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Abstract
Expanding urban areas such as Queensland’s Sunshine coast face growing land
use conflicts among urban, agricultural and conservation uses. Private allocation
decisions often exclude non-use value of environmental benefits leading to both
socially undesirable and economically inefficient outcomes. We present the results
of a choice modelling study in the Sunshine coast to estimate community values
for peri-urban land in production and conservation. We examine the implications
of the value estimates in the optimal allocation of land for sugarcane on the basis
of total economic value from all land uses including the preservation of unique and
threatened vegetation.