رتبه بندی مشکلات اساسی در عمل تجزیه و تحلیل هزینه - منفعت در هلند

This paper investigates the perceptions of key participants in the Dutch Cost–Benefit Analysis (CBA) practice regarding substantive problems when appraising spatial-infrastructure projects with CBA. Two research methods were applied. Firstly, 86 key participants in the Dutch CBA practice were interviewed in-depth in order to obtain an overview and a ranking of perceived substantive problems with CBA in the Netherlands. Secondly, the people interviewed were also asked to fill in a written questionnaire in which they were asked to rank the substantive problems once again, in order to improve the validity of the ranking; 74 of the participants completed this questionnaire. The most important conclusions of this paper are, firstly, that key participants in the Dutch CBA practice consider ‘problems with the estimation of the non-monetized project effects’ as the most important substantive problem cluster and ‘problems with monetizing project effects’ as the second most important substantive problem cluster. Secondly, key participants in the Dutch CBA practice consider the ‘problem analysis’ in a CBA to be a very important substantive problem. Thirdly, there is, in a broad sense, consensus among the different groups in the Dutch CBA practice concerning their perception of the seriousness of problem clusters and the way they rank the problem clusters. Fourthly, a large part of the substantive problems mentioned by the key participants in the Dutch CBA practice are non-specific CBA problems.

In most western countries (Social) Cost–Benefit Analysis (CBA) is a widely used ex-ante evaluation tool used to support the decision making process in transport (e.g. Grant-Muller et al., 2001, Hayashi and Morisugi, 2000, Odgaard et al., 2005 and Vickerman, 2007). Nevertheless, many process and content related problems with the use of CBA in the decision making process can still be found in scientific literature (see Section 2). To the best of the authors’ knowledge, a systematic empirical analysis concerning the perceptions of different participants in a CBA practice on content related problems has not been carried out. A study of participants’ perceptions can clarify whether substantive problems discussed in the scientific literature are actually experienced in practice. In this paper we investigate the perceptions of 86 key participants in the Dutch CBA practice concerning substantive problems that arise when appraising spatial-infrastructure projects using CBA. We define the way welfare effects are estimated and the way the estimations are presented in the CBA reports as substantive problems. We attempt to identify which substantive problems key participants experience and what the relative order of importance of substantive problems is according to 86 key participants. Moreover, we aim to identify the extent to which perceived substantive problems are specific CBA problems or just problems related to any ex-ante policy evaluation tool. Finally, we aim to analyze to which extent different groups in the Dutch CBA practice (e.g. consultants, scientists, policy makers) perceive substantive problems differently. Our empirical results can be used as inspiration for CBA research agendas. When researchers take into account the perceptions of key practitioners by the determination of a CBA research agenda, this might enhance the acceptance of the use of the instrument in the decision making process. The remainder of this contribution is organized as follows. Section 2 positions this paper in CBA-related transport literature. Section 3 discusses the research methodology. Section 4 presents the quantitative results regarding the ranking of substantive problems in the Dutch CBA practice. Section 5 discusses the perceived substantive problems in more detail. Section 6 analyzes the extent to which different groups in the Dutch CBA practice perceive the substantive problems differently. Finally, Section 7 concludes and discusses the results.

Firstly, we can conclude that key participants in the Dutch CBA practice experience a large variety of substantive problems regarding the appraisal of spatial-infrastructure projects using CBA. The 86 key participants interviewed mentioned 636 substantive problems that were categorized in 92 problem categories. Subsequently, it was possible to cluster the 92 problem categories into nine problem clusters.