tsuge takahiro

<p>Wildlife overexploitation is a significant challenge in biodiversity conservation. Regulation can enforce consumer behaviour change to be biodiversity-friendly but also cause unintended negative impacts. A quantitative investigation of consumer preference for alternative goods is needed before the regulation intervention. This study focused on a case of Japanese eels that are threatened with extinction due to commercial fishery and overfishing and clarified potential alternative choices after the market regulations. This study employed a best–worst scaling technique. Our analysis specifies the two consumer groups; approximately 30% of consumers (“Potential Illegal” group) may select illegal eel consumption as their second-best preference. The Potential Illegal group tends to contain males, younger, and people who eat eels once or more annually, in comparison to the other group. Our findings can contribute to setting effective regulations as useful information about potential consumer choice changes.</p>

Summary Message framing contributes to an increase in public support for invasive species management. However, little is known about people’s preferences for the multiple objectives of management within different contexts relating to the challenges and benefits of invasive species management. We examine Japanese citizens’ preferences for the goals of free-roaming unowned cat (Felis catus) management in three contextual frames by applying experimentally controlled information and the best–worst scaling technique. Our results indicate that the ecological frame highlighting the ecological impacts of free-roaming unowned cats on native ecosystems significantly increases Japanese citizens’ concern about cat predation, although the frame did not change the preference ranking of goals. There are differences in the effects of message framing depending on cat ownership. The best–worst scaling technique shows that Japanese citizens prefer to maintain a sanitary environment, followed by the prevention of zoonotic diseases. Although the ranking of sanitary environmental management does not depend on cat ownership, the ranking of the other goals differs depending on cat ownership. The findings highlight the importance of strategic message framing and its prioritization in encouraging public support for invasive species management.

As consumption behavior is one of the key human activities destabilizing the Earth system, green consumption is expected to increase. However, although consumers often show interest in green consumption, they tend to choose non-green alternatives. Presuming that one of the reasons for their inconsistency lies in the trade-offs between green attributes and other attributes (e.g., brand, performance, and price), this study adopted a discrete choice experiment to understand how green attributes play a role in consumers' purchase decisions. To obtain a deeper understanding, the study conducted a cross-country (young Japanese [n = 370] and Vietnamese [n = 403] consumers) and product (water bottles and T-shirts) comparative analysis. The findings showed that for both products, Japanese respondents were less appreciative of green attributes in both relative and absolute terms than Vietnamese respondents. Furthermore, the marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) for a low environmental impact was the highest among the other attributes in both products for Vietnamese respondents, while this was not the case for Japanese respondents. Utilizing the findings obtained from the conditional logit models and MWTP, this study proposes several policy implications for the promotion of green purchases suitable for each country's unique situation.

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd Investigating visitors’ crowding norms is necessary to establish the carrying capacity of natural recreation areas. For this purpose, several question formats have been used, but it is known that these have methodological issues. To reduce these methodological issues, we compared several different question formats to investigate respondents’ perceptions of acceptable crowding limits, using montage photographs of different numbers of people at four sites in Shiretoko and Yakushima World Natural Heritage Site in Japan. We applied the double-bounded dichotomous choice model used in the contingent valuation method. Our use of conventional long- and short-format question models shows that acceptability decreases as the number of people increases, in single- and double-bounded models. This confirms the findings of past studies. Despite differences in the crowding norms as measured using different question formats, there was little difference in the number of people depicted in the photographs. The logit model of the double-bounded dichotomous choice model makes it possible to analyze the impact of differences in the number of people and other relevant factors, including the respondents’ characteristics and attitudes. The number of respondents and the burden on respondents vary in each question format, and each provides different information to managers. Management implications: • A double-bounded dichotomous choice model is shown to be a suitable method to analyze crowding norms at natural recreation sites. • This model is less burdensome for respondents and requires fewer samples than some other methods. • The choice model also permits one to analyze the influences of visitors' characteristics and other factors on crowding norms.

