River Water Quality: Who Cares, How Much and Why?

Danyel Hampson,Dan Rigby,Ian Bateman,Silvia Ferrini

doi:10.3390/w9080621

Abstract

An important motivation for the implementation of the Water Framework Directive is the creation of non-market environmental benefits, such as improved ecological quality, or greater opportunities for open-access river recreation via microbial pollution remediation. Pollution sources impacting on ecological or recreational water quality may be uncorrelated, but non-market benefits arising from riverine improvements are typically conflated within benefit valuation studies. Using stated preference choice experiments embedded within a survey that also collected respondents’ socio-economic characteristics, we aimed to disaggregate these sources of value for different river users, thereby allowing decision makers to understand the consequences of adopting alternative investment strategies. Our results suggested that anglers derived greater value from improvements to the ecological quality of river water, in contrast to swimmers and rowers, for whom greater value is gained from improvements to recreational quality. More generally, we found three distinct groups of respondents: a majority preferring ecological over recreational improvements, a substantial minority holding opposing preference orderings, and a yet smaller proportion expressing relatively low values for either form of river quality enhancement. As such, this research demonstrates that the non-market benefits that may accrue from different types of water quality improvements are nuanced in terms of their potential beneficiaries and, by inference, their overall value and policy implications.

Highlights

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) requires substantial improvements to the quality of Europe’s waters so that the ‘good ecological status’ of surface waters is achieved [1]
The strength of the coefficients relative to one another suggested that such respondents, on average, valued improvements in ecological quality more than they did for improvements in recreational/microbial water quality
This research disentangles and examines the relationships between ecological and recreational This research disentangles and examines the relationships between ecological and recreational sources of value, thereby allowing decision makers to better understand the consequences of adopting sources of value, thereby allowing decision makers to better understand the consequences of adopting alternative investment strategies that favour either ecological, recreational or a mix of benefits

Summary

Introduction

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) requires substantial improvements to the quality of Europe’s waters so that the ‘good ecological status’ of surface waters is achieved [1]. One important motivation for the implementation of the WFD appears to be the creation of non-market social benefits such as improved provision of, and opportunities for, open-access recreation (Articles 4, 9 and 11 of the WFD). Previous research has shown that it is technically infeasible and prohibitively expensive for all UK rivers to be brought to ‘good ecological status’ within the near future [2]. The WFD allows derogations from ‘good ecological status’ where remediation projects may be technically infeasible, or where remediation costs may be disproportionate to the benefits created The financial costs of pollution remediation must be offset against the benefits of that remediation.

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Conclusion