Hyötykertoimet

Hyötykertoimet are quantitative factors used primarily in Finnish statistical and economic analyses to convert objective measures of activity into estimates of perceived or instrumental benefits. The term literally means “benefit coefficients” and is most commonly linked to cost‑benefit and impact assessment frameworks. In practice, a hyötykerroin assigns a monetary or other numerical value to a single unit of a chosen input or output, allowing analysts to aggregate heterogeneous benefits into a common scale.

The calculation of a hyötykerroin usually starts with a survey or model that elicits respondents’ valuations of a specific outcome. Responses are aggregated and then normalised against a baseline reference level, producing a coefficient that represents the relative importance or utility of that outcome. For example, in a transportation study, a 1‑kilometre reduction in travel time might receive a hyötykerroin of 0.02 euros per minute, reflecting the average willingness to pay for shorter journeys among a sample population. When applied across all stakeholders and combined with cost data, the resulting net benefit estimate informs investment and policy decisions.

Hyötykerroimet are widely used in environmental economics, public health, and regional development projects in Finland. Despite their usefulness in translating intangible goods into tangible numbers, they suffer from limitations including sampling bias, temporal instability of preferences, and the difficulty of capturing non‑monetary values. Critics also caution that reliance on these coefficients may oversimplify complex social trade‑offs, especially when the underlying data are limited or when valuation contexts differ substantially from those used to create the coefficient.