Quantifying the landscape benefits arising from the Rural Environment Protection Scheme: results from a public survey

Abstract

This paper presents the main results from a public survey designed to quantify the contribution of the Rural Environment Protection Scheme (REPS) to rural landscapes. The paper also reports the findings from a number of questions that were included within the survey to determine the public's attitudes towards the rural environment, farmers and the countryside in general. Findings from these attitudinal questions reveal that there is a wide range in public opinion regarding changes in the state of the rural environment, the role of farmers as custodians of the rural environment and the relative priority of Government spending on REPS. Within the public survey, two choice experiments were included to estimate the magnitude of landscape benefits stemming from the REPS. Results from the choice experiments indicate that the landscape improvements are highly valued by the Irish public. Conservative estimates suggest that the landscape benefits of the REPS alone amount to almost the entire cost of the Scheme.