Using meta-regression to determine Noise Depreciation Indices for Asian airports

The external costs of aviation noise are an important input in policy assessment for cost-benefits analysis. The Noise Depreciation Index (NDI) is used to capture the externality costs through measuring the depreciation of property prices (PPs) exposed to aviation noise. This paper summarizes existing studies on NDI and examines the underlying differences in order to transfer these NDI values to other parts of the world, where NDI estimates are not directly available. We find that higher wealth, expressed in terms of PPs, relative PPs or income, result in higher values of NDI. This means that wealthier households de-value the PPs more than the average in the presence of aircraft noise. The income dependence allows the NDI estimates to be transferred to other locations using local PPs or income for cost–benefit analysis. Estimates of NDI for some Asian countries using the meta-regression results are also provided.