W5133: Economic Valuation and Management of Natural Resources on Public and Private Lands

(Multistate Research Project)

Status: Active

Project Menu

SAES-422 Reports

Annual/Termination Reports:

[03/28/2023] [04/01/2024] [04/07/2025]

Date of Annual Report: 03/28/2023

Report Information

Annual Meeting Dates: 03/01/2023 - 03/03/2023
Period the Report Covers: 03/01/2022 - 02/28/2023

Participants

Participants Attachment:

Participants.docx

Brief Summary of Minutes

Minutes Attachment:

Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting.docx

Accomplishments

Accomplishments Objective 1: Evaluate Natural Resource Management Decisions and the Effects of Climate Change to Understand Associated Welfare Impacts Colorado State University <ul> <li>Task 1-1: Dale Manning and Mani Rouhi Rad completed estimation of an econometric model of crop and practice choice to use in an integrated economic-biogeochemical model of soil carbon stocks with climate change.</li> <li>Task 1-2: We completed analyses of agricultural and urban water use that can inform policies to better manage scare water. This includes work on how climate change will affect water shortages between urban and agricultural users, and how demand management and storage can impact shortages.  We also examined if remote sensing can measure agricultural groundwater, and how use responds to electricity prices. We also published a book chapter on the adoption of efficient irrigation technology based on perceptions of water scarcity.</li> <li>Task 1-3: Marissa Lee, Jordan Suter, and Jude Bayham investigated the impact of wildfire on campground demand. This work extended prior work by W5133 member Jeff Englin and colleagues. The results suggest that camper’s response to wildfire depends on region and vegetation type. These findings help campground managers understand the revenue risk posed by increasing wildfire activity.</li> <li>Jesse Burkhardt worked with the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Department and several other researchers to estimate the Willingness to Pay for wolf reintroduction. The survey also elicited preferences for management plan characteristics.</li> <li>Jesse Burkhardt entered into a cooperative agreement with the National Park Service in partnership with Leslie Richardson (NPS) to estimate willingness to pay for multiple national parks around the US. The results will help the NPS understand the benefits of the parks they manage.</li> </ul> University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign <ul> <li>Ando (UIUC) and collaborator Liqing Li at Cal State Fullerton published a paper about the impact of bison restoration on local economic activity. This finding was communicated to stakeholders in The Nature Conservancy and the Department of the Interior, and helps those conservation agents make decisions about bison restorations.</li> <li>Ando and collaborator Liqing Li published a paper that shows that people with more exposure to grasslands and outdoor activity in childhood have higher value for grassland restoration and outdoor recreation when they are adults. This finding informs efforts by local and federal recreation agencies to expand environmental education and exposure to recreational sites for children who might otherwise not engage in those activities.</li> </ul> Oregon State University <ul> <li>David Lewis, Daniel Bigelow (Montana State/Oregon State) and Chris Mihiar (USDA Forest Service) published a paper that described the large reduction in rates of US urban land development and the avoided losses in forest and agricultural land. This paper estimated that the current annual rate of land development has declined consistently across several stratifications of the U.S. land base and amounts to less than 25% of the peak rate observed in the mid-late 1990s, implying that the developed land base of the U.S. has become increasingly dense in recent years. This paper found that rising gas prices were the largest factor in driving the reduced demand. This paper received significant media attention with an Altmetric score of 104, which is in the top 5% of all research outputs scored in Altmetric. An example was a long write-up in Anthropocene magazine.</li> <li>David Lewis and Yukiko Hashida (University of Georgia) published a paper that estimated the anticipated impacts of future climate change on the economic value of western US forestry. The study developed a new method that uses discrete-choice econometric methods from the plot-level data in USDA Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) database, applied to the Pacific states of the US. The study finds evidence that a warmer and drier climate will induce an approximate 39 % loss in the economic value of timberland by 2050, though there is heterogeneity across space. The discrete-choice approach allows us to determine that the welfare losses are primarily driven by estimated losses to Douglas-fir, the most commercially valuable species.</li> <li>David Lewis, Eric Davis (USDA ERS), and Brent Sohngen (Ohio State University) published a paper that estimates the effects of carbon fertilization on forest volumes and productivity throughout the eastern US. Using a mix of matching and panel data regressions, the study estimates that elevated carbon dioxide has had a strong and consistently positive effect on wood volume while other environmental factors yielded a mix of both positive and negative effects. This study improves understanding of how elevated carbon dioxide and other anthropogenic factors are influencing forest stocks, and can help policymakers and other stakeholders better account for the role of forests in Nationally Determined Contributions and global mitigation pathways to achieve a 1.5 degree Celsius target. This paper received significant media attention with an Altmetric score of 524, which is in the top 5% of all research outputs scored in Altmetric.</li> <li>Steve Dundas and coauthors published a chapter on the economic implications of climate change in Oregon for the 6th Oregon Climate Assessment. The Oregon Legislative Assembly mandates this assessment on a biennial basis. The economic chapter highlighted recent work in valuing climate impacts in agriculture, forestry, recreation, and coastal resources and how that applies to the state of Oregon, pulling largely from work done by members of this multistate group.</li> </ul> Penn State University <ul> <li>Katherine Zipp and others at Penn State University have investigated the impacts of climate-related water stress and temperature on energy systems; hypothetical water trading schemes in the U.S.; the intersection of economic and climate tipping points; integrated modeling of human and natural systems; how water-energy-food nexus can be useful approach to dealing for food security; resource issues in Global South; changes in hardwood markets; compare how prehistoric catastrophes aﬀected the world's forests with a current-day catastrophe and aﬀects on forest health, forest resource availability, and wood decomposition rates; the scalability of wild edible plants as stop-gap food during a sun-blocking catastrophe; a literature review and systematic analyses of the water-energy-food nexus model; social perception gaps in prescribed fire use in the northeastern U.S.; how varying road noise management actions -- including quiet pavement -- impact recreationalist utility.</li> </ul> University of Florida <ul> <li>[Task 1-3] Weizhe Weng (University of Florida), Lingxiao Yan (South China Agricultural University), Kevin Boyle (Virginia Tech), and George Parsons (University of Delaware) investigated the impacts of COVID-19 on visitation to Central Park in New York City and found that the pandemic has resulted in $269 million loss of annual consumer surplus.</li> </ul> North Carolina State University <ul> <li>Task 1-3: Roger von Haefen (NC State), L. Cheng (Michigan State), and Frank Lupi (Michigan State) assessed the behavioral and revenue-raising implications of gate fees at sandy beaches in Michigan and the Southeast region of the US. Their findings should help local beach managers assess alternative strategies for addressing congestion and shortfalls in public funding for beach management initiatives. The results were published in reputable journals and shared with state agencies. This work was done in collaboration with W5133 members (Lupi).</li> </ul> University of Wyoming <ul> <li>Chian Jones Ritten (along with non-W5133 members) is currently examining how conservation of habitat for migratory species impacts tax revenues in Wyoming. This project will also examine the impact of conservation on the value of outdoor recreation in Wyoming.</li> <li>“The Comprehensive Survey of Snowmobile and Off-Road Recreational Vehicle (ORV) Use Trends and Economic Impacts of the Wyoming State Trails System.” Wyoming Dept. of Commerce, Division of State Parks and Historic Sites, Cheyenne Wyoming, $114,000 PI: C. T. Bastian, Co-PIs: R.H. Coupal, A.M. Nagler, and D.T. Taylor) (Project Awarded Funding Nov. 2019). Duration Jan. 2020- Dec. 2022.</li> <li>Despite the economic importance of snowmobiling, analyses of how climate change may affect snowmobiling and its related economic impacts does not exist in the current literature. Such knowledge is important to state agencies, rural communities, and policy makers involved with winter tourism. Our research analyzes the effect of climate affected snow conditions (specifically snow depth) on snowmobile recreation in Wyoming and estimates the resulting economic impacts across climate scenarios and recreation sites. From the survey data for the snowmobile recreation part of that project reported above, we are collaborating with climate scientists at the University of Wyoming to examine how climate change will impact snow levels, related snowmobile recreation, and resulting economic impacts and benefits. This research is being completed as an MS thesis project.  Expected completion is summer 2023.</li> <li>Analysis of snowmobile survey has been completed for the state trails report. A report regarding descriptive statistics of survey responses, trails usage, and economic impacts of snowmobiling in Wyoming was drafted. Analysis of off road vehicle (ORV) survey has been completed for the state trails report. A report regarding descriptive statistics of survey responses, trails usage, and economic impacts of ORV recreation in Wyoming was drafted. Estimation of Random Utility Models regarding snowmobile recreation site choice have been estimated for both resident and non-resident snowmobilers. These can now be combined with climate simulations to complete the economic analysis.</li> <li>Project: Estimating development risk for agricultural lands in Wyoming (Jun 2021 – Mar 2023). PI: Rashford.  Sponsor: The Nature Conservancy.  Amount: $29,000. We completed modeling to predict the risk of residential development for all agricultural land parcels in Wyoming.  Statewide NGOs are currently in the process of combining our risk estimates with estimates of ecological characteristics to determine how to effectively target conservation easement acquisitions across WY. </li> </ul> Objective 2: Advance Economic Valuation Methods and Uses to Enhance Natural Resource Management, Policy, and Decision-Making Colorado State University <ul> <li>Dale Manning and Amy Ando completed and published an analysis of the value of bats and presented the work at a wide range of venues.</li> <li>We also worked to form a group focused on how environmental economic methods may be influenced by racism, and proposed avenues for future research to diminish the role of racism in our methods and policy conclusions.</li> </ul> University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign <ul> <li>Atallah and co-authors published a paper on multi-targeted payments for hydrological and other forest ecosystem services.</li> <li>Atallah and co-authors used focus groups and household surveys to characterize and classify the ecosystem services associated with a palm species. They also assessed the livelihood dependence on four ecosystem service categories across four generations. Atallah and co-authors wrote, submitted, and revised and resubmitted a paper to the Agricultural and Resource Economics Review.</li> <li>Atallah revised and resubmitted a paper to the Journal of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association on family forest landowner preference for invasive species control methods and ecosystem service outcomes. This work is with co-authors at the University of New Hampshire and the University of Maine.</li> <li>Ando worked with W5133 partners Noelwah Netusil (Reed College) and Sahan Dissanayake (Portland State) to publish two papers using innovative choice experiment methods: one estimates the public benefits of green roofs for mitigating climate impacts in urban areas, and the other shows the impact that using high quality graphics in survey design can have on the quality of the research results. These papers will inform urban climate adaptation through green infrastructure, and improve choice experiment research.</li> <li>Ando worked with a grad student and postdoc on a paper that brings together a set of benefit transfer methods in a non-market valuation tool that can be used by multi-disciplinary teams studying coupled food-energy-water systems. This paper will help more teams of scientists be able to use relatively good economic methods in their research.</li> <li>Ando and seven collaborators (from Michigan State, Manhattan College, Williams College, Colorado State, UMass-Amherst, University of Michigan, and University of British Columbia) including Manning and Interis from W5133 wrote a paper that was accepted for publication in the Review of Environmental Economics and Policy showing how methods commonly used in environmental economics, including non-market valuation, can maintain environmental injustice unless scholars make changes in our practices. This paper will spur a range of new research efforts to advance environmental justice.</li> <li>Ando published a paper in Environmental and Resource Economics commenting on “The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review” (Dasgupta 2021). The paper shows how the Review fails to can do much to help stem global biodiversity loss. However, ingrained features of economics as a discipline often produce explanations and solutions for environmental problems that advantage wealthy and powerful entities in our global society rather than those who are poor or otherwise marginalized. This paper highlights two features of the Review in which re-focusing could improve both the effectiveness and the equity of its suggested global response to the biodiversity loss crisis, including changes to the approach of non-market valuation to focus concern on the needs of poor and marginalized people.</li> </ul> Oregon State University <ul> <li>David Lewis, David Kling, Steve Dundas and Daniel Lew (NOAA) published a paper that develops a new method to estimate the marginal benefit and corresponding public discount rate for changes in the abundance of a threatened species. Building off advances in choice experiment design and estimation, the study applies the method to Oregon Coast Coho salmon, an important threatened species in the Pacific Northwest. The study finds that the public values a one-year marginal increase in Coho abundance of 1000 fish from $0.08 to $0.19 per household with a discount rate for future increments in salmon abundance of 2.1%. Using an example of valuing the social benefits from closing one fish hatchery in one watershed that led to an instantaneous and permanent marginal increase in salmon abundance of 0.79%, results show this marginal change can generate over $63 million in present value of social marginal benefits to the greater Pacific Northwest region.</li> <li>David Kling, Steve Dundas and interdisciplinary collaborators published a paper that for the first time estimates the public's willingness-to-pay for Pacific Northwest sandy beach and coastal dune landscape restoration. The research, based on an original choice experiment deployed to residents of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, finds evidence that respondents on average are willing to substitute restoration that approximates the unspoiled coastal landscape on a smaller spatial scale for larger restoration projects that achieve only partial restoration. Maintaining recreation access is preferred, and programs with recreation restrictions yield positive willingness-to-pay only if accompanied by the highest restoration quality.</li> </ul> Penn State University <ul> <li>Green stormwater infrastructure provides a suite of benefits in addition to the primary objective of retaining stormwater runoﬀ. It is important to value these ancillary benefits to properly conduct benefit-cost analysis and maximize the value to residents in the design stage. We conducted a choice experiment to quantify the nonmarket benefits in monetary terms. We found that residents value both recreation and educational opportunities for green stormwater infrastructure (Wang, Brent, and Wu 2022).</li> <li>Stated preferences methods are used for nonmarket valuation in many settings. It is important to be able to recover accurate estimates of the public's willingness to pay (WTP), but critics argue that stated preference methods suﬀer from hypothetical bias - the WTP is artificially high when captured from a hypothetical scenario. We address a methodological issue of hypothetical bias in stated preference research. We conducted a field experiment within a stated preference survey on stormwater management. Some respondents were randomly selected to pay for the costs of their choice in the hypothetical choice experiment. This reduces the willingness to pay and may generate more accurate estimates of nonmarket values (Brent et al. 2022).</li> </ul> Virginia Tech <ul> <li>During the 2022/23 reporting period, Klaus Moeltner developed a new estimation framework that combines output from hedonic regression and matching estimators to identify the most efficient model at lowest risk of mis-specification bias. This framework is largely based on the recognition that unobserved spatial and temporal fixed effects in the regression model can, in fact, provide balance in estimation and guidance in matching-based model selection. For our empirical application of flood hazards to residential properties in Massachusetts, we find that the new estimation framework provides clear signals and leads to the selection of a much more efficient model than would have emerged under prior "best strategies."</li> <li>During the 2022/23 reporting period, I refined the Locally Weighted Regression (LWR) framework I developed during the previous reporting period by simplifying the task of choosing appropriate weight functions, introducing different distance functions to determine "locality," and streamlining the Benefit Transfer (BT) step following LWR estimation. I also applied these tools to two real-world watersheds in Iowa and Vermont to value improvements in water quality due to environmentally friendly agricultural practices. I find that the refined LWR approach substantially improves over generic BT based on a single meta-regression in both within sample accuracy, and BT efficiency.</li> </ul> University of Florida <ul> <li>[Task 2-1] To investigate the impacts of COVID-19 on visitation to Central Park, Weizhe Weng (University of Florida) built an innovative analytical framework that integrates mobile big data, a modern econometric approach, and a traditional travel cost model. Our modeling approach enabled a rapid assessment of the pandemic impacts and provided a basis for valuing unpriced services provided by urban parks.</li> </ul> Objective 3: Integrated Policy and Decision-Making Colorado State University <ul> <li>Task 3-1: Jude Bayham and Christine Dimke (Colorado State University) in collaboration with Patricia Champ (USDA USFS) developed a reduced grant match criteria for the Colorado State Forest Service Forest Restoration & Wildfire Risk Mitigation. In 2020, Colorado passed HB 20-1057, which amended the program to increase access for communities with “fewer economic resources'' by reducing the match requirement from 50% self-financing to 25% for qualifying applicants. The research team developed the criteria for “fewer economic resources” based on the social vulnerability index.  The team assembled the data and produced a geospatial data layer that the CSFS uses to determine reduced match eligibility. This project led to further research graduate research activity.</li> </ul> University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign <ul> <li>Atallah gave an invited presentation related to this objective on incorporating nonmarket valuation estimates into an agent-based model of forest landowner invasive species control. January 2023. “Individual environmental preferences and aggregate outcomes: an empirical agent-based model of forest landowner invasive species control.”, Agent-Based Modelling for Agricultural Policy Decision-Making, Canadian Agri-Food Policy Conference, Ottawa, Canada.</li> <li>Ando partnered with a team of researchers led by Heidi Albers at the University of Wyoming to publish a paper about how best to design conservation policy that meets the particular needs of migratory species, especially in the face of climate change.</li> </ul> Oregon State University <ul> <li>David Kling and coauthors published a paper that describes ecological federalism, a concept akin to environmental federalism focused on managing species and their habitats across political boundaries.</li> </ul> Penn State University <ul> <li>Environmental programs such as subsidies for green products and technologies are an important part of environmental policy. Governments are increasingly focused on the equity implications of their policies. Since subsidies benefit participating consumers while the full taxpayer base bears the costs. Therefore, it is important to assess the distributional implications of subsidy programs based on who is eligible and who signs up. We perform this analysis on green stormwater infrastructure subsidies in Seattle, WA. We analyzed participation data from the RainWise program in Seattle. In eligible areas, the wealthiest households and least White neighborhoods have lower participation rates. The findings highlight the importance of considering eligibility and participation in balancing the joint goals of environmental quality and environmental justice. (Brent, Cook, and Lassiter 2022).</li> <li>Households consistently shop (consume) and eat in ways that go against standard dietary recommendations. The main hypotheses for this lack of healthfulness include a lack of available healthy option (food deserts), high prices, and/or budget constraints. Our research exploits exogenous variation in housing prices as a shock to household budget constraints to test where income shocks impact the quality of food households consume and eat. We perform this analysis using large household-level scanner datasets combined with various national datasets on housing prices. The models allow us to test hypotheses related to income constraints and their impacts on the quality of food households purchase and eat. We find that while increased income does increase overall calorie intake, it does not impact the quality of food that households purchase. Thus, our results suggest that policies focused solely on income transfers may not accomplish the policy goal of improving household diet quality. (Zhang et al. 2022c).</li> </ul> University of Florida <ul> <li>[Task 3-2] Weizhe Weng (University of Florida) leads a project that quantifies the co-benefits of Greenhouse Gas emissions of water policies. We find that the co-benefits from reduced nitrous oxide emissions, which accrue at a broad geographic scale, exceed the benefits from relatively local water quality improvements by 14-20 fold. We demonstrate that considering these co-benefits has the potential to alter the benefit-cost ratio for water policies and even reverse the conclusions of benefit-cost analysis. This project is a collaboration of a team of economists, agronomists, Biological Systems Engineer, and limnologists.</li> </ul> University of Wyoming <ul> <li>Chian Jones Ritten and Ben Rashford (along with non-W5133) have worked on providing decision support tools for policy makers when designing conservation for migratory species’ habitat.</li> </ul> North Carolina State University <ul> <li>Task 3-2: Roger von Haefen (NC State), Daniel Obenhour (NC State), Jonathan Miller (NC State), George Van Houtven (RTI International), Sasha Naumenko (formerly of NC State), Michael Gerst (Univ. of Maryland), Hillary Waters (Univ. of Minnesota), and Melissa Kenney (Univ. of Minnesota) quantified the benefits of water quality improvements for urban streams in the Piedmont region of North Carolina using an ecological production framework. This finding helped US EPA and state environmental agencies assess the economic benefits of policies designed to improve stream conditions in rapidly urbanizing waersheds. Our results were shared with US EPA, NC Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and other agencies and local stakeholders, and Naumenko and Miller helped execute this research as graduate students. This was done in collaboration with other W5133 friends (Van Houtven) and outside stakeholders including the US EPA and NC DEQ.</li> </ul> South Dakota State University <ul> <li>Task 3.1 Jennifer Zavaleta Cheek (South Dakota State University) described how park managers with South Dakota Game, Fish, and Parks (SD GFP) how current managers think about climate variability and how they plan for it. To better understand the perspectives of state managers, we surveyed 63 park managers on March 29th, 2022 during an annual meeting of South Dakota’s Park Division.</li> </ul>

