Valuing high seas ecosystem conservation

Xuan, B. B., Armstrong, C. W., Ankamah‐Yeboah, I., Hynes, S. and Needham, K. (2021) Valuing high seas ecosystem conservation. Conservation Biology, 35(5), pp. 1405-1416. (doi: 10.1111/cobi.13720) (PMID:33592121)

Abstract

The high seas provide a variety of ecosystem services that benefit society. There have, however, been few attempts to quantify the human welfare impacts of changes to the delivery of these benefits. We assessed the values of several key ecosystem service benefits derived from protecting ecosystems in the high seas of the Flemish Cap through choice experiments conducted in Canada, Norway, and Scotland. Rather than solely eliciting public willingness to pay, we also explored the determinants of variance in the estimates of willingness to pay. We aimed to determine how much respondents were willing to pay for high-seas ecosystems conservation, which factors influence individuals’ willingness to pay, and whether individuals in Canada had a higher willingness to pay relative to those living in Norway and Scotland. This latter point captures distance-decay effects. On average, the public placed positive value on conserving high-seas ecosystems and on developing economic activities related to the exploitation and exploration of marine resources, despite a lack of awareness and familiarity with these environments. Distance-decay effects on willingness to pay were not clear. Scots had the highest willingness to pay and the Norwegians the lowest willingness to pay for all attributes, with the only exception being willingness to pay for a large increase in new jobs, in which case Canadians’ willingness to pay was higher than Scots’. The public's willingness to pay was influenced by sociodemographic characteristics and their perceptions of high-seas ecosystems. Our results provide evidence of the impacts of high-seas governance on human welfare and that improved governance could increase the value people place on high-seas ecosystems and the services they produce.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: This work received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement 678760 (ATLAS).
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Simpson, Dr Katherine
• Authors: Xuan, B. B., Armstrong, C. W., Ankamah‐Yeboah, I., Hynes, S., and Needham, K.
• College/School: College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences > School of Biodiversity, One Health & Veterinary Medicine
• Journal Name: Conservation Biology
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing
• ISSN: 0888-8892
• ISSN (Online): 1523-1739
• Published Online: 16 February 2021
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2021 The Authors
• First Published: First published in Conservation Biology 35(5):1405-1416
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License