Value landscapes and their impact on public water policy preferences

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd A growing body of research suggests that people's values may be important predictors of their preferences regarding water governance and policy. However, this assertion is rarely tested empirically. The present study summarises the results of a large-scale quantitative study on the link between public water policy preferences and people's values, based on data from a representative sample of the general population collected in a household survey in the Upper Paraguay River Basin, Mato Grosso, Brazil (n = 1067). Structural equation modelling is applied to represent the clusters of values, or ‘value landscapes’ that shape attitudes and water policy preferences, in this case, for or against the construction of the highly controversial Paraguay-Paraná Waterway across the Pantanal wetland. Results demonstrate that opponents of the waterway share a value landscape composed of closely related self-transcendence values, democratic governance-related values, and ecological and cultural water values, whereas supporters hold self-enhancement values, economic governance-related values, and economic water values. Beyond this individual case study and beyond water governance, our findings may explain the protracted nature of, and seeming impossibility to resolve, environmental conservation vs. economic development conflicts more broadly.Scottish Government Hydro Nation Scholars Programm

Economic valuation of ecosystem services trade-offs of tilapia cage culture farm and native capture fisheries in Lake Maninjau, Indonesia

Research on the effects of cage aquaculture on native fish populations has revealed its negative and positive impacts. However, a separate analysis of its ecological and economic effects creates incomplete information for the decision-makers. Moreover, the inadequacy of time series data has caused challenges to knowledge-based decision-making in establishing new cage aquaculture sites, especially in low-middle income countries. We use the ecosystem services (ES) framework to analyse the synergy and trade-off of cage aquaculture to a native fish species, Gobiopterus sp. in Lake Maninjau, Indonesia, as an effort to provide comprehensive information to support local decision-makers and to fill the information gap. We engaged some modelling techniques such as the Maximum Entropy Model (MaxEnt) validated with field survey data, Bayesian Networks (BN), and Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) in this research. The results show that cage aquaculture provides habitat services for the species and temporary forgone fish production due to the accelerated sulfur upwelling. The economic value of habitat provision reached 74,500 IDR per year per cage or 1,128 million IDR per year in 2017. Further, the average value of the forgone benefit of fish production in the current cage aquaculture business extends from more than 550 million IDR per year in the dry season to almost 600 million IDR per year in the rainy season. The results indicate that the negative impacts of cage aquaculture on the native fish population outweigh its benefit. The recommendation for management actions includes applying alternative aquaculture techniques and other technological interventions.</p

Enhancing the Face Validity of Choice Experiments: a Simple Diagnostic Check

We propose a simple diagnostic check for face validity assessment of willingness to pay (WTP) estimates derived from choice experiments (CEs). The check is based on a threshold value for WTP that is related to the highest cost attribute level, which can be used to assess plausibility of estimated WTP. If the threshold value is exceeded, WTP estimates are considered to overshoot. This may be due to issues with (i) the design of the CE and/or (ii) respondents’ behavior deviating from assumptions underpinning CEs. Applying the check to a sample of publications, this paper provides evidence on the incidence and magnitude of overshooting of WTP in the agricultural and environmental CE literature. Based on a random sample of publications including 304 observations representing individual studies and population samples, the results show that overshooting of WTP is widespread, with 65% of observations exceeding the overshooting threshold value. An exploratory analysis to identify factors associated with overshooting of WTP across studies reveals that study design factors, and in particular the design of the cost attribute, play an important role. We recommend that researchers apply the diagnostic check for the design of choice experiments and to motivate further scrutiny of choice experiment results