Which Future for the Hurunui? Combining Choice Analysis with Stakeholder Consultation

Dan Marsh and Yvonne Phillips ()
Additional contact information
Yvonne Phillips: University of Waikato
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Yvonne Sharon Matthews

Working Papers in Economics from University of Waikato

Abstract: The future of the Hurunui River and its catchment has been hotly contested between those who seek to store and/or divert water from the river in order to increase agricultural production and those who would like to see the river undeveloped and the quality of natural resources in the river and catchment improved. The Canterbury Regional Council wished to develop an approach to manage catchment nutrient loads across the region in order to achieve the objectives of its Natural Resources Regional Plan (NRRP) for water quality and aquatic habitats. Our approach, combining stakeholder consultation with choice analysis, was developed and tested in the Hurunui catchment in 2010-2011. The policy objective of the choice experiment was to describe and quantify the preferences of Canterbury Region residents with respect to existing conditions (the status quo) and potential future land use and water quality scenarios for the catchment. It was envisaged that this quantitative information on preferences across the region would be used by policy makers at the same time as they considered the outcomes of the stakeholder deliberative process. At the conclusion of the consultation process there was ‘general acceptance’ of a future development strategy for the Hurunui catchment that would maintain water quality in the main river at 2005-2009 levels while improving the tributaries to 1990-1995 water quality. Results from the choice experiment are broadly supportive of this approach. Canterbury region residents would require substantial compensation (mean $244-$315 per household per year) before they would accept a decline in water quality in the main river or in the tributaries. Willingness to pay for improvements in the main river is lower with a mean of $25-$33 per household per year.

Keywords: choice experiment; scale factor; error variance; water quality; New Zealand (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q25 Q51 Q53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2012-12-21
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://repec.its.waikato.ac.nz/wai/econwp/1217.pdf (application/pdf)

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:wai:econwp:12/17

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers in Economics from University of Waikato Private Bag 3105, Hamilton, New Zealand, 3240. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Geua Boe-Gibson ().