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This paper describes the application of a cost-benefit analysis to a highly popular tourist area - the Cíes Islands. The goals of the analysis are, first, to determine the social value of the area in terms of attractiveness and, second, to evaluate public intervention in terms of the preservation of the Islands. Non-users as well as users are considered. The results indicate that there is a clear social benefit and potentially valuable information is made available to public decision makers. Taking only users into account, the cost-benefit ratio is an estimated 5.4, which is to say that for each additional monetary unit spent on conservation more than 5 monetary units are earned in terms of social benefit. Moreover, this return increases to 16.8 if users are taken into account in the valuation process.

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