A comparison of regional and national values for recovering threatened and endangered marine species in the United States

Economic Valuation of Green Island, Taiwan: A Choice Experiment Method

The evaluation of ecological security and ecosystem services is now a core issue in the field of natural and environmental resources. Quantifying the economic value of island ecosystem services can inform policy decisions that affect the island and help justify expenditures on ecosystem service improvements. This study investigates the preferences of residents and tourists regarding Green Island and estimates willingness-to-pay (WTP) values for island ecosystem services using a choice experiment. The results indicate significant differences between the preferences of residents and tourists regarding island environmental resources. Therefore, based on the multiple attributes and ecosystem services, this study formulated three assessment schemes: “environmental protection”, “recreational development”, and “integrated operation and management”. Based on our analysis of the problems reflected in the aforementioned valuation models, we recommend that policy makers refer to environmental attribute preferences to create statements or advertisements targeting relevant audiences when planning island development. This paper contributes to the literature by demonstrating how the economic valuation of island ecosystem services can help design and target island conservation policies in order to maximize welfare.

Public Assessment of Releasing a Captive Indo-Pacific Bottlenose Dolphin into the Wild in South Korea

A captive Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin named “Jedol” was released from a zoo into the wild, in Jeju Island Sea off South Korea, in July 2013 to improve his welfare. Since he was illegally captured off the coast of Juju Island in May 2009, he had been performing in dolphin shows at Seoul Zoo, which is owned and operated by the Seoul Metropolitan Government. The release demanded considerable public expenditure, of which the source was local taxes gathered from the residents of Seoul. This paper seeks to conduct an ex-post evaluation of the release, employing the contingent valuation (CV) technique. A total of 500 households living in Seoul in 2013 participated in the CV survey to report their willingness to pay (WTP) for the release. Fifty-two percent were willing to accept an increase in local taxes over the next five years to carry out the release. The mean household WTP estimate was obtained as KRW 4880 (USD 4.56) per annum. The present values of the total WTP and the cost of the release are KRW 79.82 billion (USD 74.53 million) and KRW 751 million (USD 701,000), respectively, in 2013. Interestingly, the former is much more than the latter. We can conclude that the release was desirable from the point of view of Seoul residents.

Deriving a Benefit Transfer Function for Threatened and Endangered Species in Interaction with Their Level of Charisma

Biodiversity and species conservation are among the most urgent global issues. Both are under serious threat because of human intrusion and as a result, it is likely that present and future projects will affect threatened and endangered species. Thus, it is important to account for these impacts when evaluating and conducting cost and benefit analyses of projects. Due to their public good character and non-tradability, the total economic value of threatened and endangered species cannot be reflected by a market price and therefore, alternative approaches (stated preference method) are needed to determine their monetary value. This paper reviews and compares the valuation literature on threatened and endangered animals and conducts a meta-analysis regression to identify explanatory variables for the variation in willingness to pay for threatened and endangered species. The main findings of the meta-analysis show that the interaction of the level of threat and charisma have a positive effect on willingness to pay. Furthermore, developed countries have a higher willingness to pay compared to developing countries. Similarly, visitors of conservation sites have higher willingness to pay than residents. The provided example of a benefit transfer of the estimated function shows the practicability of our results.