Evaluating management options for a Marine and Terrestrial National Park: Heterogeneous preferences in choice experiments

In order to analyze preferences for various management options at the Atlantic Islands National Park in Spain, a stated choice survey was carried out. The complexity of responses and the identification of a wide variety of heterogeneous preferences and motivations were studied through the analysis of follow up questions. The application of a latent class model employing the information gathered in the follow-up questions has proved useful to disentangle different preferences and motivations. The results show that not considering this heterogeneity in the estimation process may lead to biased results, and therefore to an erroneous interpretation of individual's management preferences. In particular, results seem to indicate that those individuals with rational responses prefer to pay more for actions to improve the quality of the National Park rather than to expand it; while those with a protest attitude are more reactive to some measures, such as visits control and the creation of smoking areas.