Are citizens' juries a useful tool for assessing environmental value?

Abstract

Stated preference valuation surveys, such as choice modelling, are the preferred choice for environmental valuation of water quality improvements. Such willingness to pay (WTP) surveys commonly rely on face-to-face interviews or mail-out questionnaires on a relatively large representative sample of the target population. There is increasing concern that survey respondents may have insufficient information and limited opportunity to deliberate prior to stating their preferences about their WTP. Citizens' juries have been proposed as a novel way to overcome these limitations, providing information from expert witnesses and facilitating informed discussion within the jury, which is composed of members of the affected community. A choice modelling survey, using a 23-person citizens' jury, was conducted to estimate WTP for improvements in water quality in the Bremer River, one of the most polluted waterways in southeast Queensland, Australia. The choice modelling survey conducted pre-and post-exposure of the jurors to expert information about water quality in the Bremer River evaluated the usefulness of the jury process. A significant improvement in juror understanding was found in their responses to the survey. Importantly, following exposure to information from expert witnesses, jurors' educational background ceased to be important in determining their WTP. These findings suggest that citizens' juries could be valuable in overcoming the information problems associated with standard WTP surveys.

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“…Robinson et al (2008) reflected on their experience of using deliberative citizen's juries to derive a willingness to pay (WTP) for water quality improvements in the Bremer River catchment, Queensland, Australia. They found that citizens' juries result in an improved understanding of the proposals on the part of participants when compared with those asked to provide a WTP as individuals, and through statistical analysis they discovered that educational background ceased to be an important determinant of WTP for jury members (Robinson et al 2008). Liu et al (2010) apply an integrated Deliberative Multi-Criteria Evaluation approach to planning the management of invasive species.…”