The economics of public open spaces under water scarcity

The rise in extreme weather events and changing baseline climate conditions call into question the suitability of maintaining current irrigation practices in public open spaces. With Perth, Australia as a case study, this thesis presents five papers that examine the benefits and costs associated with changing conventional public-open-space designs towards water-conserving alternatives. Nonmarket valuation techniques (choice experiments and hedonic price analysis), along with benefit-cost-analysis and best-worst scaling methods are applied. Results show that cities facing water stress may be able to implement management and policy changes that simultaneously enhance financial and environmental sustainability, and community wellbeing.