%0 journal article %@ 0272-7714 %A Liu, X.,Wirtz, K.W. %D 2010 %J Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science %N 3 %P 512-517 %R doi:10.1016/j.ecss.2009.02.020 %T Managing coastal area resources by stated choice experiments %U https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecss.2009.02.020 3 %X In many coastal regions, oil spills can be considered as one of the most important and certainly the most noticeable forms of marine pollution. Efficient contingency management responding to oil spills on waters, which aims at minimizing pollution effects on coastal resources, turns out to be critically important. Such a decision making highly depends on the importance attributed to different coastal economic and ecological resources. Economic uses can, in principal, be addressed by standard measures such as value added. However, there is a missing of market in the real world for natural goods. Coastal resources such as waters and beach cannot be directly measured in money terms, which increases the risk of being neglected in a decision making process. This paper evaluates these natural goods of coastal environment in a hypothetical market by employing stated choice experiments. Oil spill management practice in German North Sea is used as an example. Results from a pilot survey show that during a combat process, beach and eider ducks are of key concerns for households. An environmental friendly combat option has to be a minor cost for households. Moreover, households with less children, higher monthly income and a membership of environmental organization are more likely to state that they are willing to pay for combat option to prevent coastal resources from an oil pollution. Despite that choice experiments require knowledge of designing questionnaire and statistical skills to deal with discrete choices and conducting a survey is time consumed, the results have important implications for oil spill contingency management. Overall, such a stated preference method can offer useful information for decision makers to consider coastal resources into a decision making process and can further contribute to finding a cost-effective oil preventive measure, also has a wide application potential in the field of Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM).