Abstract
The aim is to develop an efficient and transparent method for eliciting socio-economic values of ecological and biodiversity functions provided by the Dutch Wadden Sea. This is a well-known example of a complex marine ecosystem. The approach can support the design of an effective and broadly accepted marine management policies. This objective is operationalized by the use of alternative economic valuation methods, including contingent valuation and travel cost method, so that both use and nonuse values can be assessed, and the consistency of the value estimates obtained by different methods can be tested. Special attention will be devoted to the development of a framework for a contingent valuation in the context of different stakeholders, reflecting different socio-economic professional groups with distinctive knowledge, familiarity, and experience with respect to the effects of marine ecosystems and biodiversity values provided by the Dutch Wadden Sea. In particular, contingent valuation will be applied to the general public, recreationists, fishermen, environmental conservation agencies, scientist experts and policy officials. Finally, the degree of transferability of such findings to other cases will be examined.
Netherlands