| Summary: | The damage schedule framework was applied as an analytical protocol to assess
communities' valuation of environmental resources. The study was an empirical test of the
feasibility of developing damage schedules using two coastal areas of Thailand, Ban Don
Bay and Phangnga Bay. The objectives of this research included (a) investigating the ability
of people to provide judgments about the relative importance of resources, (b) examining
how this information could be used to derive scales of relative importance, and (c)
developing the damage schedules based on these importance scales. A questionnaire
containing series of paired comparison questions was used as a survey instrument. About
200 people were surveyed for each study area. These included 'formal experts', such as
researchers, policy makers and administrators, and 'layexperts', such as resource users,
other stakeholders, and people living in the study areas. The first part of the questionnaire
presented pairs of resource losses (e.g. damage to coral reefs, loss of mangrove forests),
while loss-causing activities (e.g. an oil spill, shrimp farming) were paired in the second part
of the questionnaire. For a series of these pairs, respondents were asked to indicate which
member within each pair was more important. The results showed a significant agreement
in the rankings of importance of resource losses and activities provided by all respondents
in each study area. Agreement in the rankings was found between formal experts and
layexperts and among layexperts of different occupations. Intransitive responses occurred
but did not have a significant effect on the resulting scale values and rankings. Comparison
between the damage schedules of the two areas supported the underlying assumption that
people could make judgments on the relative importance of different losses and could
provide meaningful rankings that reflect community values. The damage schedules can be
adjusted over time as losses or activities of different magnitude occur, by interpolating or
extrapolating from the initial scale values. Damage schedules, apart from providing
predictability and enforceability in the damage payments, can also be developed quickly
and at lower cost than current valuation methods. === Science, Faculty of === Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES), Institute for === Graduate
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