Publications

Publications Objective 1: Evaluate Natural Resource Management Decisions and the Effects of Climate Change to Understand Associated Welfare Impacts <ol> <li>Alix-Garcia, J. M. and D. Millimet. 2023 “Remotely Incorrect? Accounting for Nonclassical Measurement Error in Satellite Data on Deforestation” Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/723723">https://doi.org/10.1086/723723</a></li> <li>Bigelow, D.P., Lewis, D.J., and C. Mihiar, C. 2022. “A major shift in U.S. land development avoids significant losses in forest and agricultural land.” Environmental Research Letters, 17 024007. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac4537">https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac4537</a></li> <li>Blumberg, J., Goemans, C. and Manning, D., 2022. Producer Beliefs and Conservation: The Impact of Perceived Water Scarcity on Irrigation Technology Adoption(No. w30080). National Bureau of Economic Research.</li> <li>T. Bastian, A. Van Sandt, and R. H. Coupal. 2020-2021 Wyoming Comprehensive Snowmobile Recreation Report. University of Wyoming, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics. Report prepared for the State of Wyoming, Department of Parks and Cultural Resources. May, 2022. pp. 138.</li> <li>T. Bastian, A. Van Sandt, and R. H. Coupal. 2021 Wyoming Comprehensive Off-Road Vehicle Recreation Report. University of Wyoming, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics. Report prepared for the State of Wyoming, Department of Parks and Cultural Resources. October, 2022. pp. 132.</li> <li>Davis, E.C., Sohngen, B., and D.J. Lewis. 2022. “The effect of carbon fertilization on naturally regenerated and planted US forests.” Nature Communications, 13 (5490): <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-33196-x">https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-33196-x</a>.</li> <li>Dundas, S. J. 2022. Economic and policy implications for coastal housing markets facing sea level rise and erosion. In: Conway-Cranos, L., J. D. Toft, D. J. Trimbach, H. Faulkner, J. Krienitz, D. Williams, and S. Des Roches (eds.) The 2021 Puget Sound Nearshore Restoration Summit Proceedings. Olympia, WA: Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. p. 46-47. <a href="https://wdfw.wa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/02339/wdfw02339.pdf">PDF</a></li> <li>Dundas, S. J., S. Capalbo, and J. Sterns. 2023. The Economic Implications of Climate Change for Oregon. In: Fleishman, E. (ed.) Sixth Oregon Climate Assessment. Corvallis, OR: Oregon Climate Change Research Institute. pp. 134 – 157. doi: <a href="https://doi.org/10.5399/osu/1161">5399/osu/1161</a></li> <li>Filippelli, Steven, Matthew Sloggy, Jody Vogeler, Dale Manning, Christopher Goemans, Gabriel Senay (2022). Estimation of field-scale irrigation withdrawals in the Ogallala aquifer. Agricultural Water Management.</li> <li>Gharib, Ahmed, Joey Blumberg, Dale T. Manning, Chris Goemans, and Mazdak Arabi (2023). Assessment of vulnerability to water shortage in semi-arid river basins: The value of demand reduction and storage capacity. Science of the Total Environment.</li> <li>Ghimire, R., M. Suvedi, and M. Kaplowitz. 2022. Adoption of improved agricultural practices: Learning from off-season vegetable production in Nepal. Journal of International Agricultural and Extension Education, 29(3), 32-47.</li> <li>Hashida, Y., and D.J. Lewis. 2022. “Estimating welfare impacts of climate change using discrete-choice models of land management: An application to western U.S. forestry.” Resource and Energy Economics, 68: 101295. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.reseneeco.2022.101295">https://doi.org/10.1016/j.reseneeco.2022.101295</a></li> <li>Hrozencik, R.A., Manning, D.T., Suter, J.F. and Goemans, C., 2022. Impacts of Block‐Rate Energy Pricing on Groundwater Demand in Irrigated Agriculture. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 104(1), pp.404-427.</li> <li>Jensen, A. J., S. J. Dundas, and J. T. Peterson. 2022. Phenomenological and Mechanistic Modeling of Recreational Angling Behavior Using Creel Data. Fisheries Research 249: 106235. doi: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fishres.2022.106235">1016/j.fishres.2022.106235</a></li> <li>Lee, M. C., Suter, J. F., & Bayham, J. (2022). Reductions in National Forest Campground Reservation Demand from Wildfire. Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics.</li> <li>Li, L. and A.W. Ando. 2022. “Bison and rural economies.” Agricultural and Resource Economics Review 51(3): 455-472. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/age.2022.13">https://doi.org/10.1017/age.2022.13</a>.</li> <li>Li, L. and A.W. Ando. Forthcoming. “Early exposure to nature and willingness-to-pay for grassland restoration.” Land Economics.</li> <li>Lupi, Frank, von Haefen, Roger H. and Li Cheng. “Distributional Effects of Entry Fees for Financing Public Beaches,” Land Economics, 98:509-519, 2022.</li> <li>Lurbé, S., Burkhardt, J., Goemans, C., Manning, D. and Hans, L., (2022). Further evidence on social comparison and residential water use. Water Resources and Economics, p.100214.</li> <li>Manning, D., Rad, M.R. and Ogle, S., 2022. Inferring the Supply of GHG Abatement from Agricultural Lands.</li> <li>Montúfar, Rommel, Jake Gehrung, Neil Michael Ayala Ayala, and Shady S. Atallah. 2022. “Identifying the ecosystems services of the Ecuadorian ivory palm (Phytelephas aequatorialis Spruce): A qualitative study from the central coast of Ecuador.” Economic Botany. (DOI: 10.1007/s12231-022-09552-9)</li> <li>Rice, W.L., Newman, P., Zipp, K.Y., Taﬀ, B.D., Pipkin, A.R., Miller, Z.D. and Pan, B., 2022. Balancing quietness and freedom: Support for reducing road noise among park visitors. Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, 37, p.100474.</li> <li>Tanner, S., F. Lupi and C. Garnache. 2022. Estimating visitor preferences for recreation sites in wildfire prone areas, International Journal of Wildland Fire. 31(9), 871-885.</li> <li>Van Sandt, R. Coupal, and C. T. Bastian. 2022. The Economic Contributions of Wyoming’s Snowmobile Program. University of Wyoming, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics. Report prepared for the State of Wyoming, Department of Parks and Cultural Resources. pp. 10.</li> <li>von Haefen, Roger H. and Frank Lupi. “How Does Congestion Affect the Evaluation of Recreational Gate Fees? An Application to Gulf Coast Beaches,” Land Economics, 98:495-508, 2022.</li> <li>Webster, M., K. Fisher-Vanden, V. Kumar, R. Lammers, J. Perla, “Integrated hydrological, power system and economic modeling of climate impacts on electricity demand and cost.”, Jan 2022. DOI: 10.1038/s41560-021-00958-8. https://www.nature.com/articles Nature Energy /s41560-021-00958- 8.</li> <li>Wu, H., Miller, Z.D., Wang, R., Zipp, K.Y., Newman, P., Shr, Y.H., Dems, C.L., Taylor, A., Kaye, M.W. and Smithwick, E.A., 2022. Public and manager perceptions about prescribed fire in the Mid-Atlantic, United States. Journal of environmental management, 322, p.116100.</li> </ol> Objective 2: Advance Economic Valuation Methods and Uses to Enhance Natural Resource Management, Policy, and Decision-Making <ol> <li>Amy W. Ando, Titus O. Awokuse, Nathan W. Chan, Jimena González-Ramirez, Sumeet Gulati, Matthew G. Interis, Sarah Jacobson, Dale Manning and Samuel Stolper (accepted). Environmental and Natural Resource Economics and Systemic Racism. Review of Environmental Economics and Policy.</li> <li>Ando, A., T, Awokuse, J. González-Ramirez, S. Jacobson, D. Manning, N. Chan, S. Stolper, and S. Gulati. Forthcoming. “Addressing systemic racism in environmental and resource economics.” Review of Environmental Economics and Policy.</li> <li>Ando, A.W. 2022. “Equity and cost-effectiveness in valuation and action planning to preserve biodiversity.” Environmental and Resource Economics 83: 999 – 10145. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-022-00674-1">https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-022-00674-1</a>.</li> <li>Asbjornsen, Heidi, Yanhui Wang, David Ellison, Catherine M. Ashcraft, Shady S. Atallah, Kelly Jones, Alex Mayer, Monica Altamirano, and Pengtao Yu. 2022. “Multi-Targeted payments for the balanced management of hydrological and other forest ecosystem services.” Forest Ecology and Management522 (2022): 120482. (DOI:10.1016/j.foreco.2022.120482)</li> <li>Brent, Daniel A., et al. "Reducing bias in preference elicitation for environmental public goods." Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics2 (2022): 280-308. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8489.12463</li> <li>Chang, J.W., A.W. Ando, and M. Chen. 2023. “Valuing changes in the portfolio of service flows from climate-induced extremes on a linked food, energy, water system (C-FEWS)”. Frontiers in Environmental Science 11: <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2023.1069483">https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2023.1069483</a>.</li> <li>Lewis, D.J., Kling, D.M., Dundas, S.J., and D.K. Lew. 2022. “Estimating the value of threatened species abundance dynamics.” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 113: 102639. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2022.102639">https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2022.102639</a></li> <li>Manning, Dale and Amy Ando (2022). Ecosystem Services and Land Rental Markets: Producer Costs of Bat Population Crashes. Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists</li> <li>Netusil, N., L. Rabe, S. Dissanayake, and A. Ando. 2022. “Valuing the public benefits of green roofs.” Landscape and Urban Planning 224: 104426. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2022.104426">https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2022.104426</a></li> <li>Netusil, N., S. Dissanayake, L. Lavelle, A. Ando, and K. Wells. Forthcoming. “Does presentation matter? An analysis of images and texts in a choice experiment of green roofs.” Q Open.</li> <li>Nguyen, T., D. M. Kling, S. J. Dundas, S. D. Hacker, D. K. Lew, P. Ruggiero, and K. Roy. Quality over Quantity: Non-market Values of Restoring Coastal Dunes in the US Pacific Northwest. Land Economics 99(1): 63 – 79. doi: <a href="https://doi.org/10.3368/le.040721-0036R">10.3368/le.040721-0036R</a></li> <li>Swedberg, K., Boyle, K. J., Stachelek, J., Ward, N. K., Weng, W., & Cobourn, K. M. (2022). Examining Implicit Price Variation for Lake Water Quality. Water Economics and Policy, 2240005.</li> <li>Wang, Rui, Daniel Brent, and Hong Wu. "Willingness to pay for ecosystem benefits of green stormwater infrastructure in Chinese sponge cities." Journal of Cleaner Production 371 (2022): 133462. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.133462</li> </ol> Objective 3: Integrated Policy and Decision-Making <ol> <li>Albers, H.J., K. Kroetz, C. Sims, A.W. Ando, D. Finnoff, R.D. Horan, R. Liu, E. Nelson, and J. Merkle. 2023. “Using characteristics of migratory species to inform conservation policy questions.” Review of Environmental Economics and Policy 17(1) <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/724179">https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/724179</a>.</li> <li>Brent, Daniel A., Joseph H. Cook, and Allison Lassiter. "The eﬀects of eligibility and voluntary participation on the distribution of benefits in environmental programs: an application to green stormwater infrastructure." Land Economics (2022): 102920-0166R. <a href="https://doi.org/10.3368/le.98.4.102920-0166R">https://doi.org/10.3368/le.98.4.102920-0166R</a></li> <li>Conte, Marc, Kristiana Hansen, Kyle Horton, Chian Jones Ritten, Leah H. Palm-Forster, Jason F. Shogren, Frank Wätzold, and Teal Wyckoff. (2023) “A Framework to Evaluate Mechanisms to Support Seasonal Migratory Species.” Review of Environmental Economics and Policy.</li> <li>Jones Ritten, Chian, Amy Nagler, Kristiana Hansen, Drew Bennett, and Ben Rashford. (2022). “Incorporating Landowner Preferences into Successful Migratory Species Conservation Policy.” Western Economics Forum. 20(1): 83-94.</li> <li>Kone, D., K. Biedenweg, A. Doerr, S. J. Dundas, P. Nelson, R. Niemiec, and A. Rogers. 2022. Establishing a roadmap for incorporating social science and human dimensions into potential sea otter reintroductions on the U.S. West Coast. Sacramento, CA: California Ocean Science Trust. 42 pp. <a href="https://www.oceansciencetrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Final-OST-Sea-Otter-Report.pdf">PDF</a></li> <li>Sims, C., Armsworth, P R., Blackwood, J., Fitzpatrick, B., Kling, D M., Lenhart, S., Neubert, M., Papeş, M., Sanchirico, J., Shea, K., & Springborn, M. (2023). Leveraging federalism for flexible and robust management of social-ecological systems. People and Nature, 00, 1– 9. <a href="https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi.org%2F10.1002%2Fpan3.10458&data=05%7C01%7CSteven.Dundas%40oregonstate.edu%7Ca910463bca3f4cc6f68a08db274e2701%7Cce6d05e13c5e4d6287a84c4a2713c113%7C0%7C0%7C638146988832317619%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=hKJQb7FUwBNppzxE9%2BYAmzc0ZUmnXv7u87AIJTPGXjs%3D&reserved=0">https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10458</a></li> <li>Ulrich-Schad, Jessica, Paul M. Jakus, Malieka Bordigioni, and Don Albrecht. 2022. “Preferences for Economic and Environmental Goals in Rural Community Development in the Western United States.” Rural Sociology, 87(2):605-641.</li> <li>von Haefen, Roger H. et al. “Estimating the Benefits of Stream Water Quality Improvements in Urbanizing Watersheds: An Ecological Production Function Approach,” PNAS, </li> <li>Zhang, Bo, Douglas H. Wrenn, Janak Joshi, and Edward C. Jaenicke (2022). "Housing Wealth, Food Spending, and Diet Quality: Evidence from Panel Data." Agricultural and Resource Economics Review. (2022): 1-25. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/age.2022.12">https://doi.org/10.1017/age.2022.12</a></li> </ol>   2023 Annual Meeting Abstracts SESSION 1: Land Use Change & Protection Title:               Individual environmental preferences and aggregate outcomes: an empirical socio-ecological model of forest landowner invasive species control Authors:         Shadi S. Atallah and Ju-Chin Huang W5133 Obj:   1 Presenter:      Shadi S. Atallah Email:             satallah@illinois.edu Abstract: Tree pests, diseases, and weeds threaten the ability of public and private forests to provide ecosystem service worldwide. While forest ecosystems span large spatial scales, forest disturbances are typically managed at multiple, smaller spatial scales due to jurisdiction. This mismatch in ecological and management spatial scales is most pronounced in the Eastern United States (U.S.), where most forests are owned by private parties with diverse ownership and management motivations. Given that these forest disturbances are mobile and renewable, they can lead to spatial-dynamic externalities if they are under-controlled from a landscape perspective.             We combine the benefit of bioeconomic models in modeling the spatial dynamics of externalities and the benefit of choice experiments in characterizing preferences for control methods and ecosystem service outcomes. We develop a socio-ecological model of bio-invasion and control that is discrete in both time and space. The model includes computational private forest landowners that are ecologically connected beyond their property boundaries through the dispersal of the invasive shrub. The distribution of landowner characteristics and willingness to pay for invasive shrub control is based on a discrete choice experiment survey. According to the survey results with 939 landowners in Maine and New Hampshire, choices of invasive shrub control options are affected by control methods (chemical vs. mechanical), neighborhood control rate, and cost. Landowners prefer mechanical over chemical methods, on average, but mixed logit models suggest a significant individual heterogeneity regarding chemical use. The proportion of neighbors controlling the invasive shrub significantly affects own decision to control but only for landowners with a land size smaller than 24 acres. Larger landowners do not take into consideration whether neighbors control the invasive shrub. We simulate the socio-ecological system over 50 years and collect data on the aggregate landowner welfare, total number of treatments, and the percentage of mature trees. We do so under no control, a cost-share payment, and a lumpsum subsidy. We find that under no subsidy, no control takes place. Under a lumpsum subsidy, and compared to a cost-share payment,  landowners choose mostly chemical rather than mechanical treatments, experience a lower net private welfare gain, achieve a better landscape level of bioinvasion control which allows more trees to reach the mature age with fewer treatments. The results highlight the counterintuitive role of individual pro-environmental preferences over invasive species control within one’s property on detrimental landscape-level environmental and economic outcomes. From a methodological perspective, the integrated model illustrates the promise of using choice experiments to generate willingness-to-pay functions for socio-ecological models and the role of the such models in providing insight over the dynamic outcomes of preferences identified in choice experiments.   Title:               Does Land Conservation Affect Local Employment? Evidence from the Conservation Reserve Program Authors:         Liqing Li and Amy W. Ando W5133 Obj:   1 Presenter:      Liqing Li Email:             lli40@illinois.edu Abstract:        Land conservation programs that improve environmental quality by retiring active croplands may entail a trade-off between environmental quality and local economic development. This paper examines the impact of private land conservation programs on local employment in the U.S. based on Conservation Reserve Program (CRP).   The CRP, established by the Food Security Act of 1985, is the largest federally funded private land retirement program in the U.S. The program provides annual financial compensation to landowners who voluntarily join the program by signing a ten to fifteen-year contract. While the CRP provides several environmental benefits, land uses changing from agricultural production to environmental conservation may have unintended negative impacts on the local economy (Beck et al., 1999).   Previous research that focused on the economic impact of the CRP was mainly conducted in the late 1980s to the early 1990s when the program was first implemented (Hyberg et al., 1991; Broomhall and Johnson, 1990; Martin et al., 1988; Mortensen et al., 1990; Siegel and Johnson, 1991, Sullivan et al., 2004). However, enrollment criteria and status have experienced significant change since the late 1990s. Moreover, existing research mainly focused on the impacts in a specific county, multi-county, or state. Sullivan et al. (2004) expanded the study region to 1481 counties located in the Great Plains and most likely to be affected by the CRP. However, the effects of the CRP on local economic developments may vary by region. Research that can use updated data and expand the study region to explore the impacts of CRP enrollment on local employment for the entire U.S. and by region can bring new insights to this topic.   We utilize a panel fixed-effects model to study the impacts of CRP enrollment on local employment from 1998 to 2019. As a robustness check, we utilize heteroskedasticity to construct instruments (Lewbel, 2012) and examine the impacts of the CRP. The robustness check results align with findings from a panel fixed effects model. We find CRP enrollment has a negative and significant impact on employment for the agricultural sectors, though such impacts vary by region. The CRP does not affect farm jobs in the Midwest and South, where CRP enrollment is high but per acre farm labor requirement is low. The negative impacts of CRP enrollment on farm jobs are mainly from the West and Northeast.   While the CRP decreases farm employment in certain regions in the U.S., improved natural amenities from CRP enrollment may promote rural development. We find that CRP enrollment increases the number of non-farm jobs in industries related to recreation, food, and lodging services. However, such non-farm jobs only account for a small portion of the total economy. The impact of the CRP on aggregated non-farm job opportunities is insignificant. Overall, we do not find evidence that the CRP harms total local employment. Future debates over the scale and geographic focus of the CRP and other agricultural conservation programs may draw on the results of this research to inform estimates of the economic effects of conservation activities in different parts of the U.S.   Title:               The ecosystem service value of maintaining terrestrial protected areas in China Authors:         Haojie Chen W5133 Obj:   1 Presenter:      Haojie Chen Email:             Abstract:        Protected areas conserve and provide various ecosystem services, many of which are external to markets and invisible to commonly used development indicators (e.g., GDP), and provide indirect benefits to human well-being. The valuation of ecosystem services can assist in decision support associated with the management of protected lands, or with respect to deciding what to protect. Maintaining and expanding protected areas (PAs) can benefit humans and the rest of nature, but incurs management costs and opportunity costs . Using benefit transfer with data from existing studies, I estimated the annual value of the flow of the key ecosystem services for these lands. The value-flow of water retention, maintenance of soil fertility, sandstorm prevention, carbon sequestration, oxygen release, and recreation from China’s terrestrial protected areas is estimated be $2.64 trillion per year. The estimated benefit is over 15 times greater than the annual costs for preventing the degradation of the protected areas. These results indicate that, the benefits to social welfare for protecting these areas is substantially greater than the cost of protecting them, both in terms of management costs and opportunity costs. This study, like many others, assumes a constant unit value. That is, the value of a service equals the quantity of the service (e.g., tonnes of water) multiplies the unit value (e.g., value of water per tonne), which can be reflected by various indicators (e.g., market price, alternative cost, or avoided damage cost). Such an assumption ignores tipping points related to the provision of ES possible diminishing marginal value, and supply-demand relationships of the service. However, this assumption makes the assessment of values, especially at large special scales, practical and possible In order to better integrate these values into natural capital accounts, I am currently exploring ways to relax this assumption. I also look forward to exploring more sophisticated valuation approaches, including deliberative valuation is effective for soliciting ES values for protected areas.   