Choice experiments and collaborative decisions on the uses and values of rivers

ABSTRACT

There is growing interest in deliberative and collaborative approaches to environmental management and in obtaining information on values to inform these processes. We explore the question of when a discrete choice experiment (DCE) is most useful for policy formulation, through discussion of a DCE designed to identify public preferences for freshwater management. The study was conducted in a contested New Zealand policy context with a collaborative stakeholder group considering the uses and values of local rivers. Using a DCE, survey responses were collected and analysed to estimate public preferences for changes in river attributes. This produced informative results, but suffered from a limited sample and a decision not to use a focus group to aid survey design. The results were challenged by members of the stakeholder group on various grounds that went well beyond these limitations. The group was not ready to accept the DCE results as an input for decision-making, with one referring to the study as ‘manufacturing consent’. For DCE to produce results that are accepted in contested policy contexts, it needs to be more integrated into the stakeholder engagement process. This has implications for moves towards greater use of collaborative decision-making for natural resource management.

KEYWORDS:

• Willingness to accept
• social learning
• attributes
• framing
• reductionism

Acknowledgements

Comments from the editors and two anonymous reviewers significantly helped to sharpen the focus of this article and are gratefully acknowledged. The views expressed and any remaining errors are the responsibility of authors only. The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Dan Marsh and Ricardo Scarpa of the University of Waikato during the design of the survey.

Notes

1. New Zealand has five unitary local authorities, which combine the functions and responsibilities of both regional and district councils. Tasman District Council is one of these.

2. Given the nature of Tasman rivers, boating on these three rivers would mostly involve whitewater and flat water kayaking, but might include some rafting and power boating as well.

3. As an anonymous reviewer pointed out, all public consultation processes can be described as ‘manufacturing consent’ (Cooke and Kothari 2001). This perhaps explains in part the increasing public distrust of government and the trend towards more deliberative and inclusive forms of democracy described, for example, in Innes & Booher (2010).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (contract CO9X1003), Wellington.