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Why:

Policy-makers need to understand the likely social impacts of future policies. A range of market-based and non-market economic methods exist that try to capture the importance of the environment to human wellbeing. However, these may not fully capture the shared values and meanings ascribed to nature. This research aims to address some of these limitations and provide decision-makers with tools that they can use to incorporate shared, cultural and plural values in decision-making.

People hold different types of values; contextual values around how valuable something is to them, but also ‘transcendental’ values around principles and deeper beliefs. They may also hold different values depending on whether they are asked as a householder or a member of their local community or interest group, or as a consumer versus a citizen. There is also evidence that values around nature are not pre-formed, and often implicit. People may need to form values through deliberation with others. Deliberative processes can inform values, as well as bring out the communal and cultural transcendental values, beliefs and meanings that shape individual values. They also allow consideration of fairness, debate around risk and uncertainty, and more consideration of long-term impacts. Therefore, these shared social valuation processes are thought to generate different value outcomes than valuation on the basis of conventional individual survey methods. To elicit these shared, plural and cultural values, it is necessary to use a mix of monetary, non-monetary and hybrid approaches to capture the fullest possible range of values to inform more robust, inclusive and far-sighted decision-making.

What:

Aim:

To operationalise cultural, shared and plural values for decision-making and explore their relationship to individual and aggregated individual values.

Summary:

This WP will focus on developing effective monetary and non-monetary deliberative valuation methods that account for shared, plural and cultural values of the environment. The project will review the existing literature and conduct case studies to deliver practical, widely transferable methods for assessing these values and provide empirical evidence that clarifies the relationship between individual, aggregated individual and shared values; and the role of deliberation and social learning in shaping shared values.

Outputs/outcomes:

Methods/tools being developed:

Case studies will investigate group based deliberative monetary valuation (DMV) and contrast this with non-Deliberative Monetary Valuation using online surveys and in group settings.

A range of deliberative techniques that have not yet been used in association with ecosystem valuation (e.g. conceptual systems modeling, storytelling) are being developed for this purpose.

Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) will be used both as an alternative to monetary valuation in short workshops, and as a means of weighing value evidence in longer workshops.

Psychometric tools will be used in tandem with valuation methods in order to gauge ethical values, worldviews, and beliefs about the environment.

A novel non-monetary indicator-based instrument for valuing the importance of cultural services to wellbeing is being developed.

Anticipated Case Studies:

Three case studies will deliver practical, widely transferable methods for assessing shared values and provide empirical evidence that clarifies the relationship between individual, aggregated-individual and shared values; and the role of deliberation and social learning in shaping shared values.

Inner Forth: Working with RPSB Futurescape and Inner Forth Landscape Initiative projects, ex-ante evaluation of the potential benefits of landscape-scale conservation, coastal realignment and heritage projects, using deliberative choice experiments.

Marine Protected Areas: Working with MCS. Ex-ante evaluation of the potential benefits of MPAs with a (non-exclusive) focus on cultural services; within a consultation context. Non-deliberative and deliberative monetary and non-monetary valuation, use of psychometrics and wellbeing indicators, UK wide focus groups, working with two beneficiary groups (divers and sea anglers).

Hastings inshore fisheries: Working with Hastings Fisheries Local Action Group, evaluation of shared values around inshore fisheries to feed into Europe-wide evaluation. The case study uses an iterative series of workshops that incorporate non-monetary methods including MCA and a novel form of DMV with a range of stakeholders.

Coastal and marine values in the media: This case study uses content analysis of a wide range of media publications to assess shared cultural values around marine environments and the coast.

Links to other Work packages:

WP1: Understanding of cultural values from natural capital assets.

WP3b: Potential shared marine case-study.

WP4: Understanding of cultural values from natural capital assets; collaboration on conceptual frameworks and case-studies; potential for including shared values in CES surveys; development of novel indicator-based instruments.

WP6/WP7: Input to scenarios re: conceptualisation of impact of values on responses, how shared values might influence how scenarios may play out and how shared values might change under different scenarios. Deliberative methods as policy response options, understanding response options in relation to cultural values.

WP8: How do shared values influence uptake of ecosystems knowledge in decision-making? How do decision-makers perceive plural values? How do shared and cultural values relate to institutional obstacles for the uptake of valuation evidence.

WP9/WP10: Tool-reviews of deliberative monetary valuation and multi-criteria analysis; joint case studies.

Team:

Principal Investigators:

Mark Reed (Birmingham City University)

Jasper Kenter (University of Aberdeen)

Project manager:

Jasper Kenter (University of Aberdeen)

Team Members:

Ros Bryce, Niels Jobstvogt, Mandy Ryan, Verity Watson, Michelle Pinard (University of Aberdeen)

Katherine Irvine (De Montford University & James Hutton Institute)

Liz O’Brien (Forestry Commission/Defra)

Emily Brady (Edinburgh University)

Mike Christie (Aberystwyth University)

Andrew Church, Neil Ravenscroft and Johanna Orchard-Webb (University of Brighton)

Nigel Cooper (Anglia Ruskin University)

Althea Davies (University of St Andrews)

Mark Everard (Pundamilia Ltd)

Ioan Fazey (University of Dundee)

Neal Hockley (Bangor University)

Claire Molloy (Edgehill University)

Advisory board:

Sue Ranger (Marine Conservation Society)

Kate Studd (Inner Forth Landscape Initiative)

Alistair Scott (Birmingham City University)

Sue Williams (CCW)

Rob Jarman (National Trust)

Resource allocated: £250,000