The Scottish Government

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Chapter One Introduction

1.1 This report offers a background review of international literature to inform Scottish implementation of the Water Framework Directive. It explores the public's perceptions of, and values placed on, the water environment. Its sources are mainly published English-language academic literature, policy evidence and datasets, and web resources.

Background

1.2 Scotland depends socially, culturally and economically on the quality of its water environment. The EC Water Framework Directive 2000/60/EC ( WFD) applies to all water in the natural environment and is implemented in Scotland by the Water Environment and Water Services (Scotland) Act 2003. The Act establishes for the first time a source-to-sea planning framework for river basin management, designed to help reduce levels of pollution and to protect habitats in support of Scotland's biodiversity. It creates a strategic framework to protect Scotland's water environment.

1.3 At the heart of the WFD are objectives to prevent deterioration of water status and to try to restore all waters to 'good' ecological status by 2015, unless it is disproportionately expensive, technically infeasible to do so, or if the specific water body is heavily modified. The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency ( SEPA) is the lead authority in the Act, although the Scottish Ministers also have responsibilities.

1.4 In addition to these scientific and economic factors, the Scottish Executive and SEPA will need to make informed, defensible decisions which are informed by the values and priorities expressed by the Scottish public in regard to the desirable outcomes for WFD implementation. As the people of Scotland are all 'stakeholders' in water, engaging the public is crucial to the process of implementing the WFD.

1.5 A clear need, therefore, exists for high quality evidence and good understanding of the values of the public in relation to the (water) environment, in order to inform policy decisions. To meet this need the Scottish Executive has commissioned three projects to elicit and explore public priorities and values in relation to the water environment, of which this review of evidence in terms of existing literature is one. Results from a representative survey of the Scottish public, exploring how they perceive and value the water environment have also recently been reported (Scottish Executive, 2006). A third project, being undertaken by Ipsos MORI with Mott MacDonald Consultants, involves in-depth qualitative work which will gather and explore the opinions and priorities of the Scottish public and key stakeholder groups in regard to the quality of the water environment, also exploring the decision-making process. It will report early in 2007.

Key aims

1.6 The aim of this study was to examine recent (from the past five years) and contemporary research and thinking on how the people of Scotland view the natural environment and what their environmental priorities might be. The review includes evidence from Scotland and the UK level, followed by relevant texts from Europe, and the rest of the world. It considers perceptions of, and values placed on, the water environment.

1.7 The key objectives for this review are to explore:

• evidence for perceptions of the environment (water in particular) amongst the general public in Scotland and the UK;
• specific evidence in other countries on attitudes to the water environment;
• the relative values which are placed on different attributes of environmental features and issues in Scotland, the UK and other countries;
• whether the views of different groups of people vary in significant ways and what factors influence shared and divergent views.

Review Methodology

1.8 To conduct this review, the following tasks were undertaken.

• Referring to the initial aims and objectives, a set of search terms was developed. ¹
• Using these terms, a systematic computerised search of academic literature, policy literature and datasets was conducted.
• Literature (abstracts and, where available, full documents) was collated in the software package 'Endnote', and then read and analysed. Key words and themes were identified.
• In addition, the following individuals and organisations were contacted for relevant publications and research evidence: academics in institutions with an interest in this topic, Scottish Natural Heritage ( SNH), Macaulay Institute, Scotland and Northern Ireland Forum for Environment Research ( SNIFFER), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs ( DEFRA), and European governments currently implementing the WFD.

1.9 All searches were limited to English-language texts published in the last five years, back to 2001, and evidence was sought first from a Scottish perspective, then from the UK level, followed by Europe and then the rest of the world.

Theoretical Background

1.10 The methodology above identified 177 accessible references, of which 132 consisted of academic literature, the remainder being policy evidence and datasets. The majority of the academic literature explores environmental attitudes on an empirical, case-study, site-specific level. It is noted that perceptions of, and attitudes to, water environments are dependent upon the type of water environment experienced (sea/ocean, lakes/lochs, rivers/streams or wetlands). Although the literature encompasses a number of different disciplines (including geography, psychology, economics, sociology, anthropology, politics, history, environmental sciences, environmental management/planning, and ecology), key theoretical approaches, definitions and concepts can be identified as particularly prominent.

Definitions, Concepts and Methods

1.11 Although there is a plethora of perception definitions in the multidisciplinary academic literature, one widely accepted definition is provided by Gold: "perception is the psychological function that enables the individual to convert sensory stimulation into organised and coherent experience" (1980, 19). Perception research began in the discipline of psychology in the 1960s and gained much importance in the 1970s, leading to its development in a number of social science disciplines including geography, economics and sociology.

1.12 The notion of a distinctive environmental perception, concerned to elucidate the processes whereby individual human beings acquire, process and arrive at some conscious apprehension of spatial-environmental information, is associated with the rise of perceptual studies from the late 1960s onwards. A comprehensive definition of environmental perception is provided by Kweon et al (2006, 73): "an information processing system in which individuals actively explore their surroundings and extract and use information in constant interaction between themselves and their environment."

