Dear Guardians/Whänau,

I am writing to request your help with an Otago University study to establish the value of biodiversity on Otago Peninsula. Valuations of this kind are important for councils when they make budget decisions and for community groups when they apply for funding.

You will find this anonymous survey is very different to most other surveys. It’s called a decision choice survey and it asks you to make a series of trade-off decisions. It gives you a series of about 20 questions, each made up of two options, and you pick the one you prefer, or if you like both equally (or neither equally!) you can choose ‘these are equal’.

It should take less than 20 minutes. Don’t worry if progress seems slow at first - it speeds up as it goes along.

You can help by filling in this survey: https://www.1000minds.com/go/biosurvey

We know this is time you could be spending on something else – we really appreciate any time you can give us.

The project has ethics approval from the University of Otago (reference D17/196)

Thanks,

Dr Fabien Medvecky and Dr Vicki Macknight