Certainty pays off: The public's value of environmental monitoring

Although monitoring is crucial for environmental science and policy, few studies have assessed its value for the public. To value the public preferences for environmental monitoring related to hydropower, we designed a discrete choice experiment, used the Q-methodology to select attributes and assessed preferences for monitoring with a split-sample design. While both samples faced decisions about hydropower management, one sample was informed that an environmental measure's efficacy was unknown due to a lack of monitoring. We found that uncertainty significantly reduced utility levels and willingness to pay, which indicates that the public positively values monitoring. By accounting for heterogeneous preferences using both the mixed logit and latent class approach, our results were confirmed irrespective of the socio-demographic profile. In our application to environmental hydropower, we find strong support for fish protection and opposition to foreign ownership. In light of the growing number of environmental policies (e.g., Water Framework Directive) that mandate monitoring, these findings highlight the need to account for its positive externalities. Thus, we recommend that decision makers include the public value of monitoring in environmental cost-benefit analyses.