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For two decades, the establishment of the “Donau-Auen” national park east of Vienna has been on the political agenda in Austria. Since 1991, concrete proposals have been worked out for several variants of a national park including hydraulic engineering concepts and hydroelectric power stations. Within this planning process a cost-benefit analysis was carried out to estimate the economic impacts of the proposed projects. One crucial question was how to value the ecological quality of wetlands. These environmental goods were valued by means of a willingness-to-pay (WTP) survey. Two different kinds of variables were defined: (1) Costs and benefits depending on direct “anthropocentric” use including energy production with hydroelectric power stations, shipping, groundwater protection, stabilisation of the river bed to stop channel erosion, visitors' benefits, forestry, farming, fishing, hunting and the costs of …