Measuring and Mobilizing Citizen Preferences for Source Water Protection

Abstract

Three themes dominate environmental management: public participation, use of the best science, and cost effectiveness. While economic valuation has grown in prominence as an aid to achieving cost effectiveness, its methodology has been challenged as inappropriate for complex situations outside of respondents’ knowledge and experience. Preferences may be constructed through education and experience. Further, particularly for public goods, preferences may develop through a social discourse that confronts multiple value frames and in response to equity concerns. Some recent experiments have sought to elicit values for cost benefit analyses from deliberative groups with access to scientific information or expertise. This project furthers the development of deliberative valuation techniques through application in the Okanagan, and collaborative adaptation with other projects in the network. With a focus on source water protection in the Central Okanagan, a series of choice experiments will be conducted.