This study aims to understand the preferences regarding 15 services in ecosystem and facilities provided by urban green spaces using a partial profile choice experiment. The method is one type of discrete choice experiment in which researchers present respondents with only a subset of all the attributes under consideration. Therefore, it has the advantage of valuating large numbers of attributes simultaneously. In Northern Japan's Sapporo city area, which is the site of our study, the future vision for urban green spaces needs to be revised, and thus a valuation of the services from ecosystems and facilities provided by urban green spaces is necessary. The survey was conducted in December 2017 by a contracted research company. Respondents were members of the general public that were registered at the research company and live in the study site. The results showed that overall, services from the ecosystem were preferred over those from facilities. “Forming the landscape” and “Providing places to interact with the forest,” which are generally considered requirements of urban green spaces, were highly valuated, as were “Conserving biodiversity” and “Providing evacuation sites,” neither of which have been previously considered major services in the context of Japan's urban green space management. Finally, despite Japan's declining birth rate and aging population, “Providing facilities for the elderly” was valuated lower than “Providing facilities for children.”

Sound management of social-ecological systems should reflect diverse values; otherwise, the systems may inadvertently lead to neither fair nor desirable states. Relational values are one of three primary value domains of these diverse values. Since they may strongly motivate care for nature, nurturing these values could be a useful management measure for people involved in management (e.g., policy makers and nonprofit organizations) to realize a desirable state of social-ecological systems. To test this hypothesis, we studied ocean literacy programs at a district junior high school in Hinase District, Okayama, Japan. The district is known as a Satoumi (Japanese coastal socio-ecological production landscape). First, we measured the significance of relational values in the district. Second, we assessed the effect of the ocean literacy programs on cultivating relational values. Third, to test the feasibility of the ocean literacy programs as management measures to cultivate relational values, we used a contingent valuation method, developed in environmental economics, to measure residents' willingness to support the programs. Our study reveals that relational values are a critical component of Satoumi. Students are promising supporters of Satoumi given the declining and aging population of guardians, a result of the decline in revenues from fishery; moreover, the programs cultivate relational values in students. Residents support the ocean literacy programs, and their willingness to pay for them is connected with relational values. Therefore, ocean literacy can be an effective and feasible management measure for sustaining Satoumi through cultivation of relational values.

<p>Access to and benefit-sharing of genetic resources (ABS) has long been a controversial topic in international discussions centered on the Convention on Biological Diversity. With the Nagoya Protocol being adopted and coming into effect, as well as ABS Guidelines taking effect as Japanese domestic measures, discussion on this topic is now shifting to reexamine its significance and specific implementation measures. To provide social scientific foundations for future international and domestic ABS policies, this paper sets out the prospect for potential research issues in ABS by introducing trends of earlier legal studies in Japan and examining previous economic studies in terms of the economic theory of genetic resource utilization, economic valuation of genetic resources and genetic resource utilization by firms.</p>

Resilience management is gaining support as resilience studies proliferate. Quantification of resilience could help decision makers understand the complex dynamics of resilience and adopt resilience management. However, most quantifications have focused on resilience as an attribute of social-ecological systems, such as thresholds and safe operating spaces. Although informative for planning and implementing effective resilience management, they do not inform decision makers if people accept and support this management. Therefore, it is necessary to understand how people perceive resilience. We applied three metrics to measure how people perceive resilience: (1) an economic valuation of resilience, (2) motivations behind valuing resilience, and (3) the relative importance of resilience compared with other ecosystem services. We adopted coral reef ecosystems in Okinawa, Japan for our analysis. Coral reef ecosystems, which are rich in marine genetic resources (hotspots), have become endangered because of increasing anthropocentric pressures, and resilience is becoming an accepted method in coral reef ecosystem management. Our study revealed that an ex-ante willingness to pay (WTP) for expected benefits from a resilience management program ranged from 3439 to 5663 JPY for mean WTP and from 1615 to 2579 JPY for median WTP (cf. 100 JPY = 0.891 USD in 2017). Primary motivations, i.e., human values, underlying the valuation of resilience were conservation and self-transcendence, which overlap with some ecosystem services such as culture, bequest, education, coastal protection, sanitation, and habitat. Resilience is highly important compared with the other 10 coral reef ecosystem services. These findings could help decision makers plan and implement an effective, acceptable, and supported resilience management program.

