Valuing the commons: An international study on the recreational benefits of the Baltic Sea
Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskrift › Tidsskriftartikel › Forskning › fagfællebedømt
The Baltic Sea provides benefits to all of the nine nations along its coastline, with some 85 million people living within the catchment area. Achieving improvements in water quality requires international cooperation. The likelihood of effective cooperation is known to depend on the distribution across countries of the benefits and costs of actions needed to improve water quality. In this paper, we estimate the benefits associated with recreational use of the Baltic Sea in current environmental conditions using a travel cost approach, based on data from a large, standardized survey of households in each of the 9 Baltic Sea states. Both the probability of engaging in recreation (participation) and the number of visits people make are modeled. A large variation in the number of trips and the extent of participation is found, along with large differences in current annual economic benefits from Baltic Sea recreation. The total annual recreation benefits are close to 15 billion EUR. Under a water quality improvement scenario, the proportional increases in benefits range from 7 to 18% of the current annual benefits across countries. Depending on how the costs of actions are distributed, this could imply difficulties in achieving more international cooperation to achieve such improvements.
| Originalsprog | Engelsk |
|---|---|
| Tidsskrift | Journal of Environmental Management |
| Vol/bind | 156 |
| Sider (fra-til) | 209-217 |
| Antal sider | 9 |
| ISSN | 0301-4797 |
| DOI | |
| Status | Udgivet - 1 jun. 2015 |
| Eksternt udgivet | Ja |
Bibliografisk note
Funding Information:
We gratefully acknowledge the funding for the survey from the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and the four Finnish Ministries ( Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry , Ministry of Environment , Ministry of Transport and Communications and Ministry of Finance ). We are also grateful for the support provided by the following projects/organizations: the research project Protection of the Baltic Sea: Benefits, costs and policy instruments (PROBAPS); the research alliance Integrated management of agriculture, fishery, environment and economy (IMAGE), funded by the Danish Research Council of strategic research; and the Baltic Nest Institute (BNI) Denmark, funded by Aarhus University. The study was a subproject within the BalticSTERN research network, and we are grateful to the BalticSTERN Secretariat for support and coordination. The data collection was coordinated by Synovate Sweden. The first author acknowledges the support of the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education and the Foundation for Polish Science. We are grateful for prof. Anni Huhtala's substantial contribution in designing and conducting the study as well as comments which helped developing this manuscript. Any remaining errors are ours alone.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Elsevier Ltd.
ID: 324692047