Using Meta-Analysis to Assess Benefits of Green Infrastructure Investments: Application to Small Urban Projects in Hinesville, GA

Abstract

Small scale urban green infrastructure projects can provide local ecological services that should be accounted for in project assessment. Benefits assessment can be expensive and time consuming; benefit transfer provides an economical alternative, but the quality of the analysis depends upon available data. The best-case scenario for benefit transfer is to utilize a meta-analysis. In this paper, we use the meta-analysis of Bockarjova, et al. (2020) to predict ecological benefits of small scale urban green infrastructure investments in Hinesville, GA. In doing so, we implement a censoring procedure on the benefit transfer function to permit analysis of small-scale (less than one-hectare) projects. We find evidence of substantial net economic benefits, with estimates ranging from $657,000 to over $5million.

Keywords: green infrastructure, benefit-cost analysis, benefit transfer

JEL Classification: D61, Q01, Q24