Estimating Indigenous Cultural Values of Freshwater
Dr Sini Miller completed her PhD thesis in 2014 on Assessing Values for Multiple and Conflicting Uses of Freshwater in the Canterbury Region. Her research, supervised by Professor Caroline Saunders and Associate Professor Peter Tait, applied Discrete Choice Modelling (DCM) methodology to assess how Canterbury residents value and trade-off multiple attributes of freshwater use. Policy scenarios explored the impacts of irrigation scenarios on employment, environmental, recreational and cultural values of water.
The Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society presented its annual Best PhD Thesis Award to Dr Miller at its conference in Rotorua in February 2015. Sini Miller, Peter Tait and Caroline Saunders subsequently published an article, Estimating indigenous cultural values of freshwater: A choice experiment approach to Māori values in New Zealand, in the science journal Ecological Economics (vol. 118, 2015, pp. 207-214).