Strengths
¥ Universally Accepted Measure of Economic
Benefits
¥ Easy to Interpret and to use for
purposes of comparison
¥ Suitable for use in conventional
Cost-Benefit Analysis
¥ Only measure of economic benefits
acceptable to some people
Weaknesses
¥ Non-market $$ Valuation Methods are not
fully developed
¥ Non-market $$ Valuation Methods are
expensive to apply
¥ Results of Non-market $$ Methods are
controversial
¥ Results are almost always
site-specific
¥ Results of good studies almost always
apply to individual services
¥ Results not generally accepted in
courtrooms and hearing rooms
¥ Difficult to address linkages between
benefits and decisions
¥ Difficult to use to compare
environmental assets being traded
¥ Difficult to use to prioritize
environmental assets