Title:               Understanding tradeoffs residents make between fuel treatment and environmental benefits to reduce fire risk Authors:         José J. Sánchez, Lorie Srivastava and Emily Schlickman W5133 Obj:   1 Presenter:      José J. Sánchez Email:             Abstract:        Wildfires across the western United States are becoming larger, more frequent, and more severe. This shift has been largely attributed to a global change in climate along with local changes in the quantity of fuels in forested areas. Furthermore, increasing population and sprawl has expanded the wildland-urban interface (WUI), which has heightened fire-related risks for communities and people living in the WUI. In California, 3 out of every 10 homes are in the WUI – a number that is expected to increase in the coming years.    This project investigates ways to reduce the risk of wildfire in diverse WUI communities across California by better understanding residents’ perceptions of fuel management and their associated environmental benefits. The study focuses on vulnerable communities, which was defined by having high fire risk, large percentage of minority population, low income, English as a second language, and unreliable internet service. A multimode survey approach (in-person, online, and mail) was used to obtain a representative sample.   Specifically, the research questions addressed by this study are: (1) what is the economic value that residents place on their preferred type of fuel reduction activity to help reduce fire risk? and (2) what benefits do residents derive from provisions of ecosystem services that are protected or improved by their preferred fuel reduction activity?  To address these research questions, we estimate the economic value of the trade-offs between wildfire and ecosystem benefits from fuel treatments. We used a choice experiment survey of residents in 16 communities throughout California. Each respondent was made to select between fuel treatment options in which the activity (e.g., prescribed fire, mechanical thinning, grazing, etc.) and benefits to their communities (e.g., improved air quality, water quality, and greater recreation opportunities) varied.   Data collection is complete for the in-person survey, and ongoing for the online and mail survey modes. The survey booklet is expected to be mailed out in mid-February. Preliminary results will be presented using the in-person and partial online survey data. The results of this study may be applicable and useful in several ways relating to both on-the-ground resource managers and in developing more research-based planning processes for the WUI. For example, the results will help stakeholders better understand their preferred fuel treatment activities and their potential ecosystem service benefits in WUI watersheds. Second, the results will help land and fire managers better target spatially-specifically fuel management strategies by better accounting for vulnerable communities’ preferences for their surrounding landscapes. Third, this project will provide critical information to improve policy uptake and decision-making such as the recent Climate 21 Memo’s opportunities for the USDA to address development in the WUI and the increased use of prescribed fire.   SESSION 2: Revealed Preferences Title:               Travel cost method: traditional surveys versus mobile device data Authors:         Alecia Evans, Jude Bayham, Charles Sims W5133 Obj:   2 Presenter:      Alecia Evans Email:             Abstract:        Mobile device data are being increasingly leveraged in the valuation of recreational sites. This is in lieu of traditional survey-based methods such as the travel cost method (TCM). The use of mobile device data is promising for numerous reasons. Relative to traditional surveys, it is less costly  and it provides an opportunity to gather time-series data over longer time horizons (Jaung and Carrasco 2020). Despite its potential, there is a dearth of studies that employ mobile phone data in conducting TCM (Jaung and Carrasco 2020; Kubo et al. 2020). However, there is no quantitative evidence of how consumer surplus estimates derived from mobile device data compare to estimates using a traditional survey-based approach. In this paper, we address this information gap in an effort to highlight possible tradeoffs involved with using mobile device data for non-market valuation. We estimate, and compare, the recreational use value of the Knoxville Urban Wilderness (KUW) in Tennessee, using both the traditional survey-based method and aggregated mobile device data from SafeGraph. Our estimation is threefold. First, we use online survey data collected throughout 2021 and 2022 to estimate both a hybrid individual – zonal TCM (IZTCM) and Zonal TCM (ZTCM). While the online survey collected individual-level socioeconomic data, the recall period for visits was only over the previous month and no data were collected on alternative sites. Therefore, we exploit the variation that exists in the individual level data rather than being limited to variations across zones by using zonal averages. Trips are aggregated according to the zip code of survey respondents. For the ZTCM, the individual level socio-economic data is aggregated at the zip code level. Next, we use only the anonymized, aggregated mobile device data from SafeGraph to estimate the ZTCM. The data gives aggregated visits for mobile devices to KUW from each zip code in the same timeframe as the online survey. SafeGraph does not provide socio-economic data on users. As such, we complement this with aggregated socio-economic data, such as age and income, from sources such as the US Census Bureau and the Internal Revenue Service. Finally, we supplement the traditional survey data with the mobile device data from SafeGraph and re-estimate a ZTCM. We use SafeGraph data to estimate travel cost from the zip codes individuals resided in from the online survey. This is complimented with the aggregated socio-economic data from the survey. In essence, mobile device data were used to refine the travel cost estimates (particularly distance travelled), whilst the traditional survey provided demographics on KUW users. The traditional survey yields consumer surplus estimates of $115 per person per trip with 95% confidence interval of $31 to $1127. Analysis of the Safegraph data is ongoing. We expect SafeGraph data will lessen non-response bias and provide a more accurate estimate of distance travelled. However, it does not provide data on visitor spending potentially introducing new bias in the travel cost estimates. We expect improvements in the consumer surplus estimates when we supplement the survey with the Safegraph data relative to relying on the survey alone.  Title:               Jointly Estimating Site-Choice and Trip Length for Non-Market Valuation Authors:         Russel A. Dame, Daniel K. Lew, David M. Kling W5133 Obj:   2 Presenter:      Russel A. Dame Email:             <a href="mailto:damer@oregonstate.edu">damer@oregonstate.edu</a> Abstract:        In the study of recreation behavior, economists commonly use site-choice models to inform welfare effects from site-level closures or quality changes.  However, applications focused on site choices often make simplifying assumptions about the length of trips, frequently assuming they are the same length for all individuals in the sample. This oversimplification may be restrictive for samples with large variations in trip length leading to biased welfare estimates and limits the scope of the study to per trip welfare estimates. Researchers that consider site choice and trip length can calculate additional daily welfare effects and ecological endpoints that can be used in dynamic simulations, providing more information to policymakers. We develop and estimate a joint site-choice and trip length model that links the site choice and trip length decisions via expected trip length. Our linked framework considers the total impact on the conditional indirect utility function from longer trips. We apply this model using data collected from non-resident anglers that participated in a recreational saltwater fishing trip in Alaska. Non-resident anglers are more likely than residents to participate in a single fishing trip to Alaska in a given year and participate in a multi-day fishing trip. Thus, fishing trip length is an important margin of choice. We estimate the trip length model as a one-inflated zero-truncated negative binomial distribution which accounts for the large proportion (~48%) of the sample participating in a single-day trip. We also estimate the site-choice model as a two-stage nested logit model that considers anglers’ fishing mode choice (charter v. non-charter). Both models are estimated simultaneously using a full-information maximum likelihood framework.  Matching our prior expectations, model estimates imply that an increase in expected daily harvest rates will increase the trip length for most key Alaskan species. However, as the historical harvest rate for Pacific halibut (Hippoglossus stenolepis) increases, the estimated coefficients suggest that trip length may decrease. Anglers may substitute fishing time with other non-fishing activities while in Alaska once they reach a satiation point of Pacific halibut harvest. We conduct two simulations using the estimated model. The first considers a reduction in the statewide expected harvest rates of Pacific halibut due to proposed Blue Line management strategy plan. We find that reductions in the expected harvest of Pacific halibut led to an increase in fishing trip length by approximately 2 to 3 hours per trip. Our simulation suggests that expected recreational mortality will decrease by approximately 2 percentage points less than predicted in the Blue Line management strategy plan due to longer fishing trips. This implies that ignoring the on-site time component may bias oversimplified calculations of ecological endpoints and cause unintended policy consequences. The second simulation considers a closure to the harvest of silver salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) for a single site. We find a near zero effect on trip length as anglers substitute to sites with similar characteristics. Unlike the first simulation, the second simulation impacts a single site allowing for greater substitution effects than a statewide policy. Title:               Regression and matching in hedonic analysis: Empirical guidance for estimator choice Authors:         Klaus Moeltner, Roshan Puri, Robert J. Johnston W5133 Obj:   2 Presenter:      Klaus Moeltner Email:             moeltner@vt.edu Abstract:        We illustrate how estimation results from hedonic regression, basic matching, and regression adjusted matching can be combined to provide guidance on model choice for housing market studies in the presence of unobserved spatial and temporal effects, when the primary goal of the analysis is to estimate an unbiased binary treatment effect. We show, conceptually, that the “golden rule” of single-control matching no longer holds when these effects are present, and exact matching in space and time is practically infeasible. A larger number of matched controls can, in fact, trigger a beneficial “cancellation effect,” a to date unexplored route towards unbiasedness. This, in turn, reveals an empirical prescription for model search by choosing the number of matched controls that drive the cancellation effect closest to zero. In our application to flood zone discounts for property values in Massachusetts, we illustrate that a close-to-zero cancellation effect is empirically feasible, and that the resulting preferred model produces reasonable estimates and has desirable efficiency properties.   Title:               Voting with their feet: Do Political Partisans Value Neighborhood Public Goods Differently? Authors:         Corey Lang (clang@uri.edu) and Jarron VanCeylon (jvanceylon@uri.edu) W5133 Obj:   2 Presenter:      Jarron VanCeylon Email:             jvanceylon@uri.edu Abstract:        Partisan divides are common among many civil issues in the United States. While understandable for issues like abortion and guns, conservation of land seems like something both political parties should get behind. Intuitively, the value of outdoor recreation and beautiful farm landscapes would seem universal. Hunters and anglers are predominantly aligned with the Republican Party, and these groups also push strongly for continued federal land protection and exhibit strong support for the Clean Water Act (National Wildlife Federation 2012). And yet, when it comes to the ballot box, a voter’s political affiliation is the single largest determinant of support for environmental conservation, with approval being 20 to 40 percentage points higher for Democrats than Republicans (Burkhardt and Chan 2017, JAERE; Lang and Pearson-Merkowtiz 2022, JEEM).   The purpose of this paper is to investigate if the partisan gap present at the ballot box is observed in the housing market, and hence if there is a true partisan gap in preferences for conservation, or if it is some phenomenon specific to voting. Following a Random Utility Maximization framework, we develop a residential sorting model to estimate household willingness to pay (WTP) for residential proximity to conserved lands, allowing for heterogeneity in WTP by partisan affiliation. This analysis requires the construction of a comprehensive dataset that comprises a cross-section of properties and proximate spatial amenities, as well as the occupant’s income, race, ethnicity, and political affiliation gathered from public mortgage application and voter registration data. Current data construction spans two major housing markets, greater Rhode Island, and greater Charlotte North Carolina. Our eventual goal is to add a third housing market from a Republican-leaning area.   Preliminary results suggest that average WTP for a residential location proximate to conserved land is about $3200 in purchase price. Importantly, we find no statistical differences in willingness to pay between partisan groups, indicating that open space is universally valued across the partisan divide. This paper illustrates a seeming paradox that partisan preferences are similar in the housing market but dramatically different at the ballot box. This has two implications. First, valuation studies using voting data may underestimate Republicans’ WTP for land conservation (and potentially many more public goods). Second, land conservation efforts may be hurt by relying on the ballot box. Currently, much of the FFOS preservation spending by states and municipalities in the United States is directly approved by voters – on average over $2 billion per year (The Trust for Public Land 2022). However, this reliance on voters may ironically lead to less FFOS conservation than is desired by the public, given the seeming change in preferences by Republicans moving across venues. For these reasons, more research is needed to understand mechanisms that drive this change in expressed preferences.   SESSION 3: Farm and Food Title:               Who Values Local Food, Nature Conservation, and Farmland Preservation, and How Much? Authors:         Frederick Nyanzu (UIUC), Bryan Parthum (Environmental Protection Agency), Corey Lang (University of Rhode Island) W5133 Obj:   1 Presenter:      Amy Ando Email:             amyando@illinois.edu Abstract:        Peri-urban nature and farmland conservation activity is growing in the U.S. along with attention to expanding local food supplies. While many papers have quantified total or average public values of nature conservation, we know little about how the values people have for conservation vary among groups of people, and little research has actually quantified public willingness-to-pay for protecting farmland around cities and from increasing the supply of local food. There are also important questions to answer about who benefits most from conservation and local food. For example, other research shows that Black and Hispanic household are relatively unlikely to live near protected areas (Lang et al. 2023), but it isn’t clear whether that pattern reflects discriminatory barriers or preference heterogeneity. This paper uses a choice experiment survey of people in 10 cities in the East and Midwest to estimate the values of nature conservation, farmland preservation, and local food, and to explore how those values vary with features of people like race, ethnicity, income, and factors that influence mobility like disability and personal access to a car.   We craft a choice experiment survey to elicit the values people place on different kinds of conservation and local food. The survey explains that the respondents’ city and local non-profit groups could invest in efforts to establish protected natural areas and farmland around the edge of the city. Those protected areas could vary in several ways: number of acres of protected nature and protected farmland, amount of local food available to the respondent from the protected land in the growing season, type of recreational amenities (trails, picnic areas, or both), distance from the respondent’s home, and cost to the respondent in increased taxes. We field our survey online to about 800 respondents in 10 cities through Qualtrics.<a href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1">[1]</a> Basic estimates of the sample-average marginal values of the attributes come from estimating fully correlated mixed multinomial-logit models in willingness-to-pay space with data from the responses to the choice questions. Then, to understand how preferences vary among groups of people we use two additional types of econometric models.   The results are still preliminary, but interesting findings have already emerged. Our sample displays a fairly strong generic preference for the status quo. However, the total annual value of the features of an actual conservation project is quite large. Who benefits the most from conservation and provision of local food? In fact, we find very little evidence of preference heterogeneity. There are no major differences in preferences between White, Black, and Hispanic people in our sample of respondents. Low income respondents do have relatively low MWTP for expanding local food that can be purchased from farm stands, but there are no major difference in preferences over local food between White and Black respondents.   Much research has already documented that people gain significant value from efforts to protect nature around cities. This research shows that residents of mid-sized cities in the U.S. would be willing to pay just as much to protect peri-urban farmland as they would nature. Our findings also lend evidence to inform current discussions about expanding local food in urban areas. We find that people of all races would value expanded farm stand food, though low-income people benefit less from that standard approach to food supply. To benefit low-income urban residents, policy makers and urban planners might think more about expanding areas where free foraging is available, since we find uniformly high WTP across all demographics for including access to fishing and plant-food foraging in protected natural areas.   Title:               Conservation and Food Security: Recreational Fishing, Foraging, and Willingness-To-Pay (WTP) for Local Food Authors:         Frederick Nyanzu (UIUC), Bryan Parthum (Environmental Protection Agency), Corey Lang (University of Rhode Island) W5133 Obj:   1 Presenter:      Frederick Nyanzu Email:             fnyanzu2@illinois.edu Abstract:        To combat land conversion around population centers, peri-urban nature conservation and farmland preservation efforts are growing in the United States. While studies have quantified total or average public values of nature conservation, we know little about the value different groups of people place on local food. Some scholars show that strategic local food systems can help mitigate food insecurity (O’Hara and Toussaint 2021), but others raise concerns that local food systems can fall prey to food gentrification (Rice 2015). Willingness-to-pay for local food can be influenced by the food insecurity status of the individual as well as historical or systemic factors, and failing to account for these factors can bias one’s understanding of the values that local food expansion will provide to marginalized people.   This paper fills the gap in our knowledge of the values people place on expanded access to local food. We use a choice experiment survey on nature and farmland conservation that draws 840 respondents from 10 cities in the East and Midwest States in the United States. We develop descriptive quantitative evidence about the roles that fishing and foraging play in food access, and how that varies among different socioeconomic groups. We estimate average willingness to pay (WTP) for expanding food available at local farm stands and in local natural areas managed to provide foraging opportunities. Finally, we explore how the values people have for those types of food access vary intersectionally with race, income, food insecurity status, and the experience they already have with fishing and foraging.   Preliminary descriptive data analysis shows that where people get food from do not vary by racial group and income level. However, foraging and fishing behavior vary by income level and racial groups; while high-income groups mainly fish for recreation, low-income and minority groups predominantly fish for food. Our data are consistent with previous findings (Odoms-Young 2018) that food insecurity is higher among minority or low-income groups; thus, our data show that food-insecure groups fish more to supplement food supply than for recreation. Early estimates of WTP for expanded local food from the choice experiment show that food insecurity has a negative (though statistically insignificant) relationship with willingness-to-pay for local food, even accounting for confounding factors that might bias the estimate. Early estimates of WTP for expanded local food from the choice experiment reveal mixed evidence on how those values vary with food insecurity. There certainly is no clear evidence that providing more food in local farm stands and foraging areas would convey large benefits to food insecure urban residents.   Our study contributes to the discussion on racial distribution of food insecurity and socio-cultural characteristics and values of subsistence fishing and foraging. Our findings will help policy makers and managers understand the roles that foraging and angling play in supplementing food access for low income and minority households, and inform discussions about whether expanding local food pathways will have value to the food insecure people we might hope could benefit the most.   