Exploring distributional determinants of large carnivore conservation in Sweden

Abstract

This paper aims to fill the gap in the literature about distributional impacts (who wins and who loses) of implementing new management plans for non-market priced environmental goods and services. The focus is on whether and to what extent, age, gender, presence of large carnivores and income affect willingness-to-pay (WTP) for increasing large carnivore stocks in Sweden. Our results contradict findings from previous studies on large carnivores in the sense that patterns change when different distributional dimensions are analysed together. The results indicate that WTP is independent of the presence of large carnivores, except for the group ‘young men’. In general, young men are found to be a disparate group.

Keywords:

• non-market valuation
• large carnivores
• distributional effects
• equity

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to particularly thank Jonas Kindberg for his valuable input by contributing data on the number of bear observations per 1000 hours in different areas of Sweden. They also wish to thank Kristina Lundquist for help with the statistics. Further, they would like to acknowledge MountainMistra (‘FjällMistra’), the Swedish EPA, the Swedish Hunters Association for Hunting and Wildlife Management, and FORMAS for funding and logistic support.

Notes

1. Farreras et al. (2005) present results from three valuation studies relating to the conservation of old forests in Spain.

2. Income is included in the analysis to examine whether the differences in WTP found between different sub-populations are due to income effects rather than to differences in preferences.

3. The average presence of the four large carnivores can vary between 0 and 4, where 0 indicates that none of the four carnivores are present and 4 indicates that all of them are present. In areas with respondents from the Carnivores group the average value was 3.2. The corresponding value for areas with respondents from the No Carnivores group was0.6.