TY - JOUR
T1 - Twenty thousand sterling under the sea
T2 - Estimating the value of protecting deep-sea biodiversity
AU - Jobstvogt, Niels
AU - Hanley, Nick
AU - Hynes, Stephen
AU - Kenter, Jasper
AU - Witte, Ursula
N1 - Funding Information:
This work received funding from the MASTS pooling initiative (The Marine Alliance for Science and Technology Scotland) and their support is gratefully acknowledged. MASTS is funded by the Scottish Funding Council (grant reference HR09011 ) and contributing institutions. We are deeply thankful for the critical feedback that we received from many individuals over the course of the survey testing phase. In particular we like to thank Mirko Moro, Dugald Tinch and Neil Odam at the Stirling Economics Department for their invaluable input on survey and experimental design. Two referees provided valuable feedback on earlier versions of this paper.
PY - 2014/1/1
Y1 - 2014/1/1
N2 - The deep-sea includes over 90% of the world's oceans and is thought to be one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world. It supplies society with valuable ecosystem services, including the provision of food, the regeneration of nutrients and the sequestration of carbon. Technological advancements in the second half of the 20th century made large-scale exploitation of mineral, hydrocarbon and fish resources possible. These economic activities, combined with climate change impacts, constitute a considerable threat to deep-sea biodiversity. Many governments, including that of the UK, have therefore decided to implement additional protected areas in their waters of national jurisdiction. To support the decision process and to improve our understanding for the acceptance of marine conservation plans across the general public, a choice experiment survey asked Scottish households for their willingness-to-pay for additional marine protected areas in the Scottish deep-sea. This study is one of the first to use valuation methodologies to investigate public preferences for the protection of deep-sea ecosystems. The experiment focused on the elicitation of economic values for two aspects of marine biodiversity: (i) the existence value for deep-sea species and (ii) the option value of deep-sea organisms as a source for future medicinal products.
AB - The deep-sea includes over 90% of the world's oceans and is thought to be one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world. It supplies society with valuable ecosystem services, including the provision of food, the regeneration of nutrients and the sequestration of carbon. Technological advancements in the second half of the 20th century made large-scale exploitation of mineral, hydrocarbon and fish resources possible. These economic activities, combined with climate change impacts, constitute a considerable threat to deep-sea biodiversity. Many governments, including that of the UK, have therefore decided to implement additional protected areas in their waters of national jurisdiction. To support the decision process and to improve our understanding for the acceptance of marine conservation plans across the general public, a choice experiment survey asked Scottish households for their willingness-to-pay for additional marine protected areas in the Scottish deep-sea. This study is one of the first to use valuation methodologies to investigate public preferences for the protection of deep-sea ecosystems. The experiment focused on the elicitation of economic values for two aspects of marine biodiversity: (i) the existence value for deep-sea species and (ii) the option value of deep-sea organisms as a source for future medicinal products.
KW - Choice experiment
KW - Deep-sea biodiversity
KW - Economic value
KW - Existence value
KW - Marine protected areas
KW - Option value
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84887648732&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.10.019
DO - 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.10.019
M3 - Review Article
AN - SCOPUS:84887648732
SN - 0921-8009
VL - 97
SP - 10
EP - 19
JO - Ecological Economics
JF - Ecological Economics
ER -
