use in agriculture poses several risks to both human health and nontarget agro-ecosystems. Due to lack ofinformation on the monetary value of reducing pesticide risks, it is difficult to perform an economic analysis that addressessocial efficiency of policy and draws conclusions about the appropriate degree of regulation.The aim of the current paper is to present a critical overview of the empirical literature on pesticide risk valuation thatprovides disaggregate willingness-to-pay estimates (WTPs) of pesticide risks reduction. Recent multidimensional classificationmethods, such as coined decision tree analysis, are used in a comparative approach as tools for explaining the differences inempirical research findings. The analysis shows that the order of magnitude of WTPs is related to both the valuation techniqueand to the data available from biomedical and ecotoxicological literature. It also shows that WTP estimates of pesticide riskscannot be simply averaged over several empirical studies. The order of magnitude of a WTP estimate is, in fact, related to thespecific type of risk and to the nature of the risk scenario considered, as well to lay people’s subjective perception of risks