Figures 4.3 and 4.4, and Table 4.6 show that in general, visitors have preferences for all landscapes except an increase in grassland cover (C), but for the biodiversity choice, by far the most frequent choice was an increase in rare and threatened birds and mammals (outcome D), or the status quo. Many studies have indicated that „cute and cuddly‟ wildlife is preferred by respondents and obtains higher WTP than other wildlife (Loomis and White 1996, White et al. 2001) so it is no surprise that the most favoured outcome includes an increase in rare and threatened birds and mammals. This is consistent with economic theory if we assume that respondents have innate preferences for species more similar to humans, and which can therefore elicit stronger emotional responses.
It is not obvious whether landscape or biodiversity is more important in determining choices for the combined outcome and willingness to pay bids, with similar
proportions of respondents who did not choose the same outcome for landscape and biodiversity going on to choose that which they had chosen as the landscape outcome for the combined outcome as choosing that which they had chosen as the biodiversity
outcome for the combined outcome (Fig. 4.3). However they clearly do have different influences on final choice and WTP, with high ranking of landscape in general (Table 4.3) being more important than high ranking of wildlife in determining outcome choices (Table 4.9). Landscape choice is more important in determining willingness to pay than biodiversity choice, but biodiversity choice is more important in
determining whether or not an individual is WTP something or not (Tables 4.14 and 4.17). Further work would be required to understand the precise influence of each of these elements (landscape and biodiversity) on choices and willingness to pay.
4.7.3 Willingness to pay
Aggregate willingness to pay is highest for the increase in blanket bog and rare and threatened birds and mammals. The mean willingness to pay of visitors to achieve outcomes (£6.54) is low compared with published results (Table 4.18). Note therefore that the donation payment vehicle with open ended elicitation format does not seem to have led to bids which are biased upwards.
Table 4.18 Previous WTP estimates for similar goods in UK. The
geographical scale is similar except for Christie et al. (2006, the bottom two examples) which are for the UK as a whole.
Good WTP Reference
Blanket bog landscape and biodiversity in the North Pennines
£10.52 annually to a trust fund for 5 years
Present study
South Downs landscape and Biodiversity
£19.47 annual tax Willis et al. (1995)
Somerset levels landscape and biodiversity
£11.84 annual tax Willis et al. (1995)
Upland grass/shrub habitats
£11.73 one-off payment Edwards-Jones et al. (1995)
Rare unfamiliar species in UK
£189 annual tax increase over 5 years
Christie et al. (2006)
Habitat quality in UK £74 annual tax increase over 5 years
It bodes well that the present results are less than previously published figures. There is considerable debate about the validity of valuation estimates by methods such as contingent valuation, with one criticism being that respondents can always state more than they actually would pay (e.g. Hanley et al. 2001). Cheap talk scripts such as that used in this questionnaire have been shown to lower hypothetical bias (Lusk 2003), although without undertaking a parallel non-hypothetical treatment, it cannot be known whether cheap talk has completely eliminated hypothetical bias. The embedding effect, which in this context would involve respondents failing to
incorporate the fact that the North Pennines is only one part of the British countryside which they might wish to pay towards maintaining, has been shown in many CV studies (e.g. Desvousges et al. 1993, Bateman et al. 1997). Embedding can be avoided by suitable study design (Hammitt and Graham 1999) and the present study provides lower WTP valuations for the North Pennines than other studies of UK landscapes and biodiversity such as Christie et al. (2006) which valued biodiversity and habitat enhancement in England. This suggests that the continual reference to „the North Pennines‟ in the questionnaire has at least reduced if not eliminated embedding.
Following on from the discussion in section 4.9.2, not only is landscape choice more important than biodiversity choice in determining willingness to pay, but where both landscape and biodiversity are significant explanatory variables (outcomes C, D and E in Table 4.14), the coefficient is higher for landscape. The same effect is seen in Table 4.17: WTP to prevent an outcome is higher if that outcome was NOT the chosen landscape scenario than if it was not the chosen biodiversity scenario. This indicates that landscape provides more value to consumers than biodiversity. Both of these are public goods in that they are non-rival and non-excludable, but landscape is more accessible than biodiversity. Landscapes can be observed and enjoyed aesthetically more easily than biodiversity can be. Thus perhaps landscapes provide an additional use value over and above the combined use and non-use values intrinsic in both landscape and biodiversity.
The landscape and biodiversity represented by an increase in blanket bog commands the highest willingness to pay, with a mean of £10.53, corresponding to an aggregate £283,983.50 per year for maintenance. Given the cute and cuddly effect observed elsewhere, this is no surprise. Perhaps more surprising is the fact that the blanket bog
is an important element of this combined outcome, with this landscape outcome being preferred by approximately one quarter of respondents (Figure 4.3). The mean WTP of those that chose outcome D as landscape is £14.53, whereas the mean of those that chose it as biodiversity is £10.69. Of those that chose this as combined outcome, but did not choose this for both landscape and biodiversity outcomes individually, 30 chose it as the landscape outcome and 101 as the biodiversity outcome. So even though this outcome is more often favoured due to the biodiversity it supports, the landscape element elicits higher WTP perhaps incorporating use values that biodiversity does not have.