Conference Agenda

One of the many secondary effects of climate change, beach erosion, is a growing problem worldwide. Several engineering solutions have been proposed to ameliorate the threat to coastlines, including ‘soft’ measures (e.g., beach nourishment) and ‘hard’ measures (e.g., seawalls and jetties); however, preferences for these alternative interventions have been shown to vary by location and user. La Paloma, Uruguay, is one such location that has begun to experience the damaging effects of beach erosion. While the local government has invested in technical assessments of several adaptation measures, the residents’ preferences and perspectives have not yet been considered. We conduct a choice experiment survey of La Paloma residents to identify their rank ordered preferences for management interventions including seawalls, jetties in a T or I formation, and beach nourishment as financed by an increase in annual property taxes. Moreover, we consider the role of the governing body overseeing the administration of the coastal management program, soliciting preferences for an interinstitutional committee relative to the departmental government or the Ministry of the Environment. Our results show that the average respondent would be willing to pay an additional $34 USD in property taxes to support beach nourishment, and nearly double that value, $61, for seawalls. In contrast, residents would reject the implementation of jetties in any formation. Additionally, we find residents rank the management by the Ministry of Environment first, over the Interinstitutional committee, and lastly the departmental government. Of note, 53.1% of respondents consistently chose the status quo option, rejecting all intervention types. The serial status quo responses are positively related to age, income and perceived consequentiality of the survey on tax policies. Overall, our results suggest that there is a division between residents over whether the government should intervene with any management strategy.