Eliciting public values for management of complex marine systems: An integrated choice experiment

To accurately capture how the public values marine environmental management, we need valuation approaches that can accommodate the complexity of environmental systems and human interaction with them. Coherently representing this complexity in an evaluation means that we can inform the socially optimal allocation of marine resources among competing uses, such as fisheries, industry, and environmental protection. Integrated choice experiments (ICE) provide a systematic approach to valuing large numbers of attributes, and we use them to value eight marine ecological and recreational features at Moreton Bay, South-East Queensland. The ICE employed two sub-experiments: ecological and recreational, to reduce cognitive load for respondents. We compare the ICE approach with a full-profile discrete choice experiment (DCE), with all eight attributes. The ICE had greater face validity than the traditional format. We find large, positive willingness to pay (WTP) for the provision of recreational features and habitat protection, although with some diminishing marginal effects.