Under the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) integrated catchment management plans must be prepared for all river basins, in order to achieve "good ecological status" (GES) in all EU waters. This concept is a broader measure of water quality than the chemical and biological measures, which were previously dominant. The Directive also calls for a consideration of the economic costs and benefits of improvements to ecological status in catchment management plans, along with the introduction of full social cost pricing for water use. This project applies the choice experiment method to estimate the value of improvements in a number of components of ecological status on two Irish waterways. Choice Experiments (CE) are one example of the stated preference approach to environmental valuation and involves eliciting responses from individuals in constructed, hypothetical markets, rather than the study of actual behaviour. The project shows how a CE approach determines what value the general public place on the non-market economic benefits of moves towards GES. In particular, the main objectives of the project are the following:

i.      Elicit willingness to pay for river improvements

ii.     Model improvements in local versus alternative river (scope effect)

iii.    Explore how did people choose with reference to cognitive and behavioural issues

iv.    Spatial distribution of WTP within catchment

v.     Explore the potential to use benefit transfer at a local catchment area along with the potential to aggregate at national level

vi.    Policy implications