Ranking the substantive problems in the Dutch Cost–Benefit Analysis practice

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.