Testing the Influence of Substitute Sites in Nature Valuation by Using Spatial Discounting Factors

Abstract

This paper investigates the effect of nearby nature substitute sites on preferences for nature restoration. Contrary to prior studies, we use a respondent-centric approach to control for substitute sites. We assess each respondent-specific spatial context by computing densities of nature substitute sites within various ranges from each respondent's home. This approach considers the use and non-use values of nature together. Data from three similar discrete choice experiments carried out in Flanders (Belgium) are compared. Different spatial discounting factors are tested to explore how the substitution effect behaves with regard to distance. Latent class analyses are performed to account for preference heterogeneity among respondents. We observe divergent behaviours across groups of respondents. The "distance-to-substitutes" affects how respondents gauge substitute sites. We find a significant influence of the squared average buffer distance but this effect varies in sign across case studies and classes of respondents. Our results demonstrate that individual-specific GIS data can significantly improve the representation of the spatial context and the transferability of value functions. However, the roles played by preference heterogeneity and nature perception on respondents' capacity to value nature still deserves further attention in future research.

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

“…Sutherland and Walsh 1985;Bateman et al 2000Bateman et al , 2006 and is influenced by the availability and proximity of substitutes (e.g. De Valck et al 2017). Substitutes are increasingly incorporated in CE studies-either explicitly in the study design or implicitly in the data analysis-and were shown to impact preferences for environmental changes with significant implications for value aggregation Jørgensen et al 2013;Lizin et al 2016;De Valck et al 2017).…”

“…De Valck et al 2017). Substitutes are increasingly incorporated in CE studies-either explicitly in the study design or implicitly in the data analysis-and were shown to impact preferences for environmental changes with significant implications for value aggregation Jørgensen et al 2013;Lizin et al 2016;De Valck et al 2017). Distance decay has been also shown to be influenced by perceptions and characteristics of the good being valued (Andrews et al 2017).…”

Spatial analysis of demand for sparsely located ecosystem services using alternative index approaches

“…AREA) should be taken with caution, and we should be wary of claiming the clear superiority of this spatial discounting factor over the others. In any case, these results suggest a less pronounced discounting effect than that found by De Valck et al (2017), who report the use of the inverse of the squared distance as showing the best results. Very probably, the different characteristics of the case studies (an agricultural system in our case and the restoration of different natural sites in theirs, and the geographic context -Flanders/Andalusia, etc.)…”

“…As shown in Section 2.2, the distance to environmental sites may not be a sufficiently accurate measure for explaining the heterogeneity in individuals' WTP for scattered ecosystems (as most agricultural systems are). This explains why area-and density-based approaches have been proposed for these cases as alternative approaches for spatial discounting (Yao et al, 2014;Nielsen, Lundhede and Jacobsen, 2016;De Valck et al, 2017;Holland and Johnston, 2017). However, to the authors' knowledge, none of the previous works have explicitly explained the theoretical basis justifying the use of these spatial indexes.…”

“…However, there are other spatial factors that influence the values attached to ES, which revolve around the type of value (use and non-use) attached to the service (Hanley, Schläpfer and Spurgeon, 2003), the presence of substitutes in the nearby areas (Jørgensen et al, 2013) and directional aspects (Agee and Crocker, 2010;Schaafsma, Brouwer and Rose, 2012). While distance-decay seems to be present in a vast majority of cases (Johnston, Besedin and Holland, 2019), recent contributions call into question the prevalence of this effect over other spatial factors, especially substitutability (Lizin et al, 2016;Czajkowski et al, 2017;De Valck et al, 2017), showing that there are still unresolved issues in this field.…”