Stakeholders mapping

by | Jul 9, 2021

Stakeholder mapping is a descriptive-analytic tool to discover and visualise the relationship among the stakeholders of a focal issue (e.g. a land use planning process, an ecological restoration project, or a change of the legislation of protected areas). Background information about stakeholders is collected through media- and document analysis and key-informant interviews. Data are analysed by qualitative methods in order to list the stakeholder groups relevant to the focal issue and to discover the intensity and character of their relationships. The final outcome of the analysis is the stakeholder map: a graphical representation of stakeholder relationships which includes all relevant stakeholder groups, their subgroups, their basic interests in the focal issue, and the linkages among them.

Stated preference valuation

by | Jul 9, 2021

Stated preference valuation is a term for survey-based methods which are often applied to estimate the willingness to pay (WTP) for non-market goods (e.g., environmental public goods) or policies that deliver them. In contrast to revealed preferences methods (using observations on actual behaviour), they are based on hypothetical choices made in carefully designed situations (e.g., votes).

The most popular stated preference valuation methods are the contingent valuation (in which usually a single WTP-question is asked) and discrete choice experiments (DCE) (in which respondents are asked to repeatedly choose the most preferred alternatives that are described using selected attributes and attribute levels).

SWOT analysis

by | Jul 9, 2021

SWOT stands for Strengths – Weaknesses – Opportunities – Threats. The SWOT analysis is used in strategic planning and is intended to identify key factors that are important for achieving a specific goal. Strengths and weaknesses are internal characteristics of the system under consideration and can be directly influenced by an actor. Opportunities and threats are external conditions that cannot be directly influenced by an actor (e.g., politics or the economy). The SWOT analysis is a method of subjective examination of data. For this purpose, the data are arranged in a matrix:

SWOT strategy matrixStrengthsWeaknesses
OpportunitiesUsing strengths that take advantage of opportunitiesUsing opportunities to eliminate weaknesses
ThreatsUsing strengths to avoid threatsMinimise weaknesses and avoid threats

References

Fürst, D., & Scholles, F. (Eds.). (2008). Handbuch Theorien und Methoden der Raum- und Umweltplanung (3rd ed). Rohn: Dortmund.
Hunger, J. D., & Wheelen, T. L. (2000). Strategic management (7th ed). Prentice Hall: Upper Saddle River, N.J.

Transaction costs (TCs)

by | May 4, 2021

are the costs arising from organising the transfer of goods and services between two agents (Cheung, 1992). Transaction costs provide the key to understanding alternative forms of economic organisation and contractual arrangement. What is important is the cost of conducting transactions in one organisational or contractual form relative to the others. Therefore, what matters is not the absolute amount of transaction costs, but the relative ranking of transaction costs associated with different organisational or contractual choices.

For a general overview of how TCs can be measured see Wang (2003). In agri-environment schemes (AES) a basic distinction can be made between private TCs, borne by farmers, and public TCs that are borne by the government (Mettepenningen et al., 2009). Private TCs can be categorised in three major groups: search costs, negotiation costs and monitoring and enforcement costs (Dahlman, 1979; Hobbs, 2004).

References

Cheung, S.N.S., 1992. On the New Institutional Economics. In Werin, L., and Wijkander, H. (eds). Contract Economics. Oxford: Blackwell, 48-65.
Dahlman, C.J., 1979. The Problem of Externality. Journal of Law and Economics 22, 141-162.
Hobbs, J., 2004. Markets in Metamorphosis: The Rise and Fall of Policy Institutions. in Van Huylenbroeck, G., Verbeke, W., and Lauwers, L. (eds). Role of Institutions in Rural Policies and Agricultural Markets. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 199-212.
Mettepenningen, E., A. Verspecht and G. Van Huylenbroeck, 2009. Measuring private transaction costs of European agri-environmental schemes. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 52 (5) 649-667. DOI: /10.1080/09640560902958206
Wang, N. 2003. Measuring Transaction Costs:  An Incomplete Survey.Ronald Coase Institute Working Papers, Number 2.

Transaction costs analysis

by | Jul 9, 2021

Transaction costs analysis is the method used by businesses and institutional investors to analyse the effectiveness of their portfolio transactions. The examined costs are represented by both explicit (commissions and fees) and implicit costs (opportunity cost and price changes).

See also: transaction costs (TCs)