Decline in the alpine landscape aesthetic value in a national park under climate change

Kota Mameno (), Takahiro Kubo (), Hiroyuki Oguma, Yukihiro Amagai and Yasushi Shoji
Additional contact information
Kota Mameno: Tohoku University
Hiroyuki Oguma: National Institute for Environmental Studies
Yukihiro Amagai: Shiretoko Nature Foundation
Yasushi Shoji: Hokkaido University

Climatic Change, 2022, vol. 170, issue 3, No 17, 18 pages

Abstract: Abstract Alpine landscapes are projected to be degraded under climate change, which would threaten their benefits to society. Previous studies, however, have been limited to aesthetic change, and it remains unclear how much the aesthetic change would affect human welfare. To address this issue and gain insights into climate change adaptation policies, we conducted a choice experiment survey using digitally manipulated images based on climate change scenarios and natural scientific knowledge in a mountainous national park in Japan. We uncovered that park visitors appreciate the alpine landscapes that include snow patches on mountains and some types of alpine flowers by analyzing the data from 445 respondents. Conversely, both the invasion of alpine vegetation by dwarf bamboo and the disappearance of snow patches due to climate change substantially deteriorated the perceived aesthetic benefits from alpine landscapes. The economic loss caused by climate-induced landscape degradation was estimated at more than 100 USD per visitor, at maximum; the disappearance of snow patches and invasion by dwarf bamboo reduced the benefits by approximately 13 USD and 101 USD, respectively. Our findings suggest that sustaining the aesthetic value of alpine landscapes in national parks via climate change adaptation has potentially significant economic benefits. By supposing that the mountain national park attracts 70,000 visitors in summer, climate change would cause as a minimum of eight million USD economic loss at the park without appropriate measures annually. Our findings highlight the importance of climate change measures by considering climate change impacts on social benefits associated with alpine landscapes.

Keywords: Alpine vegetation; Climate change adaptation; Cultural ecosystem service; Discrete choice experiment; Mountainous national park (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10584-022-03322-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:climat:v:170:y:2022:i:3:d:10.1007_s10584-022-03322-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10584

DOI: 10.1007/s10584-022-03322-1

Access Statistics for this article

Climatic Change is currently edited by M. Oppenheimer and G. Yohe

More articles in Climatic Change from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().