Nyttan av att uppnå god miljöstatus i den svenska Östersjön

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the benefit of achieving Good Environmental Status in the Swedish Baltic Sea. This was made possible by evaluating the descriptors of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive through a Contingent Valuation study answered by the citizens of Sweden in 2019. The estimates were obtained through Ordinary Least Squares and Interval regressions and then compared to similar studies. The results found that the predicted willingness to pay for achieving Good Environmental Status in the Swedish parts of the Baltic Sea varied between an average of 1 027 and 1 093 SEK per person and year until 2040. Aggregated over citizens aged 18-79, the total welfare is estimated to circa 8 billion SEK per year. Due to the geographical vastness of the Baltic Sea, a delimitation was set to the Swedish and Finnish part of the Baltic Sea. Swedes’ willingness to pay are particularly driven by prior knowledge and concerns about the current status. A variety of ex ante and ex post measures have been applied to mitigate biases, such as adjustments to reduce hypothetical bias. Moreover, scope and embedding effects have been acknowledged and discussed. Overall, this essay is seen through an anthropocentric lense. Thus, the true value of the Baltic Sea is not evaluated.