Communicating Stakeholder Priorities in the Great Barrier Reef Region

Preliminary results of a survey investigating individual well-being of residents in the Great Barrier Reef region of Australia are presented The well-being factors were grouped into domains of; society, representing family and community issues; ecology, representing natural environment; and economy, dealing with economic issues and provision of services. The relative perceived importance of factors was quantified, allowing for a creation of individual well-being functions. In the society domain, family relations and health were identified as the most important contributors to well-being. Water quality was the ecology domain factor that received highest scores, and health services and income were the most important contributors to the economic domain. The methodological approach used in this study has a potential to integrate ecological, social, and economic values of local people into decision-making processes. The profiles of well-being thus generated would present policymakers with information beyond that a available from standard data sources.