Title:               Enrollment Restrictions and the Adoption of Conservation Practices in the U.S. Corn Belt Authors:         Xiaolan Wan, Gregory Howard, and Wendong Zhang W5133 Obj:   1, 2, 3 Presenter:      Gregory Howard Email:             glhoward@illinois.edu Abstract:        Using a mixed-mode survey of 568 farmer respondents in the Boone and North Raccoon River watersheds in Iowa, we utilize a discrete choice experiment to examine farmer behavioral response to a new policy design of conservation programs—enrollment restrictions in cost-share programs. Using a random parameters logit model, we first show how farmers’ preferences for conservation practices change when enrollment restrictions are imposed in conservation programs. Our results suggest that eligible farmers are more likely to choose a conservation contract with enrollment restrictions. We consider three contracts with per-acre payments similar to those offered in Iowa’s EQIP program—incentivizing cover crops ($40), no-till ($10), and split nitrogen application ($9) for two years—and compare willingness-to-accept for these contracts with and without enrollment restrictions. Mean willingness-to-accept estimates for the cover crops, no-till, and split nitrogen application contracts decrease by 82%, 92%, and 93%, respectively, when enrollment restrictions are introduced. In addition, estimated participation supply curves demonstrate higher enrollment when introducing enrollment restrictions, though this is especially true for low compensation levels, and enrollment decreases as the proportion of farmers who are ineligible for the conservation contract rises. We show that this sharp reduction in WTA for enrollment restricted contracts (compared with contracts without enrollment restrictions) is not driven by sample selection, as we see similar results when we consider only subsamples of eligible farmers.   Title:               Moving to the Country: Understanding the Effects of Covid-19 on Property Values and Farmland Development Risk Authors:         Kelsey Johnson, Lee Parton, Christoph Nolte, Matt Williamson, Theresa Nogeire-McRae, Jayash Paudel, Jodi Brandt W5133 Obj:   1, 2, 3 Presenter:      Lee Parton Email:             leeparton@boisestate.edu Abstract:        As human populations grow, one strategy for meeting housing demand is through the development of agricultural land and other open space, which can generate negative externalities. This may be addressed at local, state, or federal levels with land-use planning, including farmland preservation policies (FPPA, 1981; Hunter 2022). Efficient land-use planning in the presence of competing land uses requires knowledge of development risk, housing preferences, and the full costs of farmland loss. We conduct a national scale hedonic analysis to investigate how COVID-19 has affected property prices in suburban and rural areas with high development risk and for the purpose of understanding the effects of COVID-19 driven shifts in housing preferences. This analysis is made possible through the use of data on U.S. housing transactions provided through the ZTRAX program (Zillow, 2020). Our analysis demonstrates that the pandemic caused differential price impacts across 21 states, suggesting heterogeneous shifts in preferences. Furthermore, our estimates suggest heterogeneous price effects driven by the characteristics of nearby urban areas, with prices appreciating faster on land at risk located near small urban areas. Our analysis finds that development pressure, as measured through transaction prices, changed in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.   Title:               Electricity Demand by the Irrigated Sector in Response to Climatic Shocks Authors:         Dilek Uz W5133 Obj:   3 Presenter:      Dilek Uz Email:             dilekuz@unr.edu Abstract:        Climate change is already impacting global agricultural productivity (Lobell et al., 2011; Burke et al., 2015) with crop losses due to extreme heat projected to rise substantially through the end of the century (Petersen, 2019). A rich economics literature characterizes how climate change impacts agricultural profits, land values, and yields (Mendelsohn et al., 1994; Schlenker et al., 2005; Burke and Emerick, 2016). In regions with access to water resources for irrigation the agricultural productivity losses associated with climate change are less severe as producers as can potentially adapt to reduced precipitation and higher temperatures by applying more water to their crops (Schlenker and Roberts, 2009). This paper addresses this form of climate change adaptation by characterizing how the irrigated agricultural sector responds to extreme heat and drought. Specifically, we use unique utility level data on electricity distributed to irrigated agricultural producers to empirically model how the sector’s energy demand responds to climatic shocks. Our results shed light on an important form of climate change adaptation for the agricultural sector while also informing projections of electricity demand by the irrigated sector under differing climate change scenarios.   Electricity is a vital input for the U.S. irrigated agricultural sector, powering nearly 75% of all irrigation pumps which are generally used to extract water from underground aquifers (NASS, 2018). Electricity use by the irrigated agricultural sector is also an important part of aggregate electricity demand, constituting approximately 1% of national demand annually (Sowby and Dicataldo, 2022). Despite irrigated agriculture’s importance for the electricity distribution and generation sector, relatively few studies have examined how climatic and economic factors influence irrigated agriculture’s demand for electricity. Notable exceptions include Maddigan et al. (1982) and Uri and Gill (1995) which both empirically model the price elasticity of demand for electricity by the irrigation sector. This paper builds on this work by incorporating weather variables in empirical models of the irrigation sector’s demand for electricity. This extension to past modeling efforts is important as the sector’s demand for electricity exhibits substantial inter-annual variation based on growing season temperatures and precipitation as higher temperatures increase crop water needs and precipitation and pumped water are roughly substitutes. Projected increases in the intensity and severity of droughts and heat waves under global climate change scenarios underscores the importance of characterizing the irrigation sector’s responsiveness to such climatic shocks (Sch¨ar, 2016; Satoh et al., 2022).   SESSION 4: Recreation and Conservation Title:               Measuring the Benefits and Costs of Conservation Program Design for Migratory Species Authors:         Chian Jones Ritten, Roger Coupal, Kristi Hansen W5133 Obj:   1, 3 Presenter:      Chian Jones Ritten Email:             <a href="mailto:cjonesri@uwyo.edu">cjonesri@uwyo.edu</a> Abstract:        Conservation actions that support terrestrial migratory species, including elk and mule deer, have become a growing regional policy concern in the Pacific Northwest and the Intermountain West. Unlike sedentary species, these migratory species require habitat across expansive, usually connected areas. This unique need for spatially explicit conservation actions along pre-defined migration routes, or corridors, challenges the effectiveness of existing conservation programs (Conte et al., 2022). Further, because these species move throughout the landscape seasonally, effective conservation is species, time, and place specific, suggesting a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to conservation will be ineffective to meet the needs of migratory land species (Jones Ritten et al., 2022). Previous literature has highlighted the need to measure ecological benefits when designing conservation policy for terrestrial migrating species (e.g., Conte et al., 2022; Jones Ritten et al., 2022). Yet, incorporating the full cost of conservation policy, specifically the value of any reduction in outdoor recreation, is also a critical factor that has yet to be addressed in the literature. We use the case study of mule deer and elk migration corridors in Southwest Wyoming (Rudd, et al., 2018) to show the need for policy makers to incorporate the value of impacts to recreation and local public finance into conservation policy design. The choice of policy design, which will affect tourism and provision of public services in the county, will likely influence economic development including local government public finance and overall impacts to the region. The transition to taxation and public service regimes associated tourism and outdoor recreation increases can be constrained due to political and social considerations. Thus, misestimating the true cost of conservation design may lead to not only ineffective conservation policy, but broad regional impacts.  Title:               Snow, skiing, and the impacts on the regional economy Authors:         Joseph Snapp, Yvette Uwineza, Jude Bayham W5133 Obj:   1 Presenter:      Jude Bayham Email:             <a href="mailto:jude.bayham@colostate.edu">jude.bayham@colostate.edu</a> Abstract:        The ski industry is an important attraction of economic activity in many rural mountainous regions around the country. Climate change poses a threat to the ski industry and the economies that support ski tourism. Using high-resolution spatiotemporal mobile device data, we estimate the impact of snow depth on ski resort visitation and the subsequent impact of that visitation on supporting industries at different proximities from the resorts. We then quantify the direct impacts of visits to supporting industries on retail sales in the ski resort communities. We find that a 10% increase in snow depth leads to an increase of $1.7 million in daily retail sales for a representative community in Colorado. Our results highlight the economic vulnerability of resort communities to climate change.   Title:               Representing landscape type and wildfire burns in different sized recreation sites in a discrete choice framework Authors:         Sonja Kolstoe, Trudy Cameron, Abby Kaminski W5133 Obj:   2 Presenter:      Sonja Kolstoe Email:             sonja.kolstoe@usda.gov Abstract:        Recreational destinations in consumers’ consideration sets often come in all different shapes and sizes but are included in the choice set of a recreation demand model in the same fashion based on the presence and/or extent of their site attributes. Generally, when land cover is included in a recreation site choice model, it is included as a dummy variable for the dominant land cover type, as was done in Kolstoe, Cameron and Wilsey (2018). That study focused on the Pacific Northwest, where most of the narrowly defined sites of the type in question generally have an essentially homogenous land cover type, making land cover characterization for each site straightforward. However, there are two potential research contexts where this simple strategy may be problematic: (1) medium and large sites where only portions of the physical area relevant for a recreational day-trip (say) have been affected by wildfire (and potentially to differing degrees) and (2) large and very large sites (e.g., Yellowstone National Park) where the ecosystems themselves are vastly different but are technically within one “site” per the conventional definition. When wildfire has affected the “site,” then there may be parts of the site that are affected whereas others may remain untouched. In the literature, wildfire has been included in recreation demand models in a variety of ways (e.g., Englin et al. (2006)) and there have been concerns about how to account for individuals who visit multiple sites on a single trip (e.g., Parsons et al. (2021)). For example, Englin et al. (2006) valued Jasper National Park and its recovery following a forest fire. They used the Canadian National Parks Inventory data to break down three main types of vegetation (lodgepole pines, spruce-juniper and alpine meadows). They also account for the ages of tree stands, and time since the wildfire event. Data and computing power exist nowadays that make it feasible to account for site attributes (e.g., landcover type, wildfire burn extent, and burn severity) in a more granular fashion on a large spatial and temporal extent. However, the question then becomes how to uniformly include site attributes such as land cover and burn severity for medium and large sites where portions may be unaffected by wildfires? Medium and large sites may have to be treated differently, as collection of smaller subunits with essentially homogeneous land cover, if the researcher is to account for different portions of the site. This strategy is related to modeling visitation to multiple different sites during a single excursion (e.g., Parsons et al. (2021)). We will present a framework for different alternatives concerning how such attributes may be included in recreation demand and visitation models, including consideration of alternative strategies for incorporating heterogeneous medium and large destination “sites” into a discrete-choice model via different degrees of spatial aggregation.   Title:               Is the Wellbeing of Surviving Wildlife Welfare Relevant—And Should We Care? An Application to North Atlantic Marine Plastics Authors:         Robert J. Johnston, Tobias Börger, Keila Meginnis, Nick Hanley, Tom Ndebele, Ghamz E. Ali Siyal, Nicola Beaumont, Frans de Vries W5133 Obj:   1, 2 Presenter:      Robert J. Johnston Email:             <a href="mailto:rjohnston@clarku.edu">rjohnston@clarku.edu</a> Abstract:        People’s willingness to pay (WTP) for improvements to wildlife populations has been established by decades of research, largely applying stated preference (SP) methods. This work provides evidence of WTP for outcomes such as increased population sizes, reductions in mortality and biodiversity improvements. With few exceptions, this research focuses on measures that are related—directly or indirectly—to whether organisms survive. For example, measures such as population sizes, mortality, and biodiversity are fundamentally related to survival. In contrast, potential welfare effects linked to the quality of life of surviving organisms are often overlooked. Consider a pollutant such as marine plastics that causes mortality of marine species but can also cause non-fatal suffering for surviving animals. In such cases, pollution reductions may improve the survival and quality-of-life of affected species. If people care about animal wellbeing, SP welfare elicitation that overlooks these values—for example eliciting WTP for mortality reductions alone—may misrepresent benefits in possibly complex ways. The idea that people might value animal welfare improvements is not new. Research demonstrates that individuals are willing to pay for improvements in farm animal welfare, for example. Yet SP research evaluating WTP for environmental policies that benefit wildlife almost universally proceeds under an implied assumption that valid welfare measures may be obtained through WTP estimates linked to survival or existence alone.   To consider the implications of this common practice, this article develops a theoretical model and discrete choice experiment (DCE) to evaluate whether and how the omission of potentially relevant information on species wellbeing influences the validity of WTP estimation, drawing from a case study of marine plastic reductions in the North Atlantic. Empirical evaluation proceeds via a DCE that evaluated preferences of US households for programs to reduce plastics pollution in the North Atlantic. Two otherwise-identical DCE treatments were developed, both of which included an attribute that quantified reductions in anticipated mortality of marine species. The first treatment included an attribute that quantified additional reductions in non-fatal harm to the same species. Scenarios in the second treatment omitted this attribute along with any mention of non-fatal harm. The questionnaire was implemented during 2022 over a sample of households in US Atlantic coast states, yielding a final sample of N=4,681 responses.   Random utility models were estimated via mixed logit in WTP space with structural comparisons across DCE treatments. Results support hypotheses from the theoretical model. Omitting information on changes to the wellbeing of surviving wildlife from SP scenarios that convey other environmental impacts leads to profound impacts on welfare estimates. For example, such omissions cause WTP estimates for mortality reductions to roughly double in magnitude—presumably because respondents (when not given information on wildlife harm) speculate that mortality reductions are accompanied by equivalent reductions in non-fatal wildlife suffering. These effects imply that welfare estimates linked to wildlife survival in the literature may be unknowingly affected in non-trivial and theoretically predicable ways by respondents’ speculations about concomitant impacts on species wellbeing that might also occur.   SESSION 5: Elicitation Improvements Title:               Revealed Preferences from Voluntary Contributions Authors:         Zhenshan Chen, Stephen K. Swallow W5133 Obj:   2 Presenter:      Zhenshan Chen Email:             zhenshanchen@vt.edu Abstract:        We introduce an approach to modeling a binary-choice contribution solicitation for public goods. This approach recovers the compensating variation of the underlying public good by integrating nonparticipation, free riding, and warm glow factors in an expected utility framework. Monte Carlo simulation suggests the proposed approach reliably recovers the willingness to pay measures with only moderate bias, and the estimates are more accurate if the provision probabilities are elicited. We also provide an empirical example to show how the proposed approach can be applied to real donation datasets. Providing the basis of donation serving as a value elicitation tool, this study potentially opens a novel area for future research valuing public goods. Being natural and familiar to the public, voluntary contributions have the potential to function as a value elicitation tool for certain public goods. A typical value elicitation tool for public goods is the stated preference approach, which was often criticized (e.g., Hausman, 2012) for involving hypothetical bias. Eliciting value measures from voluntary contributions (i.e., a revealed preference approach) could mitigate such concerns, serving as an alternative to the widely adopted approach to establish consequentiality in a stated preference survey (Vossler, Doyon, and Rondeau, 2012). Moreover, when raising tax might be unjustified or potentially widely protested for certain applications, voluntary contributions could serve as an effective payment vehicle. As voluntary contributions have been widely used to fund public goods and employed in “stated” preference studies (e.g., Champ and Bishop, 2006), they form a rich but underutilized data source on public good valuation. This study establishes an integrated framework showing how voluntary contributions can serve as a value-elicitation tool for public goods. We establish an integrated framework showing how to estimate WTP from voluntary contribution data. We investigate a clearly defined public good, which unambiguously offers potential benefits to a certain group of people. Our model assumes that an individual doesn’t exactly know about others’ compensating values or the distribution of value within the population, and his decision is based on subjective beliefs regarding the probability of provision, which is then built on certain heuristics about the features specified in the solicitation. The likelihood function derived from the framework is presented below, where  denotes the probability of having a positive potential donation (under a random utility model framework) and  represents the probability of participation. ;                                       (1) .       (2) We present two applications with this framework: one is a Monte Carlo simulation, the other is an empirical analysis based on a real voluntary contribution solicitation (the Bobolink Project, see Swallow, Anderson, and Uchida, 2018). Preliminary Results and Discussion The Monte Carlo simulation shows that the utility parameter estimates from the proposed framework are generally centered around the true parameter value. As the sample size goes up to a certain level (e.g., pass 5000 total elicitations in our setting), the dispersion of the estimates considerably decreases, and the proposed estimation becomes reliable. The results from the Bobolink application show that the estimated WTP is considerably higher than WTD, although the relationship might be reversed when WTP is small and the warm glow effect dominates the donation behavior (Figure 1). Figure 1. Predicted WTD vs. WTP Note: Each point represents the predicted WTP and WTD for one individual.   Title:               Consequential Design for Valuing Private Goods Authors:         Craig E. Landry, Twinkle Roy, Ben Campbell, Greg Colson, Eileen Schafer W5133 Obj:   2 Presenter:      Craig E. Landry Email:             clandry@uga.edu Abstract:        Economic valuation can provide vital information on benefit flows associated with public goods, and stated preference methods have come a long way in providing more reliable and robust data on these values. In some cases, however, analysts wish to focus on the value of private goods that exhibit complementarity with public goods (e.g., recreation trips, organic food, green energy products). There has been considerably less research to bias and validity of stated preference methods in this domain. We propose an extension of the ex ante, consequential design for public goods to attenuate hypothetical bias in valuing private goods that complement environmental quality.   Our variant of consequentiality attempts to harness other-regarding preferences by identifying other parties that maintain a stake in results of the valuation exercise.  For example, indicating that one would take a trip to the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil leak may provide a warm glow to the respondent, but when the subject is told that survey results could be used to make costly stocking and hiring decisions by hospitality businesses in the Gulf region, the subject may undertake greater effort to evaluate a prospective trip, thus providing more realistic responses.   Using experimental methods, we compare valuation results for private goods (with complementary public goods) that highlight the potential for socio-economic consequences of others. In the first experiment, we assess the economic value of locally grown herbs, highlighting economic and environmental benefits that can accompany their trade. We split the sample and use an information treatment to convey potential negative impacts of hypothetical bias on local farmers. Relative to the control (no information on potential negative impacts on farmers), we find reduced WTP for locally grown herbs with consequential treatment, though the effect is only significant for those subjects that spent substantial time reading the treatment text (dwell time exceeds median for treatment).   