JavaScript is Disabled
Your browser's JavaScript functionality is disabled. It has to be enabled to use this function of ConfTool.
Here you can find information on how to enable JavaScript
If you have any problems, please contact the organizers at programme@eaere.org.

Conference Agenda

Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).

Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 10th Sept 2026, 07:05:10pm CEST (Norway)

External resources will be made available 30 min before a session starts. You may have to reload the page to access the resources.

Daily Overview

Session

Forests, land use, and economic development
Location: Auditorium C: Thore Johnsen
Session Chair: Manuel Linsenmeier, Princeton University

Presentation 2

Mangroves and economic development in Tobago: Incorporating payment horizons, choice certainty and ex-post interviews in discrete choice experiments

Niko Howai¹, Kelvin Balcombe², Elizabeth Robinson³

1: Department of Economics, University of Manchester, UK; 2: Department of Agri-Food Economics and Marketing, University of Reading, UK; 3: Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK

Discussant: Erin O. Sills (NC State University)

Governments have long faced potential trade-offs between economic development and protecting nature. This is particularly true for tropical and sub-tropical islands where most mangroves are found. Motivated by Trinidad and Tobago’s central government’s prior hotel development plans, we employ a discrete choice experiment (DCE) to investigate residents’ preferences for mangrove ecosystem services (ES) in the Bon Accord Lagoon and Buccoo Bay, Tobago. Preferences were investigated in the context of a trade-off between conserving mangroves and promoting economic development through a hypothetical hotel project in the study area. We use a Hierarchical Bayesian Logit Model, exploring two distinct payment horizons, 5 and 25-years, undertaken independently and also merged in models that allow for choice certainty and individual characteristics. We find that respondents have consistent willingness-to-pay (WTP) for mangrove ES and exhibit general insensitivity to the payment horizons due to perceived disbenefits associated with mangrove loss from hotel development. The DCE and ex-post (follow-up) interviews suggest that there is strong public support for policies aimed at long-term protection of mangroves.