How much is new information worth? Evaluating the financial benefit of resolving management uncertainty

Abstract

Summary1. Conservation decision-makers face a trade-off between spending limited funds on direct management action, or gaining new information in an attempt to improve management performance in the future. Value-of-information analysis can help to resolve this trade-off by evaluating how much management performance could improve if new information was gained. Value-of-information analysis has been used extensively in other disciplines, but there are only a few examples where it has informed conservation planning, none of which have used it to evaluate the financial value of gaining new information. 2. We address this gap by applying value-of-information analysis to the management of a declining koala Phascolarctos cinereus population. Decision-makers responsible for managing this population face uncertainty about survival and fecundity rates, and how habitat cover affects mortality threats. The value of gaining new information about these uncertainties was calculated using a deterministic matrix model of the koala population to find the expected population growth rate if koala mortality threats were optimally managed under alternative model hypotheses, which represented the uncertainties faced by koala managers. 3. Gaining new information about survival and fecundity rates and the effect of habitat cover on mortality threats will do little to improve koala management. Across a range of management budgets, no more than 1Á7% of the budget should be spent on resolving these uncertainties. 4. The value of information was low because optimal management decisions were not sensitive to the uncertainties we considered. Decisions were instead driven by a substantial difference in the cost efficiency of management actions. The value of information was up to forty times higher when the cost efficiencies of different koala management actions were similar. 5. Synthesis and applications. This study evaluates the ecological and financial benefits of gaining new information to inform a conservation problem. We also theoretically demonstrate that the value of reducing uncertainty is highest when it is not clear which management action is the most cost efficient. This study will help expand the use of value-of-information analyses in conservation by providing a cost efficiency metric by which to evaluate research or monitoring.

International funding agencies: potential leaders of impact evaluation in protected areas?

“…One way to reduce this challenge is for funders to strategically identify projects in their portfolios that would be suitable for evaluation. The selection of projects could be done effectively using structured decision making (SDM, [35]) a method used successfully in several fields including conservation [36]. SDM would ensure the best possible selection of metrics to monitor and evaluate each project by identifying learning objectives, and using these and their feasibility to then select candidate projects in their portfolios.…”

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“…the Christmas Island Bluetailed Skink (Cryptoblepharus egeriae) is entirely reliant on captive breeding; Smith et al, 2012). In situations where such strategies are expected to be beneficial, natural resource managers could apply approaches specifically designed for evaluating these strategies, such as the framework of Canessa et al (2014) to determine the most cost-efficient ex-situ release strategy, or the value-of-information analysis of Maxwell et al (2015) for deciding between gaining new information or funding direct management. The values obtained from these approaches could be included within this tool and evaluated against other strategies.…”

Threats to migratory birds, and actions for their conservation

“…My thesis has made a contribution toward resolving this, in part by reducing uncertainty through new empirical data and analysis (Chapters 2 and 3), and in part by developing models that make the best use of the data that are available to find efficient planning solutions given the uncertainty (Chapters 4 and 5). This extends an emerging body of literature in conservation science that focuses on making the most efficient use of information we already have (Ferraro & Simpson, 2002;Naidoo et al, 2006;Arponen et al, 2010;Urban et al, 2012;Shwiff et al, 2013;Plumptre et al, 2014), carefully assessing the value of collecting new information (Oostenbrink et al, 2008;Runge et al, 2011;Williams et al, 2011;Maxwell et al, 2015), and conservation decision-making under uncertainty (McDonald-Madden et al, 2008;Wilson et al, 2009;Carwardine et al, 2010;Wintle et al, 2010;Keith et al, 2011;McDonald-Madden et al, 2011;Nicol et al, 2015).…”