Non-market goods derived from restoring flads, are they worth the trouble?

Abstract

The quark archipelago is home to a unique environment called flad. These shallow lagoons are, trough an uplift up to 1cm year-1, changing appearance rather quickly and therefore create a niche environment. In Västerbotten, three flads were restored at their threshold with the ambition of increasing some of the ecosystem services and ecosystem goods received from a flad. These are located at Halsskärgraven, Inre Bastufjärden and Ytteravan. By using the stated preference method, or more precise the contingent valuation method, this study identifies the non-market values received from an increase in six ecosystem goods received by the nearby property owners, for these three flads. An interval open-ended method was used to identify respondents’ true willingness to pay. The study identifies if there is a difference between users and non-users in which ecosystem goods that are important while also identifying their willingness to pay. It further looks into the differences between locations in terms of total willingness to pay. The three major findings are (a) users and non-users seem to value different ecosystem goods as important, however the total willingness to pay was not significantly different between users and non-users, (b) the total willingness to pay was significantly different for Inre Bastufjärden compared to the other two locations and (c) the total willingness to pay varied between 28 077-74 774 SEK in Halsskärgraven, 9 338-17 388 SEK in Inre Bastufjärden and 33 775-54 915 SEK in Ytteravan. The study further concludes that about 11-30% (Halsskärgraven), 19-35% (Inre Bastufjärden) and 31-50% (Ytteravan) of the costs could be argued for by economic benefits received from the non-market ecosystem goods, by the nearby property owners. This gives an indication of the importance in the usage of the stated preference method.