Public values for improved water security for domestic and environmental use

Developing metrics for evaluating environmental tradeoffs can be done with varying levels of consistency across case study sites. A key issue is to determine if standard evaluation experiments can be conducted over multiple sites or whether experiments have to be tailored to each case study application. To test the usefulness of a consistent approach, a choice modelling valuation exercise has been undertaken across several countries to assess the tradeoffs that households are prepared to make between water use restrictions, maintaining environmental condition in waterways, and increased water costs. The results from the Queensland survey are reported in this paper. The results indicate that it is not possible to downplay framing issues at the case study level, and that it is not appropriate to standardize applications across case studies with differing characteristics.