Evaluation of environmental actions by local citizens – a choice modeling application

Abstract

Little is known about citizens’ judgment of nature conservation actions financed by public funds. The present work contributes to this topic with empirical evidence coming from a Choice Modeling (CM) study designed in an innovative mode. Using the participatory budget format, a CM exercise elicited respondents’ choice between the allocation of public funds for nature conservation actions versus other actions (e.g. social or economic interventions). The case study comprises an EU-LIFE project managed by a Portuguese municipality. Results highlight the importance of awareness of and accessibility to environmental goods, as those that are more willing to pay use the area for leisure activities and have a greater knowledge about it. In addition, we suggest that CM can be used as a tool to uncover citizens’ preferences regarding public budget allocation which can contribute to a democratization of decision making at this level.

Keywords:

• choice modeling
• public budget allocation
• nature conservation
• EU-LIFE program
• public policy

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank to the LIFE 12 BIO/PT/000110 project team from Praia da Vitória Municipality, and to all the interviewed persons for their interest on this topic and availability.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In what follows, the BUDGET attribute will be measured in million euros.

2 All estimations were performed using the NLOGIT Version 4.0 statistical software.

3 The work developed by Guimarães et al. (2014) did not focus on the BJ area. Therefore, we are unable to compare our results regarding this specific wetland.