Séminaire de recherche AMURE

Using choice experiment designs to evaluate policies to reduce whale-ship collisions 

Par Maxime Sebe & Abdelhak Nassiri (AMURE/UBO)

• Résumé :
  Présentation d’un article en cours de soumission. Abstract : Whale-ship collisions represent a threat to some whale population survival. The shipping industry rarely adopts solutions to reduce the risk of collisions. This lack of compliance is partly due to the fact that previous work has failed to assess the economic and logistic impacts on the shipping industry of these solutions. Our work explored for the first time the logistical considerations affecting the adoption of whale-ship collision avoidance approaches by shipping companies. We used a choice experiment approach to assess the shipping industry’s preferences for mitigation solutions, by questioning ship crews. Amongst other things, our results demonstrated a preference for avoiding a high-density whale area instead of reducing speed in it, and a requirement for upstream information to plan the journey depending on these areas. Our findings could be used as guidelines for the implementation of mitigation solutions depending on situational characteristics and provide insights for policy-making to reduce the risk of whale-ship collisions.