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Table 6 Strengths and weaknesses of MCA and CBA

From: Multicriteria versus Cost Benefit Analysis: a comparative perspective in the assessment of sustainable mobility

 

CBA

MCA

Strengths

Rigour and rationality

Participation and legitimacy

Largely formalised

Democracy

Transparency

Allows qualitative measures

It is a “common language”, known and used worldwide

Informal

Easy communication of the results

 

Independent from judgements

Potentially participative*

Weaknesses

Difficult technique, expensive.

Potential ambiguity, subjectivity

Need of many data, sometimes hardly available

Some components of arbitrariness, especially in the perception of public costs vs. private benefits

Practically impossible to assess “soft” effects (beauty, personal beliefs, attitudes)

Risk of double counting

Equity is not a goal directly assessed*, but left to decision maker

Lack of clarity, consistency, accountability

  1. * The modern applications of CBA allow the participation (trough the definition of shadow values) and to take into account the distributive aspects (trough the use of Kaldor-Hicks matrixes). See Section 3.2 for detailed references
  2. Source: authors elaboration