Achieving Robust and Socially Acceptable Environmental Policy Recommendations: Lessons from Combining the Choice Experiment Method and Institutional Analysis Focused on Cultural Ecosystem Services

Abstract

The reflection of ecosystem services in environmental policy has recently become a key aspect in solving environmental problems occurring as a consequence of their overburdening. However, decision makers often pay attention predominantly to results of quantitative (monetary valuation) methods. This article explores a new way of combining quantitative and qualitative methods that has proven to be a useful practice for achieving better environmental governance. We combine the (quantitative) choice experiment method and (qualitative) institutional analysis as full and equal complements. In our approach, the goal of qualitative institutional analysis is not to verify the adequacy of willingness-to-pay results but rather to better address cultural and social perspectives of society representatives. Such an approach increases the robustness of policy recommendations and their acceptance in comparison with isolated applications of both methods. To verify this general premise, both methods were applied in the territory of the Eastern Ore Mountains in the Czech Republic to capture preferences and attitudes of local stakeholders as well as tourists towards small-scale ecosystems. The results confirm that preference calculations regarding aesthetic values of ecosystems need to be complemented with facts about institutional settings and barriers in order to better address locally relevant recommendations for decision makers, such as the introduction of new economic instruments (e.g., local taxes or entrance fees). The findings of this study can also be considered for governance of larger local, common-pool resources such as (public) forests or protected areas.

Assessing Tourism Carrying Capacity Based on Visitors’ Experience Utility: A Case Study of Xian-Ren-Tai National Forest Park, China

“…The difference is that the CVM generally assesses the marginal utility due to the change in the level of a single recreational attribute, while all other attributes are constant [33][34][35]. However, in the actual market, visitors' recreational demands are not for a single attribute but rather a comprehensive demand for the various attributes constituting a recreational trip [36]. The total utility of visitors is the result of the joint action of multiple recreational attributes.…”

La valoración económica como fundamento de políticas ambientales: una revisión sistemática

“…Luego, la identificación y análisis de estudios de valoración monetaria de los servicios ecosistémicos reguladores y culturales (Förster et al, 2019). Asimismo, la aplicación conjunta del Método del Experimento de Elección de tipo cuantitativo y el Análisis Institucional de tipo cualitativo (Louda et al, 2021 A continuación, se presenta en la tabla 4, el tipo de instrumento utilizado, por los autores seleccionados, para realizar su investigación. Los artículos, dependiendo se los objetivos perseguidos, muestran una preferencia a la utilización combinada de las diferentes herramientas metodológicas que posibilitan el trabajo en el ámbito de la valoración económica, resaltando el hecho del uso de fuentes primarias fundamentalmente y, en ausencia de éstas se recurre a información oficial o a una combinación de ambas.…”

“…También conducen a la idea básica de políticas activas con el objetivo de salvaguardar la biodiversidad y los servicios ambientales, mediante la reducción de la extracción de recursos y la contaminación, para valorar ecosistemas y riqueza natural. Las políticas deben servir para abordar los problemas ambientales aplicando estrategias de gobernanza (Louda et al, 2021) multinivel y, con ello, asegurar el acceso y la asignación de recursos. Esta situación indica que la sostenibilidad ambiental deba estar sujeta a cuantificación y valoración, como fundamento decisional (Lusardi et al, 2020).…”

Ocean ecosystem services: modeling a factor development process to create sustainable value for decisions

“…These authors use the model to analyze and quantify the level of tourist service offered to society. In addition, Louda et al (2021) explore a new way to be helpful practices for better environmental governance. They combine methods in the cultural and social perspectives of society representatives.…”