Background: The long-term evolution of preferences for nature is crucial to conservation projects, given their targeted long-term horizons. Neglecting to account for this evolution could lead to undesirable human-nature relationships. This study compares the willingness to pay (WTP) for three coastal conservation projects in the Seto Inland Sea, Japan, at two distant time points (1998 and 2015), and tests for temporal transferability. It also compares protest responses that are often overlooked in WTP practices, regardless of their utility for conservation projects.Methods: Given the lack of a unanimous protocol for protest response analyses and their use in estimating WTP, we propose a comprehensive analytic framework that integrates the two.Results: We show that, while preferences for coastal ecosystem services were overall stable and temporarily transferable, the preferences for certain aspects of conservation projects considerably changed.Discussion: This suggests the need to reconsider the projects' scheme, not the ecosystem services themselves, along with the clarification of beneficiaries and those responsible for past destruction. We conclude by suggesting further studies with a focus on regions experiencing significant social-ecological changes, such as developing countries, by exploiting the rich asset of existing valuations. This could contribute to the database for more temporal-sensitive ecosystem service valuations utilized for benefit transfers.

For biodiversity conservation to be an effective and significant social investment, non-marketed values of biodiversity conservation and its associated opportunity costs should be evaluated in monetary terms. In this study, we measured the willingness to pay (WTP) for bird abundance using a choice experiment (CE) based on the random utility model. We performed a cost-benefit analysis to identify the optimal proportion of broadleaved trees in conifer plantations on a volume basis to maximize the social benefits of bird conservation and wood production. The results suggested that respondents to the CE were not satisfied with their current situation and preferred an increase in bird abundance. However, the estimated WTP indicated diminishing returns of bird conservation. More specifically, WTP first greatly increased before gradually experiencing decreasing marginal values, reaching its peak and finally decreasing slightly with increasing bird abundance. Optimization analyses indicated that when the relationship between bird abundance and broadleaved tree proportion was convex, semi-natural plantations with nonzero broadleaved tree proportion (002-022) were always optimal options. When the relationship was linear, optimal broadleaved tree proportion ranged from 0 to 078 and was greatly affected by wood values. When the relationship was concave, there were only two optimal broadleaved tree proportions: a very high proportion (approximately 090) and the lowest possible proportion (0). When the convex and concave relationships approached the linear form, comparable benefits could be attained across broad ranges of broadleaved tree proportion both within and across the relationships. In such cases, it would be useful to increase the likelihood of a feasible land-use strategy of either land sparing or land sharing in order to be successful.Synthesis and applications. It can be difficult to set quantitative targets in biodiversity conservation solely on an ecological basis, and social benefits of biodiversity conservation can create diminishing returns in many situations. The framework we propose shows how to reconcile resource production and biodiversity conservation in the real world.

This study investigates off-season tours by examining people's heterogeneous preferences for nature-based tours in sub-frigid climate zones. To explore heterogeneous preferences for winter nature-based tours in Shiretoko, Japan, the authors conducted a discrete choice experiment with a latent class model. Even though the visitors' preferences were different, it was possible to segment them into three groups based on the results. The first segment clearly preferred a wildlife observation tour and considered the possibility of finding rare eagles and detailed interpretation highly important. At the other extreme, the second segment preferred an adventure-based drift ice tour and were not interested in eagles or detailed interpretation. The final segment comprised those visitors whose preferences were between these two extremes. The findings show that, for satisfactory and profitable tours, tourist agents should provide specific recreation experiences to cater to these heterogeneous preferences rather than experiences thought to be acceptable to all visitors.