The concept of environment, including the ecological environment, has the ability to contain and purify wastes as a very important resource, that is, environmental resources have a very important impact on the smooth operation of modern economic systems. Environmental economics' understanding of the value of environmental resources and how they are evaluated have received increasing attention.
The environmental evaluations are divided into two categories: 1 Indirect use value. That is, the value of the part of environmental resources that participates in the process of consumption and economic production in an indirect way is the value of the services provided by the environment to support today's production and consumption, such as the value of ecological functions and the quality of water environment. 2 Choose value. It refers to the value that contemporary people choose to pay for environmental resources in order to ensure the sustainable use of environmental resources by future generations, such as the value that contemporary humans are willing to pay to protect tropical rainforests. There are many methods for assessing environmental value, which are basically divided into three categories: direct market law, alternative market law, and willingness to survey and assess methods. Specifically:
(I) Market Value Law This law regards environmental quality as a factor of production and believes that changes in environmental quality lead to changes in productivity and production costs. That is, this change causes the supply of market commodities to be affected under given resource conditions, or results in a reduction in the output or the intended return. Therefore, it can be expressed in terms of changes in the quantity or output of the market goods. The change value is measured at the market price as a measure of the value of the environment. For example, air pollution in chemical plants has an adverse effect on the agricultural production around the plant, and the environmental value can be calculated by using the value of lost crop yield as a measure to reduce pollution. This method is easy to observe and measure, but when the market price is distorted, it is necessary to make corrections or use shadow prices based on marginal prices, but it is difficult to determine accurately.
(2) Human Capital Law (or Income Loss Act)
Changes in environmental quality have a major impact on human health. Health-related currency losses include: premature death, loss of income due to illness or illness, increased expenditure on medical expenses, impact on life expectancy and working life caused by illness, death, and lost expected income; suffering of victims And associated damage to their families. Although this method is simple, it involves an ethical judgment of the value of life. Therefore, there are still some difficulties in implementing it.
(III) Recovery and Protection Cost Laws When certain activities may cause environmental pollution, appropriate facilities and measures may be taken to prevent, govern or restore and compensate. Therefore, the environmental value is assessed at the minimum cost required.
(IV) Consequence Prevention Law When the deterioration of the environmental quality cannot be reversed, people often reduce or offset the consequences caused by the deterioration of the environmental quality by increasing other inputs or expenditures. Changes in other inputs or expenditures reflect changes in the value of the environment.
(V) The wage difference method The environmental difference or environmental risk value can be assessed by the salary difference. For example, differences in the environmental conditions of workers' workplaces (noise, dust, exposure to pollutants, etc.) can affect the career choices of workers. With high wages or subsidies as an attraction, this difference in remuneration can be used as a value for assessing environmental quality.
(6) Asset Value Law The difference in the environmental quality of fixed assets (such as land and houses) affects the willingness of consumers to pay, which in turn affects the value of these fixed assets. It is thus possible to compare the price differences to assess the value of environmental quality.
(7) Travel cost method (TCM)[8]
The degree of satisfaction of travelers with respect to the environmental quality of tourism destinations to a certain extent reflects the willingness of tourists to pay for environmental quality. Reflects the environmental value of tourism destinations. After eliminating the influence of non-environmental factors, travel costs can be used to indirectly assess the value change of environmental quality. The Travel Cost Method (TCM) is mainly used to evaluate the value of outdoor recreational activities such as fishing, hunting, boating and forest tourism. This method was widely used by U.S. government agencies and later gradually adopted by the United Nations. The travel expense method is a method of evaluating priceless goods. It attempts to give priceless goods a certain price through consumer behavior. To be precise, the cost of the environmental resource of the consumer is taken as the price of the environmental resource, which generally refers to the main expenses of the trip, such as transportation fees, tickets and even the opportunity cost of time.
