Alternative to Comprehensive Ecosystem Services Markets: The Contribution of Forest-Related Programs in New Zealand

Due to the public goods characteristics of many ecosystem services and their vital importance to human welfare, various mechanisms have been put in place to motivate private landowners in the provision of ecosystem services. A common approach is to try to develop a comprehensive ecosystem services market where landowners can receive payments from beneficiaries of ecosystem services. Much research has been directed at developing methods for valuing the range of ecosystem services so that they can be incorporated into ecosystem services markets. However, valuation methods are difficult, expensive and time consuming. Other approaches to the provision of ecosystem services such as payments for ecosystem services usually focus on a single service like water or biodiversity. However, in the provision of a particular ecosystem service, there are spill-over effects of providing other ecosystem services, and thus studying those spill-over effects may provide a simple and cost-effective way of ensuring the provision of a wide range of ecosystem services. In New Zealand, there are a variety of forestry programs which provide incentives to landowners to plant trees on their lands to meet particular objectives, but which also produce other ES. This research aims to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the provision of a wide range of ES by these approaches, the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme, the East Coast Forestry Scheme, and the QEII National Trust.ecosystem services market, spill-over effect, cost-effectiveness, New Zealand, Environmental Economics and Policy,

Application of a Multi-criteria and Participated Evaluation Procedure to Select Typology of Intervention to Redevelop Degraded Urban Area

Through urban redevelopment of a degraded area, the deficiency in urban planning and/or building developments can be remedied, allowing for the flourishing of activities that can provide economic stimulus while improving the living conditions of citizens; in this way the local economy can be relaunched. Evaluation methodologies and procedures can contribute to steering the choices made by Public Administration (PA) in creating programmes and hypothesis of intervention that may be considered sustainable and shared by stakeholders. The text proposes the application of an evaluation procedure (Capanne area in Terracina, Latina, Lazio Region), based on the integrated use of a Multi-Criteria Analysis technique - the Analytic Hierarchy Process, as well as a technique promoting participation and interaction among stakeholders, the Stakeholders Analysis. The evaluation procedure can be used to support the PA to make the decision related to the best type of hypothesis of intervention among those possible: the decision must be taken on the basis of identified Stakeholders' needs and available resources, in order to further exploit the unexpressed potential of the intervention area. The structural elements of the evaluation procedure are aligned to article 1 of the "Prime Ministerial Decree" regarding ‘Projects for the social and cultural regeneration of decaying urban areas’ (15 October 2015) in order to identify the type of intervention allowable for financing provided in the Decree

Sun, Sea and Shrines: Application of analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to assess the attractiveness of six cultural heritage sites in Phuket (Thailand)

In order to make recommendations for the diversification of tourism products on the Thai island of Phuket, this paper applies the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method to rank the attractiveness of six cultural heritage sites in the island of Phuket to make recommendations for sites that could be incorporated in to cultural tourism development in the region. In addition, it applies a quantitative-qualitative evaluation structure with weighted criteria, based on local expert opinion. The research identified which of the many potential cultural tourism sites would be the most attractive to tourists and shows the utility of the AHP method, combined with quantitative-qualitative evaluation, for decision making in tourism destination development contexts

Prioritization of Road Network Construction in Bacan Island of North Maluku Province

Bacan Island, located in South Halmahera, North Maluku Province, is a potential region with a variety of important sectors, such as plantations, fisheries, mining, tourism, industry and trade. Until recently, this potential has not been exploited fully due to lack of transportation infrastructure systems. The government has prepared the plan to construct the road network systems, which consist of five road segments connecting the potential regions. With limited funding available, it would be impossible to build the road in the same time. Therefore, an optimum and carefully planned prioritization program should be applied. The purpose of this study was to determine the priority of road construction on the island of Bacan using Important Performance Analysis and Analytical Hierarchy Process methods. The result shows that the criteria considered important in determining the prioritization of road construction are as follows: (a) accessibility, (b) linkage, (c) land use, (d) cost, (e) technical aspects, (f) economic, and (g) environment. It is recommended that the construction phases of the road network in Bacan Island are Labuha-Babang, Babang-Songa, Songa-Wayaua, Labuha-Sawadai, Sawadai-Kubung, Babang-Yaba, Labuha-Belang-belang, Belang-belang-Yaba, Songa-Wayatim, and Wayatim-Wayaua, consecutively

