Year: 2019
Type: article
Abstract: IntroductionMaunalua Bay is a treasure of Hawaiʻi and has a special history of biological and cultural importance.It is a socially, economically, and culturally diverse area and there are many different people groups that care about different aspects of the bay.There is a current knowledge gap in what people value about Maunalua Bay and its surrounding watersheds.Identifying what exactly the different users value about Maunalua Bay is crucial for long-term successful management of the area.If Mālama Maunalua were to consider implementing a values survey such as the one proposed here, they could use the results to try to target their activities and outreach that are strongly valued by people living in the area or who care about the area, which may ultimately assist in informing policy change to support the improvement of the social, economic, and ecological health of Maunalua Bay and its users. Values and Why They're ImportantHuman and ecological "values" have become significant concepts in environmental management.This is because environmental decisions affect people in diverse ways and have the ability to infer behavior.The study of values is extensive, and spans several research disciplines that each perceive 'value' differently.A definition of value in environmental management is the worth, importance, or usefulness of something.More specifically, "four concepts-value as a magnitude of preference, value as contribution to a goal, values as individual priorities, and values as relations," comprise the different ways one might approach values (Tadaki et al., 2017).Values can help researchers and practitioners categorize, measure, and understand diverse human-environment relations.Often these tools are sought after to inform environmental decision making.Individuals attach values to specific goods, activities, or services and recently, these assigned values have been a focus of environmental management and planning with the aim to understand community's perceptions of a specific place (Seymour et al., 2011). Tadaki et al. (2017) synthesized insights about environmental values concepts to help practitioners and researchers reflect upon what kind of environmental values assessments might be appropriate in different settings and why.After an extensive literature review, we decided that surveys are the most appropriate way for us to ascertain people's values of Maunalua Bay.Therefore, our values survey aims to draw on the analysis of survey data to understand which values provided by Maunalua Bay are more or less important to different user types.This is because identifying what exactly different people value about the bay can allow Malama Maunalua, Conservation International as well as other managers, volunteers, community members, and legislators to direct efforts to aspects of the bay that are highly valued and can also provide outreach opportunities to different groups with the newfound understanding of what their priorities are.
Authors: Emma A. Elliott Smith, Charlotte C. Smith, Kūpaʻa Luat-Hūʻeu, Sarah Hauler
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2952347660