Welfare values of sustained urban water flows for recreational and cultural amenities under climate change

The main objective of this study is to estimate the welfare values related to sustained water flows in the Zayandeh-Rud River for recreational and cultural amenities in the urban park of Isfahan City in Iran. As is elsewhere the case in arid regions, the drying up of the river due to growing water demand and the increasingly constrained water supply as a result of climate change and more frequent droughts is expected to result in a substantial welfare loss. A double-bounded discrete choice elicitation format is applied in a stated choice survey conducted among local residents and non-residential visitors, focusing on distance-decay and the relationship between income and demand for sustained water flows in publicly provided urban space under climate change. We reject the general finding in the literature that visitors living further away are willing to pay more for unique sites. We show that the recreational services provided by the park can be characterized as a normal economic good for which those living closer by are willing to pay more than those living further away. These results provide an important benchmark for future stated preference research related to welfare valuation of water in urban open space under climate change.