A generic marginal value function for natural areas

Abstract

We conduct a CV and a CE experiment using a generic rather than a situation-specific study design in order to obtain a generic marginal value function for different types of natural areas with different characteristics in the Netherlands. We develop a modelling approach in which we use CV and CE choice data in one model. The value function obtained shows that people attach value to the presence of natural areas, and that these values vary due to differences in the magnitude of areas, in distance to areas, and differences in accessibility and fragmentation of natural areas. We discuss how the value function can be used to incorporate potential substitution between natural areas. We also show that for approximately one-fifth of our sample there is no added value having any kind of natural area nearby and that people living in small municipalities tend to be indifferent between accessible and inaccessible areas. Our approach produces a generic marginal value function, which may be used to inform cost-benefit analyses and land use planning decisions that wish to incorpo- rate positive and negative welfare externalities related to changes in the provision of natural areas. However, we also show that applying this value function to the regional or local scale may produce biased value estimates.JEL Classification H40 · Q26 · Q51

Effects of payment vehicle non-attendance in choice experiments on value estimates and the WTA–WTP disparity

“…In both models water and forest are preferred to grasslands, size of an area increases and distance to an area decreases its value, medium fragmentation has a small negative effect while strong fragmentation has a substantial negative effect on the value of an area, and also when an area is not accessible for recreation its value decreases substantially (for details see Koetse, Verhoef, and Brander (2016)). The first difference between the two models is that the ECLC model has a higher explanatory power than the MNL model; around 3 percentage points for WTP and around 2 percentage points for WTA.…”

“…A summary of attributes and attribute levels is provided in Table 1. For further details on this experiment, we refer to Koetse, Verhoef, and Brander (2016).…”

Citizens’ Preferences and Valuation of Urban Nature: Insights from Choice Experiments

“…The rationale of economic valuation and assigning monetary values to urban nature is widely recognised in academic literature and traditionally stems from the economic perspective of rational choice (Koetse et al, 2017;Paulin et al, 2019;Bockarjova et al, 2020). The monetisation of urban nature allows policymakers and other relevant participants to compare 'grey' and 'green' solutions through more objective methods, such as cost-benefit analysis.…”

“…A wide range of monetary valuation studies on urban nature has been conducted to date (Bockarjova et al, 2020;Paulin et al, 2019;Duijndam et al, 2020;Koetse et al, 2017). Nevertheless, these studies lack information on two main aspects.…”

“…The study focuses on cities because urban nature or urban NBS are most relevant in offering solutions to multiple urban challenges for highly urbanised areas, where nature is scarce (Lafortezza et al, 2018). Choice experiments are a state-of-the-art method in the literature on the economic valuation of ecosystem services to elicit the use and non-use value of nature (Koetse et al, 2017;Brander & Koetse, 2011;Duijndam et al, 2020). It allows the researcher to analyse preferences and, ultimately, the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for urban nature and its attributes.…”