A methodology for evaluating reliability of benefit of infrastructure development projects by use of discrete choice models

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Many manuals of practical cost-benefit analysis to evaluate efficiencies of various types of infrastructure development projects have been published in recent years as to respond to increasing needs for accountability. Simultaneously, growing public interest in natural environment makes inevitable to assess environmental effects of an infrastructure development project. The cost-benefit analysis manuals also contain explanations about benefit measurements of environmental quality change due to the projects. Although it is very important to assess reliability of the measured benefit and cost of projects as to make the project evaluation more accountable, methodology to assess reliability of cost-benefit analysis is neither well established nor considered in these manuals. This study focuses on methodological development of a methodology to assess reliability of benefit of a infrastructure development project which involves environmental quality change and its application for project ado … More ption judgment. Two different types of discrete choice models are used for describing respondents' behavior in questionnaire surveys in contingent valuation surveys and users' behavior to make trip to the area which has rich natural environment, i.e., stated preference model (SP) and revealed preference model (RP), respectively. The study proposed methods to evaluate reliability of benefits measured either by a RP based or a SP based discrete choice model. For SP model, the study successfully could derive exact estimator of confidence intervals of estimated benefits. However, for RP model, since the model is non-linear, approximation methods such as Talor-Maclaurin expansion, Edgeworth expansion and simulation based methods such as Bootstrap method, Jack-knife Methods and Monte Carlo based method are tested. The accuracy of evaluation of reliability obtained by proposed methods are checked by Monte Carlo simulation. The results suggest that simulation based methods fit well for enough number of trials. Applicability of the methods are also examined by case studies in the Lake Biwa and Kizu river. Methodology to judge project efficiency with noise is also proposed based on the methods to assess the reliability of benefits measured by use of discreate choice model and a graphical method to help the judgment is also proposed. Less