ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some attempts which have been made to quantify the benefits of pesticide use and the external costs. In recent years, a small number of studies have taken the approach of trying to rank pesticides in terms of their potential to cause external damages. One of the earliest is that of Kovach et al. Environmental valuation attempts to estimate the willingness to pay (WTP) of individuals for goods and services which people value, even though they are not bought and sold on a market. It is possible that the money valuations implied by use of this technique may be too high in some cases. Contingent ranking is a survey method which is designed to isolate the value of individual product attributes which are typically supplied in combination with one another. A better pesticide policy would distinguish between pesticides with different external impacts.
