Disentangling Distance and Country Effects on the Value of Conservation across National Borders

Abstract

Coordination of conservation policies and conservation actions between countries is expected to reduce overall costs and increase effectiveness. It rests on the assumption that, as a global public good, the provision of biodiversity conservation is independent of geographical and political jurisdictions. However, from a welfare economic perspective this assumption requires testing and justification. Indeed, distance may matter, as may the country of provision. This study applies a choice experiment to estimate individuals' marginal willingness to pay for comparable biodiversity conservation measures and outcomes across country borders, and with different distances from their place of residence to conservation locations in Denmark and in Southern Sweden. The case is designed to distinguish the effect of distance from the effect of country of residence versus country of provision. We find a clear and distinguishable effect of both location and country of provision. We find distance-related attributes to reflect bridge tolls and per-kilometre transport costs, and Swedes and Danes to prefer provision in their own country, over provision in the neighbouring country. The results of this study may be useful in discussing cooperation on regional and even global biodiversity conservation efforts.

Using Individualised Choice Maps to Capture the Spatial Dimensions of Value Within Choice Experiments

“…Several valuation studies have documented preferences for provision of environmental related goods in the same country as respondents are located (e.g. Dallimer et al 2014; Rogers and Burton 2017), however only one previous study (Bakhtiari et al 2018) examined these issues while at the same time controlling for distance. The Country attribute is relevant for Great Britain given its historical and current political context, but note that the approach presented here could theoretically accommodate other administrative attributes such as counties or regions.…”

“…The incorporation of space within CE studies is an increasing feature of the valuation literature (e.g. Adamowicz et al 1994;Johnston et al 2002;Campbell et al 2008Campbell et al , 2009Brouwer et al 2010;Schaafsma et al 2012Meyerhoff 2013;Johnston and Ramachandran 2014;Czajkowski et al 2016a;Johnston et al 2016;Interis and Petrolia 2016;Holland and Johnston 2017;Bakhtiari et al 2018;De Valck and Rolfe 2018;Glenk et al 2019). Initial interest in the spatial aspects of environmental preferences within stated preference (SP) valuation studies was motivated by the definition of relevant markets for aggregation of estimated values (e.g.…”

“…Distance decay has been also shown to be influenced by perceptions and characteristics of the good being valued (Andrews et al 2017). Beyond physical space, people have also been shown to have heterogeneous preferences across political boundaries, for example, exhibiting "premiums" for environmental goods and services delivered in the respondent's own country of residence (Dallimer et al 2014;Rogers and Burton 2017;Bakhtiari et al 2018). Such 'cultural' preferences for the provision of environmental goods and services related to administrative, political and/or other cultural boundaries were shown to be motivated by inter alia sense of ownership, cultural identity or ethical concerns (e.g.…”

The conservation status assessment of Natura 2000 forest habitats in Europe: capabilities, potentials and challenges of national forest inventories data

“…Increased coordination across national boundaries is widely believed to be more cost effective compared to independent national planning (Bakhtiari et al 2018). Given the evident need to improve the comparability of assessments among Member States, the use and suitability of NFIs were evaluated as a tool to assess the conservation status of forest habitat types and/or the degree of conservation, which in recent years has been the focus of important harmonisation efforts.…”

“…The significance of biodiversity for human wellbeing and the consequences of the continued loss of natural habitats have been recognised in several international conservation policies and initiatives (Bakhtiari et al 2018) such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (UN 1992), the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA 2005), the European Natura 2000 network (Wurzel 2008) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES 2012).…”