A Multi-Criteria, Dynamic, and Place-Based Approach to Ecosystem Valuation

这一为期一年的规划项目探索了一种新的生态系统评价方法，即制定一个多标准的环境评价系统，供地方生态系统管理进程使用。 重点将放在三个目标上：（1）完善拟议的多标准、动态和基于地点的环境评价方法的理论方面;（2）确定和提出其他方法，以经验研究以社区为基础的过程，阐明环境管理的目标，特别注意衡量参与者的价值观/偏好如何因参与这些进程而发生变化;和（3）与北方格鲁吉亚现有的两个流域管理项目建立工作关系，一个在农村埃托瓦河流域，另一个在查特胡奇河上迅速城市化的拉尼尔湖地区。 主要调查员将与咨询委员会合作，在多标准决策标准的新兴理论与新的、迭代的和参与性的过程之间建立联系，以确定、澄清和调和相互竞争的价值观。 将要探讨的理论假设，除了利益相关者群体之间众所周知的价值差异外，经济学家的实际和假设估值技术所衡量的短期个人价值与代表社区愿望的长期价值之间也存在重大冲突。 研究人员将开发和完善一个迭代的，以社区为基础的过程，以实证研究价值观的变化，以响应鼓励即时偏好和更多基于社区的多代价值观之间的对比的讨论。 具体而言，调查人员将划定案例研究的范围和背景，确定小组参与者（可能包括利益相关者，公民，科学家，决策者，主持人或促进者以及研究团队），并设计小组流程和经验工具（如访谈协议，调查和分析程序，用于操作和测量偏好变化）。 这项研究将提供一个审查社区价值观的新系统，这个系统在理论上和方法上都不同于更常见的单一标准评估方法（如成本效益分析）。 该方法在理论上不同于福利经济学，因为它考虑了社会互动和参与管理过程对公民评估的影响（而不是寻求个体以原子方式行事的估值聚合），并期望公民对评估过程的投入随着环境的变化以及与其他公民的互动而变化（而不是将偏好视为稳定和不可质疑的）。 这些理论偏离通常的评估工作将重点从固定偏好的“快照”研究转向研究一个迭代过程，通过这个过程，科学家、利益相关者群体、公众和机构工作人员相互作用，寻找一致接受的环境管理目标。

This one-year planning project explores a new approach to ecosystem valuation by developing a multi-criteria system of environmental valuation for use within locally based ecosystem management processes. Emphasis will be on three objectives: (1) to refine the theoretical aspects of a proposed multi-criteria, dynamic, and place-based approach to environmental valuation; (2) to identify and propose alternative methodologies for empirically studying community-based processes for articulating goals for environmental management, paying special attention to measuring how the values/preferences of participants change as a result of participation in such processes; and (3) to establish working relationships with two currently existing watershed management projects in Northern Georgia, one in the rural Etowah River watershed and one in the rapidly urbanizing Lake Lanier area on the Chattahoochee River. The principal investigators, working with an Advisory Committee, will establish linkages between emerging theories of multi-criteria decision criteria and new, iterative, and participatory processes for identifying, clarifying, and reconciling competing values. The theory to be explored hypothesizes that, in addition to well known value differences among stakeholder groups, there are also important conflicts between short-term, individual values as measured by actual and hypothetical valuation techniques of economists and the longer-term values that represent the aspirations of a community. The investigators will develop and refine an iterative, community-based process to empirically study changes in values in response to discussions that encourage contrasts between immediate preferences and more community-based, multi-generational values. Specifically, the investigators will delineate the scope and context of the case studies, identify group participants (which will likely include stakeholders, citizens, scientists, decision-makers, a moderator or facilitator, and the research team), and design the group processes and empirical instruments (such as interview protocols, surveys, and analytic procedures for operationalizing and measuring preference changes). This research will provide a new system for examining community values, a system that differs both theoretically and methodologically from the more usual, single-criterion valuation approach (such as cost-benefit analysis). The approach differs theoretically from welfare economics by considering the impacts of social interaction and participation in management processes on valuations made by citizens (rather than seeking aggregations of valuations by individuals acting atomistically), and also by expecting citizens' inputs into valuation processes to change in response to context and as a result of interactions with other citizens (rather than treating preferences as stable and unquestioned). These theoretical departures from usual valuational work will shift emphasis from `snapshot` studies of fixed preferences toward study of an iterative process by which scientists, stakeholder groups, the public, and agency staff interact in a search for consensually accepted goals for environmental management.