An economic valuation of mangrove restoration in Brazil

Mangrove forests are under considerable pressure in many developing countries and Brazil is not an exception to this problem. We investigate preferences for the restoration of mangrove areas in Brazil, using a choice experiment that varies the level and time of restoration. By interacting those attributes, we are able to identify nine potential scenarios that are expected to provide insight for policies and programs aimed to restore the threatened mangrove forest in the area. Conditional logit and scale heterogeneity multinomial logit models are estimated to analyze the respondents' choices. Our findings indicate that, out of the nine scenarios, respondents prefer a moderate restoration (i.e. vegetation health improvement of existing mangrove forest area) in less than 10 years. There also is a strong preference for complete restoration in 11 to 20 years, with complete restoration entailing vegetation health improvements and extension of the mangrove forest area of 20%. Results suggest that respondents understand that there are tradeoffs between levels and time of restoration.