Integrated Multi-Attribute Preference Analysis in Fisheries and Solar Power Symbiosis Areas: A Case Study in Cigu, Taiwan

Han-Shen Chen,Hung-Yu Kuo

doi:10.3390/w13223265

Abstract

To achieve the 2025 Non-Nuclear Homeland goal and carbon emission mitigation target, the Taiwan government has been developing actively green and renewable energy with low carbon emissions. This study assessed the FSPS development project in the Cigu region of Tainan City to provide a thorough analysis toward making tradeoffs among ecosystem conservation, aquaculture, fisheries, and green power generation development. This study employs the choice experiment method and designs different attributes and levels to discuss the preferences of stakeholders in the policy development choices for ecosystem conservation and FSPS. The hope is that it can balance economic development and ecological conservation. The findings demonstrate that the tourists’ marginal willingness to pay is low. The respondents then give importance to improving biodiversity. Finally, they prefer minimal changes to the status quo with the FSPS policy implementation. These findings can serve as a reference for decision making for regional sustainable development, aquaculture and fishery upgradation, and green power generation and exploitation.

Highlights

While contingent valuation method (CVM) can only consider the characteristic attributes of natural resources as goods as a whole and conduct single value analysis, choice experiment (CEM) can assess multiple attributes and levels, combine different alternative schemes according to the important characteristics of nonmarket goods or services, and allow the respondents to select suitable alternative schemes based on their preferences via the choice set of different scenario assumptions to avoid assessment-biased errors [27]
This study issued 1142 questionnaires, and 974 valid responses were received, with a valid questionnaire recovery ratio of 85.2%; 400, 405, and 169 valid questionnaires were from tourists, local residents, and aquaculture farmers, respectively
The findings show that knowledge of the aquaculture farmers about “fishery and solar power symbiosis (FSPS)” and “ecocompensation” is better than that of local residents and tourists, and

Summary

Introduction

Academic Editors: Jenn Kai Tsai, Charles Tijus and Wei-Ling Hsu. Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Climate change has become a global concern [1], and the development of renewable energy is essential in mitigating climate change [2,3]. Renewable energy has become pivotal for energy policies of many countries [4,5,6,7]. Taiwan has explicitly stipulated that its long-term greenhouse gas-reduction goal is to reduce 50% or more of its 2015 greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. According to Taipower [8] data, renewable energy development in Taiwan has prioritized wind and solar power generation; renewable energy constituted only 4.9% of the power generation structure in 2018.

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion