Valuing the Recreational Benefits of Wetland Adaptation to Climate Change: A Trade-off Between Species’ Abundance and Diversity

Abstract

Climate change will further exacerbate wetland deterioration, especially in the Mediterranean region. On the one side, it will accelerate the decline in the populations and species of plants and animals, this resulting in an impoverishment of biological abundance. On the other one, it will also promote biotic homogenization, resulting in a loss of species' diversity. In this context, different climate change adaptation policies can be designed: those oriented to recovering species' abundance and those aimed at restoring species' diversity. Based on the awareness that knowledge about visitors' preferences is crucial to better inform policy makers and secure wetlands' public use and conservation, this paper assesses the recreational benefits of different adaptation options through a choice experiment study carried out in S'Albufera wetland (Mallorca). Results show that visitors display positive preferences for an increase in both species' abundance and diversity, although they assign a higher value to the latter, thus suggesting a higher social acceptability of policies pursuing wetlands' differentiation. This finding acquires special relevance not only for adaptation management in wetlands but also for tourism planning, as most visitors to S'Albufera are tourists. Thus, given the growing competition to attract visitors and the increasing demand for high environmental quality and unique experiences, promoting wetlands' differentiation could be a good strategy to gain competitive advantage over other wetland areas and tourism destinations.

Is an Environment with High Biodiversity the Most Attractive for Human Recreation? A Case Study in Baoji, China

“…Studies by Qiu et al [13] and Dallimer et al [16] showed that people's recreational preferences are not related to biodiversity, but some studies have found that people preferred an environment with rich and diverse plants [15,31,32]. This study found that people's preferences have a positive correlation with species richness, and the degree of preference significantly differed in the different habitats.…”

Stated Preferences for Conservation Policies Under Uncertainty: Insights on the Effect of Individuals’ Risk Attitudes in the Environmental Domain

“…Two DCEs were designed to capture the effect of uncertainty on individuals' preferences for conservation policies. One DCE, used here as a control treatment and presented in Faccioli et al (2015), illustrated a context in which CC impacts and the results of policies in S'Albufera were displayed as certain to respondents (certain treatment). In the second DCE, both CC impacts and, consequently, the results of policies appeared as uncertain (uncertain treatment).…”

Communicating research on the economic valuation of coastal and marine ecosystem services

“…Studies around wetlands [88,89], coastal waters [49,86] and MPAs [6,90] also point to the importance of cooperating with natural scientists to obtain information about environmental uncertainties and potential irreversibilities. As the way people process and interpret uncertainty and irreversibility risk can affect ecosystem values, such information is crucial to avoid biased estimates.…”