In our second experiment, we assess the economic value of energy audits that rate respondents’ home energy efficiency and offer specific recommendations to improve efficiency in energy use. Again, we split the sample and use an information treatment that highlights the potential consequences of hypothetical bias. The information treatment indicates that “… national supplier is working with local military veterans groups that can supply experienced contractors to assist in the energy assessment partnership. Your answer to the following question could be used by these veterans groups to make investment decisions to provide for contractor services. If you provide inaccurate information, they may make poor decisions about costly investments.” In addition to testing for the influence of consequential treatment on WTP for energy audits, we explore other-regarding preferences as a mechanism. We include a standard instrument for empathy and explore whether these measures correlate with treatment effectiveness.   Title:               Correcting Voters’ Cost Misperception of Public Good Referendums Authors:         Corey Lang, Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz W5133 Obj:   2 Presenter:      Corey Lang Email:             <a href="mailto:clang@uri.edu">clang@uri.edu</a> Abstract:        Direct democracy is an important determinant of local public goods; US voters annually authorize billions of dollars in public spending through bond and tax referendums. An open question however is to what extent these mechanisms supply public goods that match preferences of constituents. A neoclassical model of voting behavior would stipulate that a referendum states a quantity of public good and a cost, and the voter performs a cost-benefit calculation to decide their choice. However, if voters misperceive costs, then they may vote in discordance with their preferences.   This paper examines referendum voting behavior and understanding of referendum costs. Specifically, we conduct an exit poll focused on a statewide bond referendum, and couple this survey with randomized information about true cost implications of the bond. The goals of the project are to understand cost perception, assess if information provision is effective at increasing cost understanding, and examine if correct cost information influences voter choice.   Data Our research design couples randomized information provision and an exit poll survey. We focus on a 2022 Rhode Island statewide bond referendum, the $50 million Green Economy Bonds (GEB), which proposed spending on a number of environmental priorities (clean water, land conservation, etc.). We trained 95 undergraduate students and sent them to 38 polling locations on Election Day. Half of the locations were “treated”, students held signs and verbally communicated factual information about average household cost of a specific bond referendum on the ballot. Specifically, we communicated that the cost of GEB would be about $7/year for the average household. These students engaged voters entering the poll. At all locations, different students conducted an exit poll. The survey was anonymous and self-administered, which mitigates social desirability bias. The survey asked about votes for governor, referendum approval, demographic information, and importantly how much the bond would cost their household in additional taxes if it passed. We created three versions of the survey that differed only in the range of cost answers. Our reasoning was that if cost guesses are dependent on the survey version (ie, anchoring bias), then that is a strong indicator that people are ignorant about costs. We collected 2,057 completed surveys on Election Day.   Results There are three sets of results. The first result is that voters are generally uninformed about personal costs of bond referendums. Examining voter respondents at control locations, those without the information treatment, the distribution of cost guesses was fairly uniform, with the highest probability choices being the lowest and highest costs regardless of survey version. Cost guesses were highly dependent on survey version – when indicator variables for survey version are added to a model of cost guess, R-squared increases from 0.05 to 0.45. Lastly, only 5.4% of respondents chose the correct cost answer, less than would be expected with random guessing.   The second result is that the information treatment worked, but was not universally effective, nor homogenously effective across groups. Survey takers at treated location were 13.2 percentage points more likely to choose the correct cost guess. While that is a 244% increase over baseline, clearly the majority of voters are not receiving the information, which is consistent with observed voter behavior of not wanting to engage with canvassers when entering a poll. Importantly, some voters were seemingly more receptive to information. Treated respondents who voted for the Democratic nominee for governor were 18.2 percentage points more likely to be accurate, while treated respondents who voted for the Republican nominee for governor were only 11.2 percentage points more likely to be accurate. Even though the information was presented in a non-partisan manner, because the information was about a referendum more favored by Democrats, it could have been construed in a partisan manner. This interpretation and Republican’s rejection of information is consistent with ideas of motivated reasoning (Kahan, 2013).   The last set of results investigates whether correct information affects voter choice. We estimate an instrumental variable model using treatment as an instrument for accuracy. Across a series of models, the effect of accurate cost beliefs is always a statistically insignificant determinant of voter choice. That being said, models that allow the effect of accurate information to be different across partisan groups suggest divergent effects. When knowing the correct cost information, Democrats are more likely to vote in favor of the Green Economy Bonds but Republicans are less likely to vote in favor of it. This result may again point to motivated reasoning or truly different interpretations of the information. For example, Democrats may interpret the information as a small cost and worth increasing their support. In contrast, the cost information may prime Republicans to think about taxes and decrease support.   Title:               Does excludability reduce free-riding in stated and real charitable donations? Authors:         Jerrod Penn W5133 Obj:   2 Presenter:      Jerrod Penn Email:             <a href="mailto:jpenn@agcenter.lsu.edu">jpenn@agcenter.lsu.edu</a> Abstract:        A known challenge of using donations as a payment mechanism to elicit willingness to pay for a public good is potential free-riding (Champ et al. 1997). The free-rider may strategically underbid knowing that others may donate towards the provision of the good. Yet studies continue to use a donation payment mechanism because of its plausibility relative to compulsory payment schemes such as taxes or fees. One suggested means of mitigating free-riding is to describe the good as quasi-public rather than a pure public good such that there is at least partial excludability. For example, Ready, Champ, and Lawton (2010) elicit donations for wildlife rehabilitation, that if a donation is not made, then an animal will be turned away. While the good is non-rival in that everyone benefits from an animal’s rehabilitation, it is excludable in that a person who positively values animal rehabilitation has an incentive to donate, and the misincentive to free-ride is removed. As far as we know though, this assertion remains untested; we do not know whether such an excludability statement has the impact of increasing WTP.  The purpose of this study is to conduct an empirical test of whether divisible donations can increase WTP. We conduct this test using a split-sample experiment contained with a discrete choice experiment for donations to several charities. This choice experiment is also implemented as both a hypothetical and real elicitation to verify the impact of excludability in both hypothetical and real WTP.  This study can provide evidence of whether stating excludability can reduce free-riding in donation-based payment vehicles, increasing stated preference practitioners’ confidence in its use. Data and Methods The choice experiment is based on donations to one of three charities, Feeding America, the National Forest Foundation, and the Against Malaria Foundation. These three were selected since each provides information supporting a claim of excludability. Feeding America states $1 equals ten meals provided, the National Forest Foundation states $1 equals one tree planted, and the Against Malaria Foundation states that $2 equals one additional bed net (to protect against mosquitoes). We are nearly finished collecting 600 responses, with roughly half being provided this impact per dollar information (excludability treatment) and the remaining half without (traditional free-riding control). Our hypothesis is that WTP should increase in the excludability treatment since the incentive to free-ride is reduced. Each choice requested a donation of $1 to $5 to the charities and participants answered six choice sets. For the real treatment to occur, all respondents received an extra $5 in participation incentives. Real DCE respondents were informed that one of the six choice sets will be selected as real and their decision to donate or not donate would be carried out and potentially deducted from their extra $5. As is common in DCE, we will model the data using conditional, mixed, and generalized multinomial logit models.   SESSION 6: Marine and Coastal   Title:               Wetlands and Water Quality: Evidence from the Coastal US Authors:         Mani Rouhi Rad, Yukiko Hashida W5133 Obj:   1 Presenter:      Mani Rouhi Rad Email:             Mani.RouhiRad@ag.tamu.edu Abstract:        Wetlands are critical ecosystems that provide a range of ecosystem services, including protection from flooding during storms and improving water quality and wildlife habitat. Wetlands have been shown to reduce river nitrate concentration in intensively managed agricultural watersheds, for example (Hansen et al. 2021). The protection for wetlands under the Clean Water Act (CWA) has gone through changes over time. Specifically, the Clean Water Rule (CWR) protected wetlands that were not adjacent to streams. However, the ruling from the Supreme Court meant that wetlands that do not directly connect to streams protected under the CWA do not fall under the regulatory authority of the Federal government. In a recent study, Taylor and Druckenmiller (2021) estimated the benefits wetlands provide for flood mitigation and found that non-coastal wetlands provide significant flood mitigation benefits. However, the wetland likely has different spatial effects on water quality, another important ecosystem service benefit. This could lead to a different set of policy recommendations (e.g., where the wetland change has the largest negative impact; where to target the efforts to mitigate wetland conversions, etc.). To evaluate the impact of policy change, we need to understand the economic value of wetlands that account for all ecosystem benefits they provide. In this study, we estimate the effects of changes in wetland extent on water quality using land cover and water quality changes in the coastal United States between 1996 and 2016. Our empirical analysis exploits the spatial direction of river flows to estimate the causal effects of wetland area changes on water quality. The wetland extent changes as a result of conversion to other uses (e.g., farmland or development). One empirical challenge is spatially modeling the effect of wetlands on controlling water quality while accounting for spatial spillovers. We explicitly consider the geospatial relationship between the river/stream and wetland network in our estimation, including the direction of the river flow to account for the extent of the wetlands’ water purification service. We estimate the impact of change in wetland extent (change in area size) on downstream water quality by comparing changes in water quality over time, between downstream and upstream of the watersheds, and across watersheds with different wetland extent. In our preliminary empirical analysis, we focus on changes in nutrient pollution and find that an increase in wetland area results in decreases in phosphorus and nitrogen, two of the main sources of nutrient pollution in water bodies. Protecting water quality is a main purpose of the CWA. Our analysis provides insights into the importance of wetland protections under the CWR. Furthermore, the estimates of the effects of wetland area on water quality allow us to estimate the loss of wealth in regions where wetlands have been lost.   Title:               Valuation of Oyster Reef Restoration Authors:         Dan Petrolia, Seong Yun, Freedom Enyetornye, Zhenshan Chen W5133 Obj:   2 Presenter:      Dan Petrolia Email:             d.petrolia@msstate.edu Abstract:        A contingent valuation survey was designed and administered to households in the five Gulf Coast states to understand public opinion and estimate the value of oyster reef restoration efforts. Methodologically, the survey was an occasion to implement one thing and test another. First, we implemented videos in the survey, rather than written text, as recent research has argued that this makes it easier for respondents to understand and follow the information provided. Second, we tested whether uncertainty in the scenario outcome impacts responses. Specifically, we implemented a split-sample design where half of the respondents received a "certain" scenario whose outcome was depicted as a fixed value (for example, an expected oyster harvest of 2.6 million pounds per year over the next 10 years for the State of Florida without the project versus a 1-million pound increase with the project), whereas the other half received an "uncertain" scenario whose outcome was depicted as a range (for example, an expected oyster harvest of between 2.0 and 3.3 million pounds per year without the project versus an increase of between 2.7 and 4.9 million pounds with the project). Harvest was chosen as the preferred metric as a signal of reef health/abundance for its acceptance by respondents and for its data availability. The survey instrument was programmed and administered using the Qualtrics platform, and a convenience sample of respondents was obtained from Qualtrics. A total of 6,338 responses were collected during October 2022. The design featured five bids, proposed as a $25, 50, 100, 250, or 500 one-time tax per household collected on state tax returns for AL, LA, and MS and as a fee collected by local counties for FL and TX (who have no income tax). Two scales our restoration were tested, a "low" and "high", specific to each state's historical harvest levels. The uncertainty treatment was texted on FL and TX respondents only, given the larger number of respondents available for interviews. Initial results indicate widespread support for oyster restoration (70% willing to pay some amount of money), though this proportion drops significantly when adjusted for certainty of response. We find greater support among those that eat oysters or that go fishing. Votes follow the law of demand as expected, with the proportion of yes votes declining as bid increases. Scope effects appear to be minimal, which is of some concern.   Title:               The Nature of Discrimination in Recreation Decision Making Authors:         Jesse D. Backstrom, Richard T. Woodward W5133 Obj:   3 Presenter:      Jesse D. Backstrom Email:             jbackstrom@txstate.edu Abstract:        Introduction: In the economics literature, discrimination has been explored in numerous settings, including employment (e.g., Becker 1957), policing (e.g., Donohue and Levitt 2001), jury decisions (e.g., Anwar et al. 2012), housing markets (e.g., Bayer and McMillan 2006), and environmental outcomes (e.g., Banzhaf et al. 2019), among others. In this paper, we explore how racial and ethnic (RE) considerations influence a common task: recreation destination choice. We propose RE distance as a new driver and find economically significant aversion to diversity in our sample of marine recreational fishermen. Not only do our findings have implications for coastal communities of color, but we believe our approach lends a unique opportunity to enrichen our understanding of the ways in which subtle biases influence day-to-day behavior. Methods: Our focus in this paper is to explore how differences between the RE composition of a potential recreation site destination and that of a trip origin (RE distance) affects the site choice decisions made by marine recreational anglers. We make use of the standard site-choice econometric model with site-level fixed effects. As developed by McFadden (1974), our conditional-logit model assumes that the ith participant seeks to maximize her anticipated utility from choosing site j=1,…,J. We model participant i’s expected utility at site j, Vij, as a function of the cost to reach the site, cij, covariates that vary across participants and sites, xij, and a set of site-specific constants that measure other time-invariant site characteristics, dj. Data: Our travel cost models are estimated using site choice data from the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP), the primary program that counts and reports catch and effort data for public fishing sites along coastal U.S. waters. The complete MRIP dataset consists of thousands of point-intercept surveys conducted in six two-month waves throughout each year. Anglers are surveyed at the close of their fishing day to obtain information on their trip and fish catch. We narrow our focus to a set of about 50,000 trips taken by private boat anglers that took trips to sites in Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida gulf coast over 2013-2016. Our RE data for all trip origins and fishing sites come from the US Census. Results: We find that anglers in our sample have a positive WTP to avoid sites with Black and Hispanic proportions that are more predominate than in their home ZIP Code. Our dataset also allows us to investigate the nature of the observed discrimination. First, following the predictions of statistical discrimination theory, we exploit data on reported fishing experience and find evidence of lower levels of aversion to diversity from more avid anglers (our proxy for experience). Second, after sorting anglers into two groups – those originating from ZIP Codes with an above (below) national-median White population proportion – we find evidence of taste-based discrimination as the site choice decisions of anglers coming from less diverse ZIP Codes are more sensitive to RE considerations than those of anglers originating from ZIP codes with a greater degree of diversity.   Title:               Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Willingness-To-Pay for Environmental Goods and Services: A Case Study of Coastal Wetlands in Tampa Bay Authors:         Julian J. Hwang W5133 Obj:   1,3 Presenter:      Julian J. Hwang Email:             Julian.Hwang@mail.wvu.edu Abstract:        The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted not only public health and economies around the world, but also various aspects of daily lives and the society.  For market goods, impacts of such shocks would be realized in the market.  For nonmarket goods such as environmental goods, however, such impacts cannot be realized.  This paper identifies two potential effects of COVID-19 on preferences for environmental goods: income effect and preference shift.  It empirically tests 1) if willingness-to-pay for an environmental good is impacted by COVID; and 2) if impacted, how much is attributed by income effect and/or preference shift, using a survey data that was collected in the midst of COVID-19 to elicit Floridians’ preferences for coastal wetlands in Tampa Bay.   SESSION 7: Stated Preference Methods   Title:               Unpacking Differences of Who is in the Sample Based on Survey Contact Mode Authors:         Amila Hadziomerspahic, Sonja Kolstoe, Steve Dundas W5133 Obj:   2 Presenter:      Amila Hadziomerspahic Email:             Hadziomerspahic.Amila@epa.gov Abstract:        In nonmarket valuation, surveys are designed to ask the who, what, when, where and why for a population of interest to understand preferences over environmental goods, services and policies. Sample representativeness remains an issue for survey-based research due to declining response rates with traditional contact modes (e.g., mail, phone) and the uptick in use of quota-based online samples. Here we contribute to the sample selection literature by asking the question - Are there systematic differences of who is in the sample, based on how the respondent was contacted? Quota-based panel sampling yield samples with marginal distributions matching the population of interest, but they may or may not be representative. Address-based sampling provides an opportunity to get a random sample of the population, but often low response rates make sample selection methods necessary. We build upon prior work in this area (e.g., Cameron and DeShazo, JEEM, 2013; Kolstoe and Cameron, Ecol Econ, 2017; Johnston and Abdulrahman, JEEP, 2017; Cameron and Kolstoe, Land Econ, 2022) by unpacking the differences in sample composition relative to the population based on how respondents were contacted to take a survey: via letters/postcard at their home address or an email from a survey company (e.g., Qualtrics). The objective is to investigate sociodemographic and response differences between an address-based sample – a traditionally preferred but more costly probability sample – with an opt-in online panel sample from Qualtrics – a less costly non-probability sampling alternative that may be subject to potential selection biases. The survey instrument was designed to estimate Oregonians’ total value (WTP) for erosion management conditional on differences in coastal armoring policy for private landowners using a contingent valuation framework. The difference in contact mode also changes the order of assumptions about whether the respondent had access to internet and when they knew the topic of the survey. In the address-based sample, letters were sent out, thus respondents knew of the topic first and then opt in by taking the survey online. Whereas in the quota-based sample, respondents are invited to take surveys as part of the commitment of being on the survey panel, thus they already have internet and learn the topic of the survey when they read the consent page. For both samples, participant and non-participant ZIP-code information is paired with tract-level data from the American Community Survey to model selection into each sample. Preliminary results suggest that the percent of renters, the percent of individuals with a college education, and the percent of individuals below the poverty level influenced whether individuals contacted in the address-based sample frame responded to the survey. We are currently investigating additional factors that could impact selection into the sample including broadband internet speed and the availability and uptake of gig economy jobs. We hypothesize that proximity to the coast, high broadband speeds and the lack of gig economy substitutes (to online survey taking) could be contributing to the overrepresentation of coastal county respondents in the Qualtrics panel sample frame. We also anticipate differences in WTP for erosion