Spatial and Scope Effects: Valuations of Coastal Management Practices

We explore how values for environmental management in the Kimberley region of Australia respond to changes in spatial scale and attribute scope. A discrete choice experiment was conducted that included the impacts of management on marine no-take areas, Aboriginal rangers, recreational facilities, and coastal development. A split sample single-site design was used to estimate values for the Kimberley region as a whole, and for two separate smaller sub-regions, allowing us to test for spatial preference heterogeneity. Management outcomes for different regions were displayed on a map to show respondents explicitly where outcomes would occur. We show that willingness to pay results are similar between the two smaller sub-regions, and that willingness to pay for the attributes increased when management occurred at the larger geographical scale. However, respondents were somewhat insensitive to changes in the scope of the two cardinal attributes: area of no-take and number of rangers. We discuss the implications of this spatial and scope insensitivity for choice experiment research.