Abstract
The Everglades is one of the largest wetland ecosystems in the world covering almost 18,000 square miles from central Florida southward to Florida Bay. Over the 20th century, efforts to drain the Everglades for agriculture and development severely damaged the ecosystem so that today roughly 50% of the historic flow of water through the Everglades has been diverted elsewhere. In an attempt to restore the Everglades, the U.S. Congress authorized the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) in 2000, expected to cost over $16 billion and to take several decades to complete. We used the results from a stated preference choice experiment (SPCE) survey of Florida households to estimate the willingness to pay for several ecological attributes related to CERP performance indicators likely to be impacted by Everglades restoration. We also used a latent class model (LCM) to explore preference heterogeneity among respondents. On average, survey respondents were willing to pay for improvements in all of the attributes included in the survey, namely increased populations of wading birds, American alligators, endangered snail kites, and spotted seatrout, and reduced polluted discharges from Lake Okeechobee to the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers. Willingness to pay was highest for reduced polluted discharges from Lake Okeechobee.
Highlights
Ecological restoration to protect and enhance ecosystem services is increasingly recognized as important in promoting both conservation and human welfare [1,2,3]
Public preferences for Everglades restoration ecosystem services resulting from ecological restoration is important to attain sustainable development for several reasons
Conditional logit, random parameters logit in preference space, and random parameters logit in willingness to pay (WTP) space produced results broadly consistent with each other and economic theory
Summary
Ecological restoration to protect and enhance ecosystem services is increasingly recognized as important in promoting both conservation and human welfare [1,2,3]. Public preferences for Everglades restoration ecosystem services resulting from ecological restoration is important to attain sustainable development for several reasons. The costs of restoration are generally presented in monetary terms so to compare the benefits of restoration to the investment needed, monetizing ecosystem services is necessary [5]. There is often a need to prioritize different restoration projects or choose among several options in achieving a restoration goal. Considering the full range of benefits and costs associated with different restoration projects or options can help decision-makers choose the more effective or beneficial course of action. Fully accounting for the benefits of restoration can illuminate how the benefits are distributed among different stakeholders [5]
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