management between samples. Title:               Using Observations of Marginal Willingness-to-Pay in Willingness-to-Pay Meta-Regressions for Benefits Transfer Authors:         Matthew G. Interis, Seong Yun W5133 Obj:   2 Presenter:      Seong Yun Email:             seong.yun@msstate.edu Abstract:        When using meta-regression for purposes of benefits transfer, the researcher must decide which observations from the literature to include in the meta-regression data set. There is a tradeoff between consistency of observations—in terms of what environmental change is measured and how and also in the theoretical value measure estimated—and the quantity of observations: the more consistent the observations are restricted to be, the fewer observations can be included in the regression. Some practitioners have adopted relatively strict consistency of observations, e.g. Hicksian measures of (non-marginal) willingness to pay (WTP) from stated preference methods, whereas others have combined less consistent measures together, e.g. Hicksian and Marshallian values from varying non-market valuation methods, using approaches varying from simple dummy controls to models with strong theoretical consistency but which are relatively challenging to implement. We investigate a middle-ground approach in which Hicksian measures of both marginal willingness-to-pay (MWTP) and (non-marginal) willingness-to-pay (for water quality changes) are combined in a theoretically-consistent manner. Including MWTP observations allows us to increase our number of observations by about 48%, increasing our confidence in using frequentist estimation (rather than, say, Bayesian estimation which has been championed for use with small samples). We compare results across two main functional forms—a commonly-used linear form and a more structural form with desirable theoretical properties—and across several sub-variations of each regarding whether and how the two types of observations (WTP and MWTP) are combined: not at all, in a theoretically-consistent way, with simple dummy controls, or in a naïve manner ignoring the difference between the two entirely. We examine model performance both within- and out-of-sample. We find that in all but a few cases, combining the two types of observations in a theoretically-consistent way performs best. The procedure is relatively easy to implement using non-linear least squares estimation. Title:               Unintended Consequences of Removing Multiple Types of Unqualified Survey Responses in Discrete Choice Welfare Analysis Authors:         Qi Jiang, Jerrod Penn, Wuyang Hu W5133 Obj:   2 Presenter:      Qi Jiang Email:             jiang.1885@osu.edu Abstract:        In stated preference valuation surveys, respondents might not give answers that would reflect their true preferences or behave strategically to influence the outcome of the survey, leading to an inaccurate estimate of the economic value of the good or service in question. Many factors may induce respondents to answer untruthfully. This paper focuses on three main reasons including protest, inconsequentiality, and inattention (Meyerhoff et al., 2014; Vossler and Evans, 2009; Borger, 2016). Protest describes a phenomenon where respondents may reject some components of the constructed valuation scenario by bidding zero regardless of their true positive demand. Inconsequentiality depicts a situation where respondents do not believe that their answers can potentially affect the outcome of the goods/services or the implementation of the policy in question. Inattention describes respondents who rush through the survey without fully understanding and considering the information or instructions. Instead of referring to these different types of behaviors separately, we refer to all such responses as unqualified responses. Two important patterns of the literature emerge. First, each definition of unqualified responses following a specific behavioral reason is only identified by its own corresponding measurement/question. Removing unqualified responses from all possible sources may cause the removal of a substantial number of observations if the unqualified responses do not overlap. Additionally, many of these qualification questions have no other use than simply being a measure to check for qualification, taking up respondents’ survey time and effort. Therefore, our first research question is whether different types of unqualified responses are correlated. If so, we may consider one criterion instead of many to clean the data. Second, a common practice is to purge unqualified responses but previous literature suggests that the WTP estimated from the cleaned up sample can be significantly different from the one estimated from the uncleaned sample. Different combinations of definitions/standards to clean the sample might lead to significantly different welfare estimates (e.g., WTP), thus possibly causing inadvertent publication bias. Thus, the second goal of this paper is to compare the WTPs after cleaning the data following different combinations of definitions/standards of response removal criteria and shed light on possible publication bias. Based on a contingent valuation survey with a split sample design including a hypothetical and a real treatment, we have three main findings. First, no large overlaps exist between protest, inconsequentiality, and inattention. Second, the WTPs estimated from the cleaned sample after excluding unqualified responses can be significantly different across different definitions/standards for qualification. Also, the WTPs could be dramatically inflated if we removed too many observations by using more stringent standards or excluding too many types of unqualified responses. This may generate opportunity for publication bias which might be insignificant for a single paper but otherwise severe collectively when considering all the literature. Third, hypothetical bias (HB), measured by the difference of WTPs between the hypothetical and real elicitation, remain stable if researchers apply similar exclusion criteria to both hypothetical and real data. However, the HB might be significantly inflated when only the hypothetical data are cleaned for unqualified responses. Title:               Fat Tails and Willingness to Pay: Kristrom revisited Authors:         Lynne Lewis, Leslie Richardson, John Whitehead W5133 Obj:   2 Presenter:      Lynne Lewis Email:             <a href="mailto:llewis@bates.edu">llewis@bates.edu</a> Abstract:        Best practices for estimating willingness to pay (WTP) from stated preference survey data typically recommend sensitivity analysis and the presentation of WTP values calculated using different methods (e.g. Bengochea-Morancha et al. (2005), Johnston et al. (2017). Both parametric and non-parametric methods are commonly used. Non-parametric methods are appealing since they are a less restrictive alternative to parametric models and do not rely on the analyst knowing or assuming the distribution of WTP. Commonly used approaches are the Turnbull (Haab and McConnel, 2002) and the Kristrӧm estimator (Kristrӧm; 1990; Boman, Bostedt, Kristrӧm, 1999).   Kristrӧm (1990) uses linear interpolation to characterize the distribution between bid amounts. This approach assumes that the distribution (i.e., survival) function is piece-wise linear between bid amounts (Haab & McConnell, 2002). This approach is appealing in that it allows for the estimation of the right tail of the WTP distribution. The challenge, however, is knowing what assumption to make regarding the choke price, or the point at which the probability of a “yes” response falls to zero. This choke price is somewhat arbitrary, typically calculated using either linear interpolation from the last two bid amounts, the approach taken in Kristrӧm 1990, or simply by truncating at the highest bid amount.   Both of these approaches can result in inaccuracies, especially with data sets for which a relatively large number of respondents say yes to the highest bid amount (fat tails). Parsons and Myers (2017) find that 60% of contingent valuation studies from 1995-2014 exhibit fat tails. Richardson and Lewis (2022) present a combined approach for the calculation of the choke price. Using a large and very well-behaved data set, they utilize four different methods to calculate the choke price. First, they follow the Kristrӧm approach of simply calculating the slope using the last two data points. They then estimate a linear probability model of WTP to calculate a choke price, using the slope over the entire range of the bid curve (as suggested by Whitehead, 2017). This method results in a choke price that is lower than their highest bid. The third option is to simply truncate the Kristrӧm estimate at the highest bid amount. These methods result in choke prices of $2,300, $450, and $500, respectively. In addition to those approaches, they present a unique, slightly modified approach. They use the (steeper) constant slope from the linear probability model to calculate a choke price but extend it from highest bid amount. This results in a more reasonable choke price than simply calculating the slope using the last two data points, at which point the slope is very flat and results in a high choke price.   Richardson and Lewis’ results do not show a statistically significant difference between WTP calculated with a truncated Kristrӧm and the combined approach, likely because so few respondents said “yes” to the highest bid, but it begs the question of at what point might it make a difference? This paper explores that question.   First, we extend Parsons and Myers to determine how many stated preference data sets exhibit fat tails. Second, using both real and simulated data sets, we present a suite of Kristrӧm estimators and offer guidance for when each approach is most useful. Since it would be extremely rare, if not impossible, to capture the tail of the distribution exactly (the bid at which 0% of the respondents say yes), it seems important to explore whether or not an alternative approach is merited.   SESSION 8: Climate Change   Title:               Consumer Preferences For Battery Electric Vehicles Considering Energy Mix: A Choice Experiment Study Authors:         Jamal Mamkhezri W5133 Obj:   2 Presenter:      Jamal Mamkhezri Email:             Jamalm@nmsu.edu Abstract:        As the adoption rates of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) continue to grow in the United States, it is important to understand how consumers respond to these markets' features and the changes associated with using new technology. While many studies have investigated how consumers respond to vehicle attributes and related aspects of BEV ownership, there has not yet been a study that looks into the energy source as a BEV attribute or estimates consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for clean electricity as a BEV fuel source in the U.S. This study aims to investigate the attitudes of U.S. drivers towards BEVs and the source of electricity that fuels them.   The study uses an online discrete choice experiment survey of 1,150 U.S. drivers to assess their WTP for clean energy as an attribute of BEVs. The survey also explores consumers' attitudes towards various policy incentives for BEVs, changes in the number of jobs, and ultimate changes in electricity costs. The data is analyzed using various conventional and advanced logit models to assess marginal WTP for each attribute and transportation plans. GIS is applied to calculate the spatial heterogeneity variables, the charging infrastructure exposure, and rural and urban areas within the U.S. This paper extends the literature by constructing marginal WTPs coupled with their confidence intervals at the individual level and in the WTP-space.   We find that there is considerable heterogeneity in preferences among decision makers, which cannot be explained by differences in sociodemographic variables. Results show that U.S. drivers have a positive WTP for increasing the share of BEVs in the transportation system and support the use of clean energy to power them. On average, respondents are willing to pay $1.24 for a 1% increase in the current BEV level. Respondents prefer renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and hydro-power over nuclear energy as a clean energy source. Drivers are willing to pay $12 per month to replace the existing 15% nuclear power in the electric grid with renewable energy sources. They also support increasing the number of jobs associated with accelerated vehicle fleet decarbonization in the U.S., prefer tax credit incentives over free charging and free parking initiatives, and dislike the current transportation plan. Controlling for spatial and individual heterogeneity results in a divergence of values. Respondents who live in urban areas, are pro-environment, male, young, have high income and education level, and affiliate with the democratic political party are more supportive of BEV and clean energy policies. The study concludes that an efficient energy policy requires both technological efficiency and economic viability, as well as public acceptance.   Title:               Estimating the effect of climate change on outdoor recreation using short-run weather deviations and passively collected trip data for U.S. grasslands Authors:         Kaylee Wells W5133 Obj:   1, 2 Presenter:      Kaylee Wells Email:             kkwells2@illinois.edu Abstract:        In 2021, outdoor recreation activities accounted for about 2% of U.S. GDP (BEA 2022) in addition to providing other mostly unobservable non-market goods. The contribution of outdoor recreation to society’s output and welfare is likely to be impacted by climate change. Despite recent progress, the relationship between weather, outdoor recreation and climate change remains poorly understood. The major barrier to estimating the causal relationship between outdoor recreation and weather/climate is often data availability. The data must be temporally and spatially explicit and cover a range of sites and time periods; requirements that are generally not met with standard survey methods. Recent research on weather/climate and outdoor recreation has used multi-year, daily bicycling trip data from a bikeshare company (Chan and Wichman, ERE, 2020) and multi-year fishing data from a government agency (Dundas and von Haefen, JAERE, 2020). This research builds on Chan and Wichman (2020) and Dundas and von Haefen (2020) to estimate a causal model of the relationship between grassland recreation and weather using passively collected trip data from StreetLight Data. StreetLight data uses information from car GPS and cell phone location tracking with machine learning to predict the number of trips made to a site. I will use the predicted number of car trips to a subset of U.S. grasslands between January 2016 and April 2022 as the basis for this analysis. Grasslands offer an interesting case study because we know society values the recreational opportunities they provide (Wells, AAEA Poster, 2022) and those recreational activities are particularly susceptible to the impacts of climate change. Increasing heat is likely to be the source of most of these impacts as grasslands offer few options for visitors seeking to mitigate the heat (e.g., finding shade under a tree). This research is in early stages, and I plan to present my proposed model and summary statistics for the trip count data.   Title:               An econometric analysis of prescribed fire as a climate adaptation tool Authors:         Yukiko Hashida, David Lewis W5133 Obj:   1 Presenter:      Yukiko Hashida Email:             <a href="mailto:yhashida@uga.edu">yhashida@uga.edu</a> Abstract:        Prescribed fires can reduce future wildfires by removing excess fuels, improve habitat for some wildlife species, and recycle nutrients back into the soil. Since wildfires are expected to increase in frequency and intensity with climate change (Abatzoglou and Williams, PNAS 2016), fire mitigation will be a critical land management option for landowners to adapt to climate change. The purpose of this study is twofold: 1) empirically estimate the impact of long-term climate and short-term weather events on private forest landowners' decisions to conduct prescribed fires; and 2) estimate the impact of prescribed fires on wildfire occurrence. Much of the previous literature focuses on wildfire suppression issues, such as resource allocation and public health impacts (e.g., Bayham et al., ARRE 2022). However, an empirical economic analysis of prescribed burning decisions of landowners is important as the economic incentives that drive private landowner decisions on when and where to conduct prescribed burning are not well understood, and there is no empirical work linking private burning decisions to climate or weather outcomes. Our study fills this gap in the literature by linking private landowners' resource management actions, wildfire mitigation, and wildfire outcomes. Our model estimates prescribed burning as a climate adaptation tool that could potentially generate externalities by altering wildfire occurrence. Our methodology also allows us to study how implementing prescribed fires – and resulting wildfires – evolves with climate change. We focus on the prime timber-growing region of the southeastern United States, where prescribed burns have been widely used. A key part of the analysis is prescribed fire permits data collected by the Non-Governmental Organization Tall Timbers, which serves as the empirical foundation to identify the location and magnitude of prescribed fire usage. Our data extends to ten states (AL, GA, FL, NC, MS, TN, SC, AK, LA, and VA) that have mandatory systems, creating 2.1 million permit records, which we subset to non-agricultural fires, resulting in about 1.6 million records over 11 years. We aggregate individual permit data into county acreages of total private forestland subjected to prescribed fires in each year between 2010 and 2021, resulting in a panel of about 10,000 county-year observations. Our first model uses the inverse hyperbolic sign of prescribed fire acreage as the dependent variable, with independent variables consisting of annual realized weather variables (annual temperature, precipitation, and vapor pressure deficit (VPD)), forest types, soil productivity, stand age, stand volume, slope, elevation, and ownership type. We apply spatial and temporal fixed effects to control for unobservables. Our preliminary results provide strong evidence that prescribed fire acreage decisions are a function of annual climate realizations. In particular, results indicate that landowners respond to warmer and drier years by substantially increasing the application of prescribed fires, which is a robust result across multiple specifications. A one-degree C increase in temperature and a one-unit increase in VPD each result in about a 40 percent increase and a 4 percent increase in burned areas, respectively. Next, we model wildfire events (burned acreages at the county-year level) as a function of prescribed burn. As the prescribed burns are likely endogenous, we explore a variety of instrumental variables such as forest sector wages, hunting permits, and extension support. Our preliminary IV results suggest that prescribed burns reduce wildfire occurrence, though the result is noisy. Our fully linked model provides evidence that landowner adaptation to climate change can raise prescribed burning, which can, in turn, provide positive externalities by lowering nearby wildfire rates. Title:               Optimizing nonmarket ecosystem service flows from coastal landscapes under climate change Authors:         Steven J. Dundas, Emma A. Gjerdseth, Sally Hacker, Peter Ruggiero, John S. Stepaneck, & Mohsen Taherkhani W5133 Obj:   3 Presenter:      Steven J. Dundas Email:             Steven.Dundas@oregonstate.edu Abstract:        Integration of ecosystem services and their nonmarket values into spatial planning is a key hurdle to designing welfare-improving land-use policies. This is especially true in dynamic environments like beaches and dunes that are subject to changing conditions from natural hazards and the impacts of climate change. Using the Tillamook County coastline in Oregon, we combine primary nonmarket values with ecological and geomorphological production functions and underlying landscape conditions to estimate the overall flow and value of ecosystem services under the current spatial distribution. We then estimate the benefit flow changes across future scenarios, where we adjust the quantity of the services provided in response to climate change (e.g., sea-level rise, storm surges) and both public and private land-use adaptation strategies (e.g., shoreline armoring, habitat restoration areas). This latter exercise then searches for “coast-use” scenarios that maximize the social net benefits of alternative land management options, in the spirit of Polasky et al. (2008).   The key challenge for the proposed integrated model to inform natural resource management decisions is measurement of both prices and quantities related to coastal ecosystem services. For the nonmarket values, we use recent, Oregon-specific revealed and stated preference studies to estimate willingness to pay for coastal protection (Dundas & Lewis 2020, Gjerdseth & Dundas 2023), recreation and safe beach access (Hadziomerspahic 2022), dune restoration (Nguyen et al. 2023) and viewshed (Gjerdseth & Dundas 2023) along with recent federal government estimates of the social cost of carbon to value carbon storage in dunes. The quantities come from measurements derived from remote sensing data (e.g., beach width, dune height) and a probabilistic climate emulator based on total ocean level observations and predictions as well as direct in-field measurements of habitat quality and carbon storage by ecologists.   Ecosystem service prices and quantities are applied to individual land parcels. Each parcel is then grouped into decision units that face similar land-use choices and benefit flows are aggregated. Then using a combination of long-term coastal change, total water level and coastal dune recovery models, we examine the evolving probability of coastal change and the subsequent impact on ecosystem service flows on each decision unit at multiple future periods. Additional variation in future scenarios and ecosystem service provision are introduced with decision unit-specific policy options such as relaxing shoreline armoring restrictions, localized managed retreat, and expansion of habitat restoration areas. The outputs include future patterns of coastal land use optimized on the economic returns of nonmarket service flows through climate adaptation. We also provide insight on specific tradeoffs, like habitat restoration and carbon sequestration in dune management (i.e., more native habitat means less carbon storage), that may directly inform decision-making about climate adaptation on public shorelines.   <a href="#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1">[1]</a> The cities are: New Haven, CT; Wilmington, DE; Augusta, GA; Louisville, KY; Columbia, SC; Grand Rapids, MI; Pittsburgh, PA; Charlotte, NC; Columbus, OH; and Nashville, TN.

