Monday, March 25, 2024
12:00 – 13:00 CET
GoToWebinar

Abstract

Coastal lagoon habitats provide multiple ecosystem goods and services that contribute to people’s well-being. However, owing to degradation from both anthropogenic and natural causes, these areas require conservation and protection that involve considerable public investment. To help determine this investment, this study estimates the nonmarket economic value of habitat, regulation, and cultural ecosystem services (ESs) using people’s environmental attitudes and temporal preferences. Primary data were collected from 517 residents in the Veneto region through an online choice experiment survey. Respondents’ environmental attitudes and beliefs were collected using the revised New Ecological Paradigm scale and analyzed using principal component analysis. Mixed logit models were applied to evaluate the marginal willingness to pay under different scenarios. The results suggest that people are willing to pay to improve the conservation of lagoon ESs and that the future environmental impacts are valued less than the immediate effects. Additionally, people with environmental attitudes are more likely to contribute to the protection of ESs, and unobservable factors such as motivations, attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs guide people’s valuations.

Speaker

Stefania Tonin is Associate Professor in Applied Economics and teaches economics and policy of sustainable spatial development and urban economics. She holds a degree in business administration and a PhD in sustainable development analysis and governance (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice).
She is member of the board of the doctoral program in architecture, cities and design.
Her research is mainly related to the economic valuation of sustainability, environmental assets and the economic analysis of urban development processes. The focus of her latest research has been the non-market valuation of the socio-economic benefits of remediation and redevelopment of contaminated and brownfield sites, the valuation of marine biodiversity, the economic valuation of the social cost of carbon, and the assessment of the collective costs of urban sprawl. Her works has been published in a number of leading refereed journals, i.e.: Ecological Indicators, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Science and Policy, Environmental Impact Assessment Review, Risk Analysis, Transport Policy, Regional Science and Urban Economics, Research in Transportation Economics, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Carbon Management, and Journal of Environmental Planning and Management.

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This webinar is the third in a series of Seminars, organized by the FEEM Research Program “Climate Change Adaptation (Adapt@VE)” and Ca’ Foscari University on Venice Lagoon.