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Hongxiao Jin

Hongxiao Jin

Researcher

Hongxiao Jin

Valuing drought impact mitigation on ecosystem services in a Mediterranean country

Author

  • Begoña A. Farizo
  • Miguel Sevilla-Callejo
  • Mario Soliño
  • Sergio M. Vicente-Serrano
  • Juan I. Lopez-Moreno
  • Angelina Lázaro-Alquézar
  • Conor Murphy
  • Sam Grainger
  • Tobias Conradt
  • Hongxiao Jin
  • Boris Boincean
Show all

Summary, in English

Drought is a complex natural hazard increasing in frequency, duration, and severity worldwide. Although droughts cause both market and non-market impacts, the latter suffers from a dearth of economic studies quantifying their magnitude. In this paper, we investigated how droughts affect selected ecosystem services expected to result in welfare losses in Spain. This study is aimed at quantifying and simulating societal losses given the expected potential increase in drought severity in the coming decades. We estimated a Discrete Choice Latent Class Model by which we distinguished three broad classes of individuals. The common behavior across all classes is that people consistently choose to avoid the negative effects of droughts. However, there are substantial differences among the three classes; while class 1 chooses options regardless of cost, even when selecting the most expensive ones, the other two classes account for the size of the payment. Moreover, health and water use restrictions have been decisive factors in individuals' choices. We have also observed that the perception of climate change is related to individual decisions. We quantified the enormous damage drought causes to societal well-being. Policymakers should take this information into account when addressing the increasing likelihood of extreme weather events.

Department/s

  • Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
  • BECC: Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate

Publishing year

2024

Language

English

Publication/Series

Journal of Arid Environments

Volume

225

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Elsevier

Topic

  • Earth and Related Environmental Sciences
  • Economics

Keywords

  • Choice experimentClimate change perceptionDrought impactsEconomic valuationLatent class modelStrategic behavior

Status

Published

Project

  • Cross-sectoral impact assessment of droughts in complex European basins

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1095-922X