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Abstract
This paper reports on a case study to establish dollar values for loss of
biodiversity in the New Zealand coastal marine environment. The study uses
the European Shore Crab (Carcinas maenas) as the example alien invasive
species and the Pauatahanui Inlet, Wellington, New Zealand, as the
ecosystem representative of the coastal marine environment. Choice
modelling is the stated preference tool used to elicit marginal dollar values for
these various attributes of the inlet. Reallocation of existing government
expenditure is used as the payment mechanism. Results indicate a wide
range of dollar values for the marginal losses to the environment, with no
clear trend on a distance-decay relationship. The probability distributions of
the dollar values of the environmental attributes tended to have a
concentration around the median with very wide tails, especially on the high
side. This indicates that most people generally agreed on a dollar value, but a
very few individuals expressed extremely high values. The study concludes
that the dollar values for loss of biodiversity and other environmental
attributes do provide useful information to decision makers, but considerable
caution needs to be exercised when applying these values in benefit cost
studies. Marginal rate of substitution estimates between environmental
attributes will be useful for estimating money values for attributes identified
given future work estimates a statistically significant money value for one.