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Abstract
Improving the conservation status of remnant native vegetation on private property
(RNV) has a number of economic benefits. RNV can contribute to on-farm
productivity through provision of unimproved grazing, timber products and stock
shelter. It may contribute to enhancing the productivity of downstream properties
though amelioration of land degradation associated with salinity, water quality decline
and soil erosion. The Australian community might also place value on certain
attributes of RNV such as its scenic amenity and contribution to biodiversity
conservation. Where these community values can be expressed in terms of trade-offs
between RNV conservation and other things of value such as personal disposable
income, they can be assessed using economic methods. It is these community values
which are the subject of this paper.
Economic values held by the community for RNV conservation are nonmarket in
nature. Since they are not revealed directly in the market place, and cannot be
indirectly recovered though surrogate market techniques, they can only be assessed
using stated preference methods. The most widely research stated preference method is
contingent valuation (CV). Concerns about the validity of CV data have limited their
use in environmental policy development, especially in Australia. The relatively new
technique of choice modelling (CM) may offer a means of addressing such concerns.
In addition, CM can enable more detailed exploration of participants’ preferences across
different quantities and qualities of the good being valued. We used both CV and CM
to assess the nonmarket economic values of RNV in two study areas - northeast Victoria
and the southern Riverina of NSW. Results from the two methods were not
significantly different, providing evidence of convergent validity. However, the CM
models have the advantage that they can be adjusted to take into account different
policy options, and the associated welfare estimates also have narrower confidence
intervals than those derived from CV models. Using the best CM model, aggregate
compensating surpluses for improved conservation management of RNV in the southern
Riverina of NSW and northeast Victoria were estimated to be $81 million and $59
million respectively.