Abstract
There is a growing impetus to increase marine protected areas coverage globally from 6% to 30% in 2030. Successfully establishing and maintaining marine protected areas require incorporating public preferences into their establishment and management. We investigate the role of alternate management regimes (top-down and bottom-up) on preferences for marine protected areas and the marginal rate of substitution between natural and man-made capital using a case study in the Asia-Pacific region of Okinawa, Japan. We implemented a choice experiment survey to infer which attributes of marine protected areas are most important for the respondents. We use our survey results to calculate respondents’ willingness to support marine protected areas in Okinawa. This study contributes to the policy debate on management of marine protected areas with empirical data that characterizes the perception of Okinawan residents with respect to the role of local coastal communities (bottom-up) compared to central government based agencies (top-down) management. We extend the analysis and estimate the trade-offs to residents in Okinawa between natural capital (i.e. coral coverage and marine biodiversity attribute) and man-made capital (i.e. restrictions on coastal development). We find that the underlying management regime affects the local residents’ valuation of the marine protected area with residents showing a higher willingness to support bottom-up management regimes. There is also substantial differences in the willingness to support different characteristics of marine protected areas by management type. Finally, we find that the marginal rate of substitution between natural capital and man-made capital varies by management type such that residents would need to be compensated relatively less in terms of man-made capital in the presence of a policy scenario that proposes an increase in natural capital under a bottom-up management regime.
Highlights
Today marine protected areas (MPAs) cover almost 6% of the earth’s coastal and marine areas
We find that the residents of Okinawa place a relatively higher value on natural capital such as coral coverage and marine biodiversity compared to man-made capital such as more infrastructure development in coastal areas
Respondents favor MPAs that are centered on the extension of the coral coverage along the coast of Okinawa, which in this experiment is interpreted as the conservation of marine environment, regardless of the management types
Summary
Today marine protected areas (MPAs) cover almost 6% of the earth’s coastal and marine areas. Many community-managed MPAs in Okinawa are established primarily for protection and enhancement of fishery resources and often target protection of specific species such as shellfish, emperor fish and groupers Such MPAs are important because they actively involve local participation from fishermen and other stakeholders that are closely associated with the marine environment and avoid many of the problems caused by national based MPA management regimes. For this study we first discussed the overall status and primary reasons for establishing MPAs in Okinawa with members from the Nature Conservation section and the Fisheries Extension center from the Okinawan prefectural government offices We used this information along with literature on the concerns and pressures facing Okinawa’s marine environment to design preliminary survey instruments. We provide examples of the Japanese survey questionnaires and English translations of the survey in supporting information S1–S4 Files
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