Group Analytic Hierarchy Process Sorting II Method: an Application to Evaluate the Economic Value of a Wine Regions Landscape

In the ongoing context of climate change, there is an increasing need to support decision-making processes in the domain of landscape planning and management. Suitable evaluation techniques are needed to take into account the interests of actors and stakeholders in shared policy decisions. An important methodological contribution to the field is given by the Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), due to its ability to combine multiple aspects of a decision problem with the values and opinions expressed by different Decision Makers. The present paper develops the “Group Analytic Hierarchy Process Sorting II method” (GAHPSort II), which aims to sort a group of municipalities included in the UNESCO site “Vineyard Landscape of Piedmont: Langhe-Roero, and Monferrato” (Italy) according to the economic attractiveness of the landscape. Extending the previous versions AHPSort I, AHPSort II and GAHPSort, the GAHPSort II optimizes multi-stakeholder evaluations on large databases by reducing the number of comparisons. Moreover, the GAHPSort II method is proposed as a novel spatial decision support system because it combines a set of economic indicators for landscape and GIS methods for aiding the Decision Makers to better understand the case study and to support the definition and localization of policies and strategies of landscape planning and management

A robust fuzzy possibilistic AHP approach for partner selection in international strategic alliance

The international strategic alliance is an inevitable solution for making competitive advantage and reducing the risk in today’s business environment. Partner selection is an important part in success of partnerships, and meanwhile it is a complicated decision because of various dimensions of the problem and inherent conflicts of stockholders. The purpose of this paper is to provide a practical approach to the problem of partner selection in international strategic alliances, which fulfills the gap between theories of inter-organizational relationships and quantitative models. Thus, a novel Robust Fuzzy Possibilistic AHP approach is proposed for combining the benefits of two complementary theories of inter-organizational relationships named, (1) Resource-based view, and (2) Transaction-cost theory and considering Fit theory as the perquisite of alliance success. The Robust Fuzzy Possibilistic AHP approach is a noveldevelopment of Interval-AHP technique employing robust formulation; aimed at handling the ambiguity of the problem and let the use of intervals as pairwise judgments. The proposed approach was compared with existing approaches, and the results show that it provides the best quality solutions in terms of minimum error degree. Moreover, the framework implemented in a case study and its applicability were discussed

Ranking Highway Transportation Asset Criticality through Stakeholder Input Using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)

The transportation system is especially vulnerable to natural and human-made disasters which can have effects on mobility, safety, and the economy. This thesis presents a method to rank transportation assets based on their criticality to the transportation system by uniquely gathering stakeholder input on criticality criteria weights. This serves as a typical first step in vulnerability and resilience assessments. Six criteria were used to estimate asset criticality: Annual Average Daily Traffic (AADT), roadway classification, freight output, tourism output, Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI), and redundancy. Then, the criteria are combined via stakeholder input using a weighted ranking scheme called the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). The AHP produces an average ranking based on the priorities of varied experts (i.e., Analysts, Engineers, Planners, etc.) using a pairwise rating system implemented as an online survey. 30 complete surveys were collected (13.2% response rate) via a national survey conducted in July 2022. While individual rankings vary, the AHP allowed for an average weight to be determined for each criterion and applied to average all criteria into a single metric. Overall, the criteria ranked in the following order (highest to lowest priority): AADT, redundancy, freight output, roadway classification, SoVI, and tourism. Criteria weights derived from AHP are then used to estimate a weighted average criticality for each asset, and finally, all assets can be ranked by their estimated criticality. The stability of the criteria ranking was confirmed after using 15 samples, indicating the minimum number of participants required for robust and reliable results in this AHP study. Using this approach, a statewide vulnerability and/or resiliency assessment can consider multiple, unique stakeholders’ perspectives within a single, consistent criticality metric