Value of Information analysis for marine conservation decision making

Abstract

Decision-making in environmental and marine conservation management often needs to be made under substantial uncertainty about ecosystem responses to various stressors. This uncertainty can lead to suboptimal or delayed actions, jeopardising conservation efforts. Value of Information (VoI), can address this issue by quantifying the benefits of acquiring additional data, thereby supporting decision-makers to reduce uncertainty and make more informed, effective management choices. This article provides the first comprehensive review of VoI applications related to marine conservation management. We provide a conceptual background and developmental history and introduce different metrics for calculating VoI. We identify, summarise, and categorise recent studies relevant to environmental and marine conservation management on the basis of the study’s objectives, type of uncertainty, model, VoI metric, etc., to elucidate the relevancy of VoI in the field. We also identify the literature gap and discuss the potential developmental direction of the VoI theory by highlighting the need to integrate dynamic decision-making and adaptive learning for more effective conservation efforts.