ABSTRACT

Effective management of coastal assets requires community input, compliance and satisfaction to ensure that the desired outcomes of management are successful. In this chapter we discuss why community values are such an integral component of coastal hazard management, and then illustrate approaches through which these values can be measured and integrated into decision making to improve the probability that subsequent policy interventions are accepted and effective. We discuss an example from Western Australia where decision-making agencies engage the community to elicit their preferences for a pre-determined set of potential management outcomes. In particular, an example of how to quantify community values for coastal assets in monetary-equivalent terms is presented, which enables social and environmental values to be traded off with the economic costs of coastal hazard management. Using such approaches to measure community values is important to effectively prioritise which hazard management options provide the greatest benefits relative to costs, and justify investment decisions in cases where financial resources are constrained.