Social Cost-Benefit Analysis
(WP 3.3)
Illustration by: Joost Fluitsma
WP 3.3 – Social Cost-Benefit Analysis
To develop and apply a monetary social cost-benefit analysis method to assess coastal sand nourishment strategies, specifically:
• To examine preferences of the general public for several non-market social and environmental benefits and costs that result from large-scale sand nourishment, e.g., recreational benefits, flood-risk reduction and non-use values, and how these benefits and costs are distributed across stakeholders (Task 3.3a)
• To evaluate the economic viability of sand nourishment strategies in the Netherlands based on a temporally and spatially explicit extended cost-benefit analysis (CBA) that includes the elicited non-market, monetized benefits of sand nourishment (Task 3.3b).explore the use of non-native sediments for coastal nourishments
Start & end date
Year 2 – year 6
Work package leader
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Methodology
This WP employs a discrete choice experiment (DCE) which is a stated preference method that uses public surveys to elicit the preferences of respondents for changes in the coastal ecosystem services resulting from sand nourishments, and to assess the associated monetary willingness-to-pay (WTP) values. The DCE will be implemented in close collaboration with the surveys of WP 3.2 that tackle similar themes. It supplements the approach applied there by eliciting monetary values and economic measures of nourishment strategies. The WP will also adopt an extended CBA to assess the viability of a project based on financial costs and benefits, as well as potential monetized environmental and social costs and benefits, under different scenarios. This should inform the strategic discussion on coastal sand nourishment strategies within WP 4.
Description of research activities
Task 3.3a: Economic valuation of non-market benefits of sand nourishment
For the ecological and recreational benefits of coastal nourishments, an advanced DCE will be implemented using an online survey among a representative sample of households living near nourishment projects to estimate the non-market, monetized benefits of different future projects, including the Living Lab nourishments. Estimation of these non-market benefits has been identified as a key knowledge gap (Deltafact, 2020). Important and novel is that we will assess how preferences are affected by the spatial and temporal beach-dune dynamics, and the fact that ecological improvements may materialize only after a certain number of years.
Task 3.3b: Extended cost-benefit analysis of sand nourishment strategies
The costs and benefits will be included in a spatially explicit extended CBA that considers the spatial (and dynamic) exposure of different elements to flood risk (e.g. residential and non-residential property as well as ecosystems) using the guidelines from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL), to assess which nourishment strategies would return net societal benefits. The CBA will consider different time horizons, (aligned with model prediction results in WP 2.4) and will include an analysis of the distribution of benefits and losses across stakeholders and space, including the costs that are born at different levels of governance. The sensitivity to uncertainties such as SLR, socio-economic developments and predicted morphological and ecological developments will be analyzed. Construction and maintenance costs will be assessed through collaboration with partners based on engineering assessments. Estimates of flood damage cost reductions will be based on the work in WP 2.4, combined with in-house Deltares coastal flood risk and damage models.
Productive interactions (co-design and co-creation)
We will co-design the DCE survey with partners with expertise in environmental economics and societal values of ecological change (Rijkswaterstaat, CEFAS, Dunea, Stichting de Noordzee, United Nations University, University of Aveiro, Waddenacademie, Waddenvereniging). This is needed in order to focus on policy-relevant benefit categories and project scenarios, to translate the scientific outcomes of WP 2 into text and visualizations understandable to the general public, to identify relevant scenarios and recreational opportunities (WP 3.1), and to discuss the transferability of these benefit estimation to other countries. Together with engineers (Deltares, Royal HaskoningDHV, Van Oord) and coastal managers (Rijkswaterstaat), we will develop costs estimates of nourishment construction and maintenance costs based on existing projects as well as future projections. Avoided flood risk damage estimates that feed into the CBA will be based on existing data on coastal flood risk assessments from Rijkswaterstaat and Deltares.
Contribution to project (impact)
The CBA results will be used to evaluate potential net-benefits and additional landscape values of the co-created sand nourishment strategies with stakeholders (WP 4). The WP contributes significantly to the societal impact of the whole project by providing stakeholders clear recommendations on the feasibility of resilient sand nourishment strategies that provide socio-economic and natural functions by including environmental and social values that have been neglected in decisions on coastal management to date.
Key results
[Here the key results of this WP will be presented.]
Other Work packages
WP 1 – Living Lab Nourishments
WP 2.1 – Quantification of Sediment Pathways
WP 2.2 – Ecological Effects and Coastal Landscaping
WP 2.3 – Exploration of Non-native Sediments for Coastal Nourishments
WP 2.4 – Predictive Modeling of Coastal Nourishment Impacts
WP 3.1 – Sand Nourishment Game
WP 3.2 – Spatial Quality of Nourished Coastal Landscapes
WP 4 – Sand Nourishment Strategy Development in the (inter)national context