Gasoline spill in the Dolomites area: an application of indirect methods for environmental damage assessment

The paper presents an application of environmental damage economic evaluation. The application was made in order to test some helpful tools provided by a handbook for the economic evaluation of compensation for environmental damage by Defrancesco et al. (2002). The paper is divided into four section. In the first one, a short overview of the features of environmental goods is presented to introduce the concept of environmental damage. In the second, the methods of economic evaluation of environmental damages elements are illustrated to evaluate the compensation amount. In the third, these methods are applied to a case study of a gasoline spill in the Dolomites area and the results of economic evaluation are provided. The final section consists of concluding remarks: a) the results of the assessment process stress the height restoration costs, which represents the most substantial element of the damage; b) the reliability of the assessment process depends on the moment of assessment; c) the results of the assessment process make it possible to compare the ways of evaluating compensation provided by Italian law.