Impact Statements

Objective 1: Evaluate Natural Resource Management Decisions and the Effects of Climate Change to Understand Associated Welfare Impacts Colorado State University • Our work related to GHG abatement in the agricultural sector is informing federal government efforts and expectations regarding the potential for agriculture to provide large scale offsets by accumulating carbon. • Our work on water scarcity has allowed managers to identify opportunities for conservation. We hope that our work on decreasing block-rate electricity prices illustrates to policymakers that there is a clear path reducing groundwater use with constant marginal electricity prices. • Work on wolf reintroduction helps the state of Colorado understand how voters want wolves managed in Colorado. University of Illinois Urban-Champaign • Atallah and colleagues at the University of New Hampshire received funding from USDA NIFA on “Diversifying the Maple Syrup Industry to Enhance Socioecological Resilience and Ecosystem Services.” 2022-2024. $499,320. Work on this grant related to Task 1-1 and Task 2-1 and will generate information about forest landowners’ willingness to diversify their maple forests for increased resilience and about consumer willingness to pay for syrup made from diversified forests. Oregon State University • Steve Dundas presented a summary of work on the value of coastal dunes to a large audience of agency scientists and stakeholders at the State of the Dunes: Oregon Dune Management Mini-conference and Workshop in Newport, OR on May 31, 2022. • Steve Dundas continued his participation in 6 federal and state funded grants where his role is to facilitate the incorporation of nonmarket values for ecosystem services and models of economic decision making into coastal land and water use policy debates, including coastal resilience to natural hazards, prioritization erosion mitigation for coastal infrastructure, and optimizing coastal land use for ecosystem service values. • Jennifer Alix Garcia made six presentations related to advances in methods, impact evaluation or conservation policy design: o Society for Conservation Biology Impact Evaluation Working Group (February 2023). o Interamerican Development Bank Sustainability Research Seminar, Washington, D.C. (October 2022). o FAO Technical Network on Poverty Analysis, Rome. (June 2022). o Moore Center Research Group, Conservation International, Washington, D.C. (May 2022). o LEEPOut Seminar, University of Exeter (May 2022). o Innovate4Climate, World Bank, Washington, D.C. (May 2022). Penn State University • Katherine Zipp’s work was presented at numerous conferences and workshops and to federal agency personnel. It was also announced in press releases to the general public. This work received interest from the California SWRCB since they issue water related building moratoria and are involved in water rights. The presentations highlighted the importance of integrated modeling work to capture important unanticipated network or spillover eﬀects. We use this information to make policy and education suggestions to prepare for future catastrophes, build resilience from smaller local disasters, prepare for the many eﬀects of climate change, and discourage nuclear weapon stockpiles. We propose policy initiatives for habitat protection, education programs, and general preparedness. This research informs prescribed fire management in the northeastern U.S. This research informs management of soundscapes in national parks. North Carolina State University • Task 1-3: Our work was partially funded by our USDA Hatch projects. It was published in two articles recently published in Land Economics. Ongoing research expands on our initial efforts by examining optimal congestion fees for sandy beaches in Michigan and the Southeast. University of Wyoming • We expect our research related to conservation to have the following long-term impacts related to objective 1: 1) Inform policy makers on the trade-offs of conservation design on public finance and outdoor recreation, and 2) identify options to offset expected reductions in tax revenues from conservation actions. • Both reports provide input to the Wyoming State Trails Program and are used for snowmobile and ORV trails management decisions at the state level. • Knowledge regarding climate impacted winter recreation will improve decision making by state agencies, rural communities, and policy makers involved with winter tourism. • Our work in the area of agricultural land-use change and conservation program design led to a new cooperative agreement with USDA ERS: Beyond the General Signup: Modeling the Grasslands and Continuous Signups in the Conservation Reserve Program Project (Sept 2022 – Sept 2024). PI: Rashford. Sponsor: USDA – Economic Research Service. Amount: $240,000. Objective 2: Advance Economic Valuation Methods and Uses to Enhance Natural Resource Management, Policy, and Decision-Making University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign • Work by Ando, Manning, and others in W5133 on environmental and resource justice led to a new grants from the Environmental Defense Fund for research on equity issues in agricultural carbon payments. Virginia Tech • The target audience for output generated under this task includes government agencies dealing with natural hazards, such as FEMA and NOAA, the real estate and construction industry, urban and regional planers, and peers and practitioners working on the impact of environmental change on housing markets. • Klaus Moeltner presented this work at the W5133 Regional Project Meetings, New Orleans, LA, Mar. 1-3, 2023. • The target audience for this project is primarily the EPA, which uses these models categorically for water-related rulemaking. Other target audiences include peers and practitioners that work on meta-analyses related to environmental quality change. A third audience is USDA, who applies these methods to better understand the benefits from land conservation programs, Overall, this audience is regional, national, and international. • This past year, the EPA continued to use methods developed through this project to assess lost benefits from wetland services due to a revision of the "Waters of the United States" portion of the Clean Water Act. • A mix of these target audiences was reached via presentations at the following events: (i) the W4133 Regional Project Meetings, Hood River, OR, Apr. 26, 2022 (ii) the annual meetings of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (EAERE), Rimini, Italy, Jun. 28 – Jul. 1, 2022. (iii) Symposium "50th Anniversary of the Clean Water Act: The Role of Environmental Economics in Improving Regulatory Analysis," Washington, D.C., Sep. 7-9, 2022. (iv) the annual meetings of the Southern Economics Association, Ft. Lauderdale, FL, Nov. 18-21, 2022. South Dakota State University • Completed work led to a report to South Dakota Game, Fish, and Parks (SD GFP) entitled, “South Dakota Game, Fish, and Parks Approach to Planning for Weather Variability Events.” This information will be part of the SD GFP strategic planning process. • A completed survey found that 39 of the 63 (61.9%) managers were preparing for increased climatic weather events in some way. The survey also determined that drought and summer weather concerned park managers the most. These findings will be key to providing actionable and relevant scientific resources to SD GFP as they plan for conservation and mitigate the impacts of climatic weather variability as best they can. • This work was presented to SD GFP leadership. Additionally, these initial results have led to additional funding from North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center (CASC) and will fund one graduate student for two years. Objective 3: Integrated Policy and Decision-Making Oregon State University • Steve Dundas participated in advisory group of social scientists with the California Ocean Science Trust to help develop strategies to include nonmarket valuation and other economic considerations in a US Fish and Wildlife Service plan to re-introduce sea otters to coastal ecosystems off Oregon. The advisory group meetings and discussions led to a technical report (Kone et al. 2022) with recommendations for needed research, stakeholder involvement, and tribal engagement to support an ethical and equitable reintroduction decision-making process. Penn State University • Penn State’s efforts help the managers of the RainWise program, and similar programs, achieve their equity and environmental justice goals. • Penn State’s work has clear implications for policymakers interested in understanding why households consume sub-optimal diet quality and how it may be improved. University of Wyoming • We expect our research related to Objective 3 to help guide policy marks in designing conservation policy to protect habitat for migratory species. North Carolina State University • Task 3-2: Our work was funded by US EPA. We have published a manuscript in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a US EPA report, and accompanying press releases. Our results will help agencies complete benefit-cost analyses for major environmental regulations as required by federal and state law and executive orders.