1.13 Public perception encompasses attitudes and concerns (Brody et al , 2004) where an attitude is "a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favour or disfavour" (Meyerhoff 2006, 211). There is a spectrum of attitudes, from disdain to apathy to enthrallment (Manuel, 2003).

1.14 The concept of value is widely debated within the academic literature. Values are defined as standards which serve as guiding principles in our lives (Kaltenborn and Bjerke, 2002). The literature identifies a range of environmental values - scientific, aesthetic, economic, environmental, social, health, recreational and religious - and such values are thought to determine attitudes and behaviour toward specific aspects of the environment.

1.15 A number of theoretical approaches have been developed to assess the human, natural and economic values placed on the natural environment. Two key approaches are:

• ecocentric value orientation (an environment/ecosystem has intrinsic value, independent of human interests);
• anthropocentric value orientation (an environment satisfies human utilitarian needs).

Thus, many people may express a preference for water environments, but for different reasons. Some may want to protect a landscape because it serves human utilitarian needs, while others may emphasise ecocentric values (Kaltenborn and Bjerke, 2002).

1.16 According to Goetgeluk (2005), the added value of water to the environment depends upon: (1) type of water (sea/ocean, lakes/lochs/ponds, rivers/streams/canals, and wetlands/marshlands); and (2) positive and negative values, where the former includes accessibility to, and size of, the water area and the latter includes water pollution and the risk of flooding.

1.17 Theorists argue that values and perceptions are also differentiated by user group, for example the perceptions of recreationalists versus farmers, and explained by a variety of factors. Sensory experience, prior knowledge (degree of familiarity with the watercourse), socio-demographics (for example, age, sex, education, and income), spatial and locational elements, and economics are all examples of such factors.

1.18 Assessing perceptions of, attitudes to, and values placed on the water environment involves the implementation of a variety of methods. Both qualitative and quantitative methods have been adopted by researchers. Examples of the former include unstructured interviews, anecdotal reports, historical explorations, narratives, participant observation and photography. Questionnaire surveys, structured interviews, and mapping are examples of the latter approach.

1.19 Conventionally, the methods available to environmental economists for the estimation of environmental values have been differentiated into revealed preference and stated preference approaches. Whilst the former tries to infer the value people place on environmental goods from their actual behaviour, the latter asks respondents about their willingness to pay for the option to use recreational resources or for a quality change to these resources, and, thus is based on people's intentions (Hanley et al, 2003).

1.20 The travel cost method ( TCM) is an example of a revealed preference technique, based on actual behaviour. It is used by economists to estimate use values for non-market goods, such as recreational resources, and is essentially founded on the simple rationale that people from different geographical locations bear different travel costs when visiting a site and visit at different rates. By tracing the relationship between travel expenditures and visitation rates (trips per annum for example), demand curves can be estimated for water environments. From these demand curves, consumer surplus - the difference between the most an individual would pay per trip and what they actually pay - can be estimated, providing a monetary value for a day out in, for example, a lake area.

1.21 The TCM is relatively uncontroversial because it is modelled on standard economic techniques for measuring values and it uses information about actual behaviour rather than responses to hypothetical scenarios. In contrast, the Contingent Valuation Method ( CVM) is the most widely applied stated preference technique which asks individuals for their response to hypothetical changes in environmental quality. In contingent valuation surveys the public is directly questioned about its willingness to pay ( WTP) or willingness to accept compensation ( WTAC) for certain hypothetical changes in environmental quality. CVM asks respondents to explain how they would behave if the market existed. Although there are many criticisms of the CVM, mostly levelled at its hypothetical nature, it is widely adopted by economists to value the natural environment.

1.22 When reading this review, it is important to bear in mind that the diverse methods that have been adopted by the researchers working in and across a range of disciplines will have influenced their results.

Review Outline

1.23 The most salient themes and issues which recurred in the literature were selected as the main chapter-themes for this review:

• Water Quality (including pollution)
• Water Quantity and Safety (including water reuse, supply, scarcity and conflict; and risk, flooding and public health)
• Recreation and Tourism
• Aesthetics and Landscape
• Nature (including vegetation, ecology and biodiversity)
• Resource Management
• Education (including communication)

1.24 Each topic is investigated as an individual section, and each section deals separately with Scotland and the UK, Europe, and then literature from elsewhere. Only the key (the most relevant which are also methodologically robust) texts are reviewed and additional texts which are not subjected to a full review are included in the references. In each chapter section, academic literature is reviewed first, followed by evidence from policy engagement.

1.25 The review concludes by identifying the priorities held by the public for the water environment, flagging-up gaps in the evidence for Scotland, based on observation of what exists elsewhere. Areas of possible further research are identified, as are the lessons for WFD implementation in Scotland.

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