Public Perceptions of New Zealand's Environment

Beginning in 2000 Lincoln University has completed biennial surveys of people's perceptions of the state of the New Zealand environment. The surveys use the Pressure-State-Response framework for state of the environment reporting to assess resources such as air quality, native plants and animals, native forest and bush, soils, beaches and coastal waters, marine fisheries, marine reserves, freshwaters, national parks, wetlands, urban environments, and the natural environment compared to other developed nations. They also examine participation in environmentally friendly activities, the most important environmental issues facing New Zealanders and a range of other issues. Individual case studies are also undertaken: in 2000 natural hazards; in 2002 the coastal marine environment, marine recreational fishing and preferences for expenditure on environmental matters; in 2004 freshwater and recreational angling; in 2006 transport and policies to internalise transport externalities. This paper reviews this research programme and its contribution to understanding state of the New Zealand environment and its management.Public perceptions, environment, survey, New Zealand, Environmental Economics and Policy,

Stated Preference Evaluation of Government Budgets

Stated preference approaches are widely used in non-market valuation. However, their potential uses extend far beyond valuation. In particular they can be used to assess efficiency of resource allocations and to design optimal resource allocations. Changes to the government budget were evaluated using a choice experiment. Results indicate potential efficiency gains from reallocation of the budget to items with higher marginal utility. In particular, New Zealand residents want more spending on health, education and the environment, with health spending consistently having the highest marginal benefits. People want less government money spent on income support. The choice experiment was able to identify the impacts of demographic factors. Young people rated spending on the environment and education more highly than other respondents.Choice experiment, public preferences, government budget, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Consumer/Household Economics, Environmental Economics and Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Health Economics and Policy, Political Economy, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

New Zealand freshwater management and agricultural impacts

In New Zealand, it is increasingly recognised, including by government, that water resource allocation and water quality are issues of national importance. Agriculture is frequently portrayed by public media as a major user of water and a major contributor to worsening water quality. We outline the water management systems in New Zealand, and the use of water by agriculture. Official reports on agriculture’s impact on New Zealand water availability and quality are summarised. We report how the New Zealand public perceive water, its management, and the roles of agriculture in water issues. Data from a nationwide mail survey were analysed to determine how New Zealanders assess the state of New Zealand lakes, rivers and streams, and aquifers, the performance of three agencies responsible for management of freshwater resources, and willingness to fund stream enhancement. We provide brief explanations for the failures of water resource management in New Zealand and report on options, including community-based responses that might address some of the mounting public, scientific, and government concerns about trends in water quantity and quality. A willingness to pay proposition, concerning riparian areas, included in the nationwide survey provides some evidence that the public are willing to pay for improved waterway management. Relevant non-market valuation studies also indicate that the public places considerable value on preservation values of water in New Zealand.agriculture, environmental economics, perceptions survey, water allocation, water quality, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Priorities for, and preferred approaches to, management of New Zealand fresh waters

Since 2000 six standardised biennial public surveys of the state of the New Zealand environment have been undertaken. A fresh water case study was included in the 2010 postal survey and in an electronic survey. Desirable futures for New Zealand's fresh water resources, sources of damage to freshwater, preferred management approaches, and views about charges for commercial uses of water are reported. Respondents desire high quality water, are not prepared to trade that off for damaging economic gains, and support charges for commercial uses of water. We report public preferences for tools to manage water use.public perceptions, fresh water, New Zealand, economic instruments, management, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Environmental Economics and Policy, Health Economics and Policy, Land Economics/Use,

THE OIL INDUSTRY\u27S STOCK PRICE RESPONSES TO EVENTS SURROUNDING THE DEEPWATER HORIZON EXPLOSION

The Deepwater Horizon explosion had considerable environmental, economic, and regulatory impacts. We examine oil companies\u27 cumulative abnormal returns related to the date of the rig explosion, as well as announcements regarding insurance liability, insurance premiums for offshore drilling, and deepwater drilling moratorium events. We find no statistically significant stock response to the rig explosion itself – mostly likely given the incompleteness of information at the spill\u27s beginning. We do find firms directly involved with the Deepwater Horizon show negative responses to the moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico along with evidence that firms emphasizing drilling and service to existing oil wells also react negatively. Our results further show negative impacts from the possibility of increased financial assurance and insurance costs for firms involved in the pipeline and bulk station and terminal areas. Finally, firms with a weaker financial position (higher leverage) tend to have lower returns. In all, results support contagion more than competitive effects

