Revealed preference valuation of beach and river water quality in Wales

ABSTRACT

This paper estimates the value of water quality for outdoor recreation in Wales, considering all beaches and rivers in the country, and accounting for the value accrued to existing visits and generated from new visits. The values were aggregated for the population and mapped to show where the benefits of improving water quality are higher. We used a revealed preference method that links models of choices of beaches and rivers with models of the monthly number of visits to all beaches and rivers. We found that improving water quality of a beach from good to excellent has an estimated value of £2.58 per existing visit and leads to an average 52% increase in the number of visits, resulting in an overall value of £199,164/month per person. Improving water quality of a beach from sufficient/poor to good has a smaller value and impact on number of visits. Improving water quality of a river stretch to above bad/poor has a value of £0.99 per existing visit and leads to a 64% increase in the number of visits, resulting in an overall value of £15,671/month per person. We discuss how the assumptions made in the analysis might affect these results.

KEYWORDS:

• Water quality
• river water quality
• beach water quality
• water recreation
• economic valuation
• revealed preference
• travel cost

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Welsh Water.