(8) Willingness to survey and assess methods If it is difficult to find the results that can be observed and measured as a result of changes in environmental quality, environmental values ​​can be assessed by investigating people’s willingness to pay or willingness to accept changes in environmental quality. There are two kinds of laws, one is to directly inquire the willingness or willingness to receive payment of the survey respondents; the other is to ask the respondents about the demand for certain goods and services, thereby inferring the willingness to pay and the willingness to accept payment . The second category includes no-cost selection method and priority evaluation method. The no-cost selection method requires the respondent to choose between several groups of programs, which are a combination of a certain environmental quality and a certain number of goods or services, and thus can be evaluated through the willingness of the respondents to choose. The priority evaluation method is to first inform the respondent of the environmental quality and price of different programs, and then give the respondent a budget to ask the respondent to use the money to purchase a group of commodities including environmental quality. The respondents' willingness to pay for the analysis and evaluation. In the willingness survey and evaluation, the information held by the investigator and the surveyee is asymmetrical. As a result, there is the possibility of various biases and the results of the investigation are inaccurate. This requires attention.
(9) Applying sustainable development principles to assess the value of environmental resources The application of sustainable development principles to assess the value of environmental resources will be an evaluation method of practical significance. The key difference between the concept of sustainable development and the traditional concept of development is that the concept of sustainable development emphasizes the commitment to future development. Since market regulation is guided by the maximization of current interests, its regulatory function does not have the ability to extend to the future. Therefore, sustainable development requires the government to play a role in balancing current and future interests. An important aspect of this role is to make the pricing of environmental resources beneficial to long-term development.
The core of people’s understanding of the nature of environmental value is to study the connotation, inherent characteristics and movement laws of environmental value from the relevance of the environment and economy. While values ​​of sustainable development abandon the traditional values ​​of the environment, it also makes the environmental value issue more complicated. As sustainable values ​​have increased the connotation of ethical values, the issue of environmental values ​​has actually exceeded the scope of pure economics and has caused numerous controversies. The controversy shows that the exploration of the nature of environmental value and its movement laws is far from over. However, in reality, decisions on the allocation of environmental resources are increasingly influenced by factors such as politics, culture, and society. Western countries even have an "anti-assessment". "The trend of thought. Some scholars oppose the monetization of all elements of the natural, social, and economic systems, emphasizing the emphasis on the application of “priceless management methods†(such as laws and administrative tools), which is also worthy of attention.
There are many ways to evaluate environmental value, but so far there is no perfect assessment method. Therefore, it must be applied flexibly to actual conditions in practical applications. The pricing of environmental resources is necessary. Taking pollution as an example, according to the Coase Theorem, the allowable emissions of an area can be “assigned†as an item, so that it can be adjusted into the circulation market by the market. However, the market is guided by the maximization of current interests and does not have the driving force to extend to the future. Therefore, sustainable development requires the government to play a role in balancing current and future interests. The government formulates relevant environmental policies and incorporates changes in the stock of environmental resources. In the national economic accounting system, the transformation of economic growth patterns is promoted. In practice, we recognize and have realized that the value of environmental resources is closely related to sustainable development. However, how to form a complete price system has great influence on the evaluation of environmental values. At present, the pricing system for environmental resources is far from being unified. No matter what kind of assessment methods are used, subjective arbitrariness cannot be avoided. In fact, it cannot be reasonably “pricedâ€. In short, improving the theory and method of assessing environmental value still needs to be done in practice and research.
V. Conclusion
The environment is valuable. In theory, it is necessary to review and update our outlook on life, development, natural outlook, and environmental values, and re-understand the relationship between man and nature. Then the environment should be taken into account in the cost of the product. Just like the cost of raw materials and labor costs, there should also be resources and environmental costs. When people buy a commodity, they have to pay for the environmental costs that they transfer to it.
Due to the limitations of the development of science and technology, some resources still do not see the potential value of their future. Perhaps the value of this application is huge, especially some non-renewable resources. If it is exhausted now, it will be Offspring do not pay responsibility and commit crimes. At the same time, the assessment of environmental value is complicated and difficult to operate, so we must not underestimate the value of the environment.
When people use the environment and use resources to produce products, must they be at the cost of environmental pollution and declining quality of the environment? Are there better methods and technologies for rational use of the environment? For renewable resources, such as wood, when we cut a tree, it causes a decline in the quality of the environment, but we can completely replant one or more trees. This is a good way to make sustainable use of environmental resources. The evaluation of environmental value should be based on whether or not sustainable development is the standard.
Source: Journal Author: Wu Anguo, Su Qingping