Academy Fellow

Professor John Rolfe is a resource economist at CQUniversity at Rockhampton. He has a number of research interests, but specialises in non-market valuation, regional development, environmental, resource and agricultural economic issues, agricultural adoption, and economic impact assessment in regional areas. He co-edited two important reference books on the topic of non-market valuation and benefit transfer in 2006 and 2015, and has published in a number of discipline areas outside his core skills in Applied Economics, including agricultural management, environmental reporting, impact assessment, and regional development,.

Professor Rolfe has led a number of major research projects (> 40) over the past 10 years for a total funding value of more than .4M. His research has been funded through a number of sources, including the Australian Research Council grants, Australian and State Governments, Research and Development Corporations, and industry grants. He has supervised a number of PhD and Masters students to completion, as well as post-doctoral researchers. Professor Rolfe is a past Editor-in-Chief for a major applied economics journal, the Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

Professor Rolfe’s standing in the resource economics field in Australia is shown by his participation in the national Environmental Economics Research Hub, from 2007-2011, where he was one of four program directors. In 2011, he was identified by Regional Development Australia as one of the most influential academics in Australia in regional development issues. He has served as the Independent Chair for the Gladstone Regional Community Consultative Committee on the basis of his expertise in impact assessment since 2012, and as Chair of the Gladstone Healthy Harbour Partnership Independent Science Panel as an expert in resource economics since 2016. In 2012-2013 and again in 2016-2017 he was one of the leaders of the 2013 Great Barrier Reef Science Consensus Statement, reflecting his expertise in this topic.

Professor Rolfe has extensive practical and policy experience on the intersection of agricultural and environmental issues in northern Australia, with a focus on economic analysis. At an academic level his key impacts are largely in the development and application of non-market valuation techniques, particularly choice modelling, and the transfer of those values to different case study settings. At a policy level, he has had a major role in applying economic analysis to key issues in regional development, agricultural development and resource protection, with a particular emphasis on dealing with agricultural water quality issues into the Great Barrier Reef.

Chair, Independent Science Panel, Gladstone Healthy Harbour Partnership

1. Johnston, R, Rolfe, J, Rosenberger, R and Brouwer, R (eds.) 2015 Benefit Transfer of Environmental and Resource Values: A Guide for Researchers and Practitioners. Springer, Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
2. Rolfe, J, Whitten, S & Windle, J 2017. The Australian experience in using tenders for conservation, Land Use Policy 63, 611 – 620.
3. Rolfe, J & Windle, J 2015 Do respondents adjust their expected utility in the presence of an outcome certainty attribute in a choice experiment? Environmental and Resource Economics, 60: 125-142.
4. Rolfe, J & Windle, J 2014. Public preferences for controlling an invasive species in public and private spaces, Land Use Policy, 41: 1-10.
5. Rolfe, J & Harvey, S 2017. Heterogeneity in practice adoption to reduce water quality impacts from sugarcane production in Queensland, Journal of Rural Studies, in press