Choosing wisely: using discrete choice experiments with experts to inform conservation action
This study demonstrates how discrete choice experiments can capture expert preferences to inform conservation decisions. Drawing on responses from more than 2,700 experts, the research found support for diverse restoration investments and prioritizing lower income regions where natural climate solutions can deliver both environmental and social benefits.
Subject Tags
- Natural climate solutions
- Climate mitigation
- Conservation Planning
Abstract
Conservation actions often rely on expert knowledge. Ensuring that expert elicitation is broadly inclusive, analyzed rigorously, and cost effective is challenging. Discrete choice experiments (DCEs) with experts present an opportunity to measure the preferences individuals with technical knowledge hold for the provision of public goods. We present a novel approach that combines machine learning, language models, and an email campaign to reach over two thousand experts with a record of peer-reviewed publication. We apply this approach to understand the preferences experts (n = 2 731) have for natural climate solutions (NCSs) that focus on ecosystem restoration. We found that experts have a collective preference for distributing funding across a variety of actions rather than concentrating on specific restoration actions. In addition, experts preferred that restoration take place in lower-income contexts, highlighting the important role such NCS can play in promoting human well-being in marginalized regions with lower opportunity costs for land. These preferences were robust to experts’ area and regional expertise, supporting the conclusion that their preferences did not narrowly reflect private interests. Overall, our research demonstrates how DCEs can synthesize expert knowledge to inform complex problems around provisioning public goods for conservation.
Citation
Erbaugh, J. T., Lu, L., Robinson, B. E., Chang, C. H., Molnar, I., Papp, D., & Masuda, Y. J. (2026). Choosing wisely: using discrete choice experiments with experts to inform conservation action. Environmental Research Letters, 21(11), 114012.
TNC Authors
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James Erbaugh
Applied Social Scientist. Global Science
The Nature Conservancy
Email: james.erbaugh@tnc.org