Assessing the heterogeneity of public acceptability for mangrove restoration through a choice experiment

Mangroves are one of the most biodiverse but degraded type of ecosystems globally. There has been a strong impetus for mangrove restoration globally to compensate for mangrove loss. Understanding the public acceptability and preference heterogeneity for mangrove restoration could help practitioners tailor restoration programs, improve stakeholder engagement, and ultimately improve the chances of restoration success. Here we conduct a choice experiment to understand the heterogeneity of public acceptability for mangrove restoration in the Large Xiamen Bay (LXB), China. We estimate the total economic value of mangrove restoration and compare the marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) for each attribute (including an ecosystem disservice) between participants with different socio-demographic characteristics and living locations. Using both the random parameter logit model and latent class model, our results reveal that the respondents' location, socio-demographic characteristics, interaction with the coastal environment, and knowledge about mangroves have significant effects on their acceptability and preference for mangrove restoration. Such findings can provide guidance to practitioners when planning and implementing mangrove restoration projects, to improve the effectiveness and equity of restoration actions in LXB and beyond. By including an ecosystem disservice our study arguably elicits more comprehensively preference tradeoffs, which should be considered in future applications of choice experiments for ecosystem restoration.