Abstract:
Knowledge on social and cultural systems is essential for comprehensive
understanding of ecosystem changes, monitoring biodiversity, development and
implementation of resource management strategies. Social values of coastal
landscapes reveal the attributes of locations and their relative importance for
people. Aim of the study was to evaluate the cultural services and derive the
monetary value of social landscape through valuing socio-cultural services of
Negombo lagoon. A discrete choice experiment approach was used to estimate the
individual’s preference towards social landscape by incorporating featured
attributes. The individual preference was expressed through the marginal
willingness to pay (MWTP) by integrating a monetary attribute into choice sets.
Thus, the MWTP or the implicit price of social landscape attributes included in the
choice task was estimated and then the total social landscape value was derived as
13,055 LKR per monthly per household. The social landscape values of Negombo
lagoon demonstrated the important ecological, and socio-cultural knowledge,
which should be integrated as guiding policies in ecosystem conservation and
management strategies. Further, the challenging management paradigm for coastal
and marine landscape of Negombo lagoon, and associated services should contain
not only the biological and physical benefits but also socio- cultural values too.
