Marine Sites and the Drivers of Wellbeing: Ecosystem vs. Anthropic Services

Barbara Cavalletti,Elena Lagomarsino,Matteo Corsi

doi:10.3390/su132212568

Barbara Cavalletti, Elena Lagomarsino + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/su132212568

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Journal: Sustainability	Publication Date: Nov 14, 2021
Citations: 3	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Genoa, University of Padua

Abstract

Coastal sites offer a range of services that contribute to human wellbeing. While some of the services are entirely human-made (e.g., parasol and sunbed rental), others are produced thanks to the contribution of marine ecosystems (e.g., water clarity). The purpose of this paper is to investigate the preferences of a sample of beachgoers for these two categories of services that policymakers have to balance when designing management strategies for coastal sites. We consider a marine site in the north of Italy that partially falls within the boundaries of a protected area but that is characterized by a medium-to-high level of anthropization. The results of a discrete choice experiment show that in the current state of things, the ecosystem services proposed for the sample have, on average, a higher marginal utility, suggesting that actions increasing those services have a larger effect on well-being.

Highlights

Drivers of Wellbeing: Ecosystem vs.Ecosystems contribute to human wellbeing through the provision of a range of goods and services that are used in many productive and consumptive activities, frequently in combination with human inputs [1,2]
For the first time, we propose a discrete choice experiment (DCE) that includes the attributes that are associated with both marine ecosystem and human-made services to allow a comparison between them
This work reports the results of a DCE conducted in a partially protected marine site along the north-western coast of Italy

Summary

Introduction

Drivers of Wellbeing: Ecosystem vs.Ecosystems contribute to human wellbeing through the provision of a range of goods and services that are used in many productive and consumptive activities, frequently in combination with human inputs [1,2]. When not exclusively devoted to ecosystem conservation, protected areas are expected to attract visitors, and the overall production of welfare deriving from their management should come from the experiential, recreational, and educational services obtained from the site by those flows of visitors [3]. Such services consist of a variable mix of human and natural inputs that, at different levels of governance, could be combined to maximize wellbeing that is conditional on the availability of information on the value that the different inputs have to those benefitting from them. Every level of policymaking, from the regulations produced by the governing bodies of protected areas to the high-level legislation concerning ecosystem conservation, can be designed around

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