VALUING THE PRESERVATION OF AUSTRALIA KAKADU CONSERVATION ZONE

The Australian Resource Assessment Commission conducted a large contin gent valuation study to estimate the economic benefits of preserving K akadu Conservation Zone (KCZ) by incorporating it into Kakadu National Park rather than allowing mining in it. Different subsamples were pre sented, with scenarios representing the environmentalist (major) and m ining industry (minor) views of the impacts. Willingness to pay to pre vent the major impact scenario was twice as high as for the minor impa ct scenario. For both scenarios, benefit-cost analysis indicates that preservation should be chosen over mining. A valuation function to pre dict the willingness to pay responses is estimated.