Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Marine Policy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/marpol Recreational boaters value biodiversity: The case of the California Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary Daniel Viana a, ⁎ , Kiya Gornik a,b , Ching-Cheng Lin a , Gavin McDonald a , Nathaniel S.R. Ng a,c , Christine Quigley a , Matthew Potoski a a Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-5131, USA b Marine Science Institute, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-5131, USA c Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Random Utility Model Non-market valuation Site-choice model Marine recreation ABSTRACT Marine ecosystems provide a range of valuable services, some of which come with market prices to quantify value and others for which markets have not set prices. Lacking perfect information, policy makers are at risk of undercounting non-priced values and services, leading to biases in policy decisions in favor of services valued through markets. Furthermore, understanding users’ valuation of specific site attributes, such as marine biodiversity, can contribute to effective policy decisions. This paper presents a non-market valuation of private recreational boaters (PRBs) in the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary located in California, USA, using data from an intercept survey conducted in 2006 and 2007. A Random Utility Model is used to estimate PRBs’ daily trip values and the importance of specific site attributes. The average consumer surplus was estimated at $48.62 per trip, with a total non-market value of non-consumptive private recreational boating of $86,325 annually. PRBs show a preference for visiting locations with lower exposure to prevailing winds and greater species richness and abundance, which to the authors’ knowledge is the first time that PRBs have been found to value biological diversity in site choices. Furthermore, this suggests that improved biodiversity and productivity of marine ecosystems contribute to better recreational experiences. The results from this study reveal the importance of including non-market services and stakeholder's preferences into policy decisions. 1. Introduction Marine ecosystem services provide environmental, economic, and social value to a variety of users and activities [1] including commercial activities such as fisheries and mining; recreational activities such as snorkeling, SCUBA diving, sport fishing and wildlife viewing [2,3]; and environmental values such as coastal protection and welfare derived from healthy ecosystems [4]. Ecosystem services reflecting the value of environmental amenities are particularly important to measure because they are often directly affected by resource management practices [5–7]. For example, private recreational boaters engage in activities, such as sport fishing, snorkeling, SCUBA diving, and whale watching, that bring them into close contact with an ecosystem's environmental amenities. Policy makers require detailed information about specific ecosystems services that generate value in order to make informed and balanced resources management decisions [8]. For example, scuba divers may value the diversity of species as much or more as the total biomass of species at their diving site [2]. Understanding such preferences can have important implications for marine resource management. Effective ecosystem management requires taking into account value across social groups, their activities and the type of value they receive [7]. In many cases, natural resource access can be restricted at low cost, allowing well-functioning markets to allocate ecosystem resources and prices to signal economic activity. In such circumstances, market prices combined with costs and quantities demanded and supplied provide policy makers with quantified information of ecosystem service value for specific user groups [9,10]. Restricting access can be a useful policy tool when one group's activity interferes with another groups’ use of the resource. For example, overfishing through large scale commercial operations can reduce a fishery's productivity [11], and commercial fishing rights can be restricted to those holding permits. In other cases, consumption of ecosystem resources is left unrestricted so that users enjoy unfettered access to the resource. Unrestricted access can be socially desirable when resource consumption does not diminish others’ use, which generally occurs with non-consumptive recreational activ- http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2017.03.017 Received 11 April 2016; Received in revised form 7 March 2017; Accepted 13 March 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: dviana@bren.ucsb.edu (D. Viana). Marine Policy 81 (2017) 91–97 0308-597X/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. MARK