Public perception of the urban environment: comparison of Wellington with national data

The first State of the Environment Reporting (SER) exercise based on a survey of New Zealanders' perceptions of the environment was undertaken in 2000. The survey questionnaire is constructed upon a Pressure-State-Response model. Hughey et al. (2001) provide background and justification for the survey approach used. OECD (1996) and MfE (1997) explain this model, which is used internationally as the basis for environmental reporting. The survey by Hughey et al. was designed to be undertaken biennially and subsequent surveys were undertaken in 2002 and 2004. The main aims of the research are to measure, analyse and monitor changes in New Zealanders' perceptions, attitudes and preferences towards a range of environmental issues, ultimately contributing to improved state of the environment reporting. With regard to the present report, the Wellington Regional Council asked us to compare data - that had been gathered through the survey by Hughey et al. - for the Wellington region (as defined through the respective post codes¹ ) with data for the Rest of New Zealand (excluding Wellington)

Environmental budget allocation : public preferences

It is important for central government to have good information about public preferences regarding budget allocations. Consumer sovereignty, government popularity, and efficiency are all dependent on clear articulation of community preferences. The paper draws upon information gathered as part of a large-scale survey to identify community perceptions about the state of the New Zealand environment (Hughey et al., 2002) to identify public preferences for allocation of government monies. Methods entailed survey participant statements of preferences for spending on specified environmental and conservation items, a balanced macro-budget reallocation exercise, and a choice modelling exercise to reveal willingness to trade-off expenditures on particular budget items. The environmental budget allocation exercise provides little guidance on which aspects of environmental spending would provide the greatest benefits at the margin. For most items the modal response was no change in current spending. However, more than 50% of respondents indicated they preferred increased spending on pest & weed control, air quality and fresh waters. The macro-budget reallocation and choice modelling exercises provide similar results. They both indicated that people obtain negative utility from allocating money to income support, and desire cuts to spending on superannuation and income support. Older respondents are not as averse to spending on income support, but are still generally in favour of cuts in spending on this item. Spending on health, education, and the environment all yield positive benefits. Respondents see significantly more benefits from spending on health, than on education or the environment. Willingness to spend on health is not affected by respondent age, but willingness to spend on education and the environment both decline with age

Criteria to evaluate the application of policy instruments designed to internalise externalities from commercial fisheries : report to Ministry of Fisheries

New Zealand has the world's fourth largest Exclusive Economic Zone and a very large commercial fishery. Arguably this fishery is one of the best managed in the world. Nevertheless, many problems remain to be solved, especially environmental problems. Many of these problems can be categorised as externalities from commercial fishing. We (Hughey et al. 2000) have identified a wide range of policy instruments which can be applied to the internalisation of these externalities. In this report we identify criteria against which each of these instruments should be evaluated before it is considered for implementation. The criteria are environmental, Treaty of Waitangi, socio-economic, recreational and management, respectively. We then evaluate the effectiveness of chosen instruments against these criteria. All of these tools can be used to enhance decision making in fisheries management and a framework for this decision making is proposed

Evaluation of externality management instruments in marine fisheries

New Zealand marine fishing activities create many types of environmental externalities, which by law must be internalised. Selection of best intemalisation instruments can be aided by following a hierarchical decision process, which first screens the universe of instruments against implementation criteria to establish the feasible set. Instruments in the feasible set can be evaluated against a range of environmental, Treaty ofWaitangi, economic, sociocultural and management criteria. This approach to selection can be formalised in decision support software to provide a useful tool for fisheries management agencies

Proximal and Distal Causes in Medicine

The proximal-distal model of disease causation is often used to capture how social causes influence health outcomes. This model serves as a conceptual framework for many analyses of social determinants of health-—it does so by locating social factors as distal causes, which are upstream of proximal biology. In an influential paper, Krieger criticizes this model for being inaccurate and confused, and suggests that we “abandon the deeply confused language of the terms proximal and distal” (Krieger 2008). While we agree with many of Krieger’s criticisms, we examine different weaknesses of this model and argue that it has important strengths. We examine three causal scenarios to show how social and biological causes interrelate in various ways, which are only partly captured by this model. In particular, we show how social factors can play three types of causal roles: they can be distal causes, parallel causes, and proximal causes. We argue that-instead of eliminating “proximal” and “distal” causal terminology—accurate use of these terms is not only possible, but instrumental in capturing how social causes influence health and disease