Date of Annual Report: 04/01/2024

Report Information

Annual Meeting Dates: 02/28/2024 - 03/01/2024
Period the Report Covers: 03/01/2023 - 02/29/2024

Participants

Brief Summary of Minutes

Accomplishments

Objective 1: Evaluate Natural Resource Management Decisions and the Effects of Climate Change to Understand Associated Welfare Impacts   Colorado State University <ul> <li>Jesse Burkhardt entered into a cooperative agreement with the US Forest Service. The project is run by Sonja Kolstoe, another W5133 member and is broadly about understanding the relationships between wildfires and community drinking water systems. The project is large and spans multiple universities and includes several other W5133 members including Steve Dundas (Oregon State), and Bryan Parthum (EPA).</li> <li>Since 2020, Jude Bayham have advised the Colorado State Forest Service Forest Restoration and Wildfire Risk Mitigation Grant Program on implementing a grant match reduction requirement for communities with “fewer economic resources” as specified in HB 20-1057. Jude Bayham developed the Wildfire Social Vulnerability Index, which is documented here (https://jbayham.github.io/CSFS_WSVI/report.html). In 2023, Jude Bayham updated the spatial layer based on new census data and conducted additional robustness analysis (https://jbayham.github.io/CSFS_WSVI/update_2023.html).</li> <li>Over the past year, Jude Bayham has made progress on several wildfire management projects. Jude Bayham contributed to a project focused on quantifying the effectiveness of different suppression strategies. Jude and collaborators have compiled data on fire spread and severity and merged it with hand- and machine-built fire line as well as retardant drops. This will guide both land and wildfire management strategies, and it will also enable economic analysis of wildfire management capacity. Several manuscripts are at different stages of development. Jude and colleagues plan to submit two manuscripts in 2024.</li> <li>Jude Bayham contributes to a project assessing how equitable the use of airtankers are in the western US. Jude Bayham and collaborators find no evidence that airtankers are used more or less in disadvantaged communities. Jude Bayham and collaborators plan to submit this manuscript in 2024. This work was presented at the Association of Environmental and Resource Economics Annual Meeting.</li> <li>We worked on understanding the effects and challenges of incentivizing practice changes in agriculture as a climate change mitigation and adaptation strategy. Next, we received a grant and began work to evaluate the economic impacts of inland flooding. This includes an analysis of how people respond to floods and flood information. We also worked on a project related to weather shocks, forests, and food security.</li> </ul>     Louisiana State University <ul> <li>Current activity of researchers at LSU and Mississippi State is developing a survey intended for commercial shrimpers in the Gulf of Mexico to understand their willingness to use new bycatch reduction devices. This survey will launch in late spring/early summer 2024 with results expected in fall 2024.</li> </ul>   North Carolina State University <ul> <li>Collaboratively with Dr. Craig Landry of UGA, we produced benefit estimates for beach trips in the Southeastern US that can be used USACE and other agencies for assessing recreational benefits from policy interventions such as beach enrichment.</li> </ul>   Oregon State University <ul> <li>David Lewis collaborated with the USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station to develop a land-use change econometric model for the conterminous United States to estimate the probabilities of change between cropland, pasture, forests, rangeland, and urban development. This joint research between Lewis and the USDA Forest Service is notable for empirically estimating the effects of climate on land‐use change across the conterminous United States and uses the empirical model to simulate the effects of a range of future climate change scenarios on the allocation of land to forestry, agriculture, and development. Econometric estimation linking climate with the net returns to land production is integrated with a discrete‐choice estimation of plot‐level land‐use change. Comparing projected land‐use changes across scenarios, this research finds that drier and warmer climate scenarios favor forest land, wetter and cooler climate scenarios favor developed land, and wetter and warmer climate scenarios favor crop lands. The land-use projections were used in other portions of the RPA that examined projections of ecosystem services. Outputs include one journal article, one RPA chapter, and one published dataset.</li> <li>David Lewis collaborated with an Oregon State University PhD student to publish a paper that estimates the effects of changes in western US wildfire risks on the economic value of private timberland across Washington, Oregon, and California. The research uses a purchased data set from Core Logic, a real estate data vendor, to build a pooled cross-sectional dataset of over 9,000 transactions of private timberland between 2004 and 2020. The analysis estimates the effects of large wildfires and drought stress on market prices for private timberland across the three Pacific states of the western U.S. In addition to estimating the land price impacts of wildfires on parcels that were directly burned, the analysis identifies changes in risk expectations by estimating the impacts from wildfires that burned in close proximity rather than directly on timberland that was sold in the land market. Results indicate that recent increases in large wildfires and drought stress over the past two decades have lowered the economic value of timberland by approximately 10%, or about $11.2 billion in damages across the three Pacific states, with approximately 5.5% (~$6.2 billion) due to climate change. Most of the wildfire damages arise from changes in risk expectations. Results provide evidence on the costs of climate-induced extreme events on natural capital that have already occurred.</li> <li>Projects use nation-wide data on water quality measurements and expenditures by environmental nonprofit organizations during the period 2009 – 2017. These data are used to empirically measure the impact of expenditures by these organizations on local water quality both near and far away from border areas where streams leave states.</li> <li>Steven Dundas and a graduate student collaborator examine the relationship between increases in people using public lands with activity on a popular social media app (Lowe Mackenzie et al. 2023). They explore this issue in the Oregon State Park system by combining visitation data with park-specific georeferenced content and engagement indicators from Instagram. Using several empirical specifications, they show suggestive evidence that Instagram is not likely correlated to increased visitation everywhere, but only in a few locations generating high user participation within the app. They find no contemporary effect and a positive association with cumulative Instagram engagement indicators on visits at this subset of parks.</li> <li>Dundas and W5133 collaborator at the University of Georgia estimated the magnitude and direction of the economic effects of removing or retrofitting housing in hazard-prone coastal locations as a response to natural hazards (Hashida and Dundas 2023). Using data from a voluntary buyout and acquisition program in the U.S. state of New York, they recover hedonic estimates of the property value impacts of government-acquired properties in the state’s coastal counties. Results suggest that buyouts and acquisitions have sizable negative effects on prices for homes sold adjacent (≤100 m) to participating properties. The spatial scale of the impacts differs across policy types, with negative effects attenuating after 100 m for buyouts but persisting for acquisitions up to 1200 m. These impacts approach zero four years after policy initiation, and the effect of buyouts may turn positive after five years.</li> </ul>   Texas A&M University <ul> <li>Liqing Li and collaborator Amy Ando (Ohio State University) published a paper demonstrating a positive relationship between individuals' early-life experiences with nature and their willingness to pay for habitat restoration. This finding guides efforts by local and federal recreation agencies to enhance environmental education and access to recreational sites, particularly for children who might not otherwise engage in such activities.</li> <li>Liqiing Li and Amy Ando investigated the reduced-form effects of the Conservation Reserve Program on local employment, providing a nationwide analysis of the impacts of agricultural land retirement on the rural economy.</li> <li>Liqing Li and Aparna Howlader from Chatham University examined the persistent and immediate effects of land retirement on the labor market and land tenure, using evidence from the historical Conservation Reserve Program in the U.S. They also probed the underlying mechanisms of the program's varying degrees of impact, considering factors such as access to irrigation, race, and different initial tenancy structures.</li> </ul>   University of Florida <ul> <li>Weizhe Weng and collaborators have developed an integrated assessment model to examine the linkages between land use, fertilizer application decisions, and their environmental outcomes along with associated social costs. Our model results highlight the finding that the co-benefits from nitrous oxide abatement are substantial, and their inclusion increases the benefit–cost ratio of water quality policies. Consideration of these co-benefits has the potential to reverse the conclusions of benefit–cost analysis in the assessment of current water quality policy. Support of climate-friendly practices (e.g., cover crops, low/no-till, nutrient management) is highlighted in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s climate-smart agriculture program. Many climate-friendly practices are also water friendly. Thinking from the other side, co-benefits of water pollution reduction would exist in climate change policies. Considering the joint production of water and climate benefits, quantifying both climate and water benefits is essential and would help to avoid biased benefit estimates if both were modeled separately. This study has been published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics.</li> </ul>   University of Georgia <ul> <li>Task 1-1: Lusi Xie tested the cost-effectiveness of reverse auction mechanisms to buy back irrigation water for protecting endangered aquatic species during droughts through field experiments with farmers in Georgia. The findings provide important insights into designing cost-effective payments for ecosystem services with the goal of providing sufficient streamflow while also minimizing the economic impact on the agricultural sector.</li> <li>Task 1-1: Lusi Xie started a cooperative agreement with the USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) in partnership with researchers from Texas A&M University and the University of Delaware. The objective of the project is to evaluate the relative effectiveness of small financial assistance incentives, lottery-style financial incentives, and technical assistance in encouraging Conservation Reserve Program participants to engage in citizen science efforts and to provide superior land management practices.</li> <li>Task 1-1: Lusi Xie, in collaboration with Leah Palm-Forster (University of Delaware), Mykel Taylor (Auburn University), and Simanti Banerjee (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) published a paper about factors influencing enrollment of leased cropland in the Conservation Stewardship Program in Kansas. The findings offer insights into refining the design of Conservation Stewardship Program to enhance the participation of leased cropland, thereby fostering improved conservation practices.</li> <li>Task 1-4: Lusi Xie is examining groundwater pumping behavior under conditions of varying risks of saltwater intrusion through laboratory experiments. This research aims to shed light on how individuals respond to heterogeneous risks, offering perspectives on water resource management strategies in areas prone to such challenges.</li> <li>During the reporting period, I presented my work on prescribed burn's adaptation benefit in mitigating wildfire risks at Auburn University, the AERE annual meeting, the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), and the University of Alaska, Anchorage. For a NOAA-funded project evaluating the non-market valuation of wetlands, other PIs and I hosted stakeholder meetings in Delaware Bay, Charleston, SC, and Savannah, GA, to get feedback on our research design (e.g., surveys).</li> <li>Craig Landry (Keynote Speaker): "Sustainability Habitation of Barrier Islands" Bald Head Island Conservancy, 2nd Annual Coastal Sustainability Symposium: Bald Head Island, NC</li> </ul>   University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign <ul> <li>Atallah and colleagues revised and resubmitted a review article related to task 1.1 and titled “Economics of Adoption of Artificial Intelligence-Based Digital Technologies for a Sustainable Agriculture.” Annual Review of Resource Economics.</li> <li>Atallah and colleague revised a research article for resubmission. The article is titled “Managing Herbicide-Resistant Weeds with Robots: A Weed Ecological Economic Model.” Agricultural Economics.</li> <li>Atallah submitted an Elsevier book chapter related to task 1.1 titled “Economics of Carbon Farming”.</li> <li>Atallah disseminated findings from a published article titled “Family Forest Landowner Preferences for Managing Invasive Species: Control Methods, Ecosystem Services, and Neighborhood Effects”. to the Forest Stewards Guild through an online webinar. 01/25/ 2024. Findings were shared with ~15 resource managers and landowner outreach professionals nationally on forest landowner preferences for managing invasive species.</li> <li>Atallah and graduate students conducted a pilot survey with 19 US maple syrup producers to estimate their willingness to diversify the tree composition of their sugarbushes for increase climate resilience.</li> </ul>   University of Wyoming <ul> <li>Research completed by Kelsey Lensegrav, Christopher Bastian, Anders Van Sandt, Bart Geerts, Kinsale Day, and Stephen Rahimi, at the University of Wyoming – entitled Economic Impacts of Climate Affected Snow Depths on Wyoming’s Snowmobile Recreation. Snowmobiling is a significant outdoor recreation activity in the Northern Rocky Mountain Region, contributing to winter tourism revenue in Wyoming and neighboring states. However, climate change poses a threat to snow levels in the region, potentially impacting the snowmobiling industry and rural communities that rely on it. Despite its economic importance, there is a lack of research on how climate change may affect snowmobiling and its economic impacts. This study analyzes the effect of climate-affected snow conditions, specifically snow depth, on snowmobile recreation in Wyoming and estimates the resulting economic impacts across recreation sites. The research combines climate forecasts with a recreation demand model and input-output analysis. Survey data from resident and nonresident snowmobilers are used to develop a recreation demand model, which estimates the probability of individuals visiting specific sites based on snow depth and trail attributes. Using downscaled climate predictions and historical snow data, the study estimates changes in snow depth at snowmobile trail areas in Wyoming. The results show that snow depths are expected to decrease with lower elevation and potentially increase with higher elevation sites. Snow depth positively influences site choice, indicating potential changes in snowmobilers' travel patterns. The study's input-output results reflect the geographical redistribution and overall changes in snowmobilers' expenditures, labor income, and jobs due to climate change in Wyoming. These findings have implications for recreation-dependent rural communities, as they can use the information to plan for future economic growth and diversification in the face of climate change's potential impacts on snowmobiling. This research was completed as a thesis by Kelsey Lensegrav, and it has also been presented as a selected paper at the WAEA meetings in July of 2023.</li> </ul>   University of Rhode Island <ul> <li>Corey Lang collaborated with URI graduate student Andrew Bechard to examine health impacts of Florida Red Tide. Harmful algal blooms (HABs) have been found to cause increases in healthcare visits for a variety of illnesses to humans if exposure and contact is sufficient. We use a more comprehensive dataset than previously implemented in prior literature to better isolate visits by healthcare facility type and proximity to bloom. Using a difference-in-differences model, our results suggest HABs cause an increase of 23.67 healthcare admissions per zip code per month across four HAB-related diagnoses. This impact is a 3,000% increase over baseline non-bloom times and an increase in monthly healthcare costs of about $250,000 for the entire impacted area. Our data include inpatient non-emergency and outpatient healthcare visits, which account for over 60% of all HAB-related healthcare visits, meaning that prior literature that has not measured those facilities has greatly underestimated HAB health impacts. The research was published in Harmful Algae.</li> </ul>     Objective 2: Advance Economic Valuation Methods and Uses to Enhance Natural Resource Management, Policy, and Decision-Making   Colorado State University <ul> <li>Jesse Burkhardt has ongoing work with the National Park Service to estimate willingness to pay for approximately 23 national parks. This work will be combined with work by Jude Bayham, another W5133 member, to advance travel cost methods.</li> <li>Jude Bayham has three projects that contribute to objective 2, all focused on developing recreation demand models using mobile device data. The first is comparing travel cost modeling based on survey data to mobile device data in the same location. Jude Bayham and collaborators are preparing a manuscript to submit in 2024. The second explores the use of high-resolution mobile device data to estimate more complex recreation demand models. The third focuses on how mobile device data can be used to facilitate economic impact evaluation.</li> <li>We worked on a paper that examined the potential impacts of racism on our environmental and resource economics methods, including valuation.</li> <li>We also worked on a grant that asks how access and preferences around carbon markets affects participation and the potential for scaling up. As part of this, we are examining preference heterogeneity in a choice experiment.</li> </ul>   Oregon State University <ul> <li>Dundas, David Kling, and collaborators also designed a choice experiment to examine public preferences for coastal dune ecosystem restoration in the U.S. Pacific Northwest (Nguyen et al. 2023). Dunes are a public good whose natural state is now rare. Respondents are asked to choose among hypothetical projects that vary by project size, restoration quality, recreation access, flooding risk, and cost. Restoration quality is defined as closeness to the natural ecosystem. We find that increasing restoration quality results in significantly higher welfare gains than increasing the size of restoration area. Maintaining recreation access is preferred, and programs with recreation restrictions yield positive willingness to pay only if accompanied by the highest restoration quality.</li> <li>Alix-Garcia is managing an RCT in the Dominican Republic. The intervention is a short experiential education program on mangroves directed at kids aged 7-18 who participate in sports clubs. The features of this project that are relevant for this report are methodological.  We use machine learning, list experiments, and an incentivized willingness to pay experiment to measure impacts of environmental education.  Machine learning is used to help evaluate changes in their perception of mangroves in response to an open ended question.  We apply a natural language model to help categorize these responses.  A second key outcome is littering behavior.  To minimize reporting bias due to negative connotations, we use a list experiment to help measure this outcome.  List experiments "hide" less acceptable or illegal behaviors within a list.  The list itself is randomized across respondents such that some lists contain the behavior of interests while others don't.  Respondents report only the number of items in a list which are "true" to them.  In other contexts, such as risky sexual behavior, this method has proven effective in measuring incidence.  A third measurement innovation in this study is to offer respondents the opportunity to purchase honey produced in the mangroves.  The justification for this is that if the mangrove education intervention changes willingness to pay for conservation, then treated individuals will be more likely to purchase the honey at any price level.  We survey both participating children and their parents, with the expectation of testing for spillover effects from kids to parents.  Although this project is international, the methodology developed here could be used in multiple settings.</li> <li>In collaboration with W5133 investigator Dundas, Kling coauthored an original study of public preferences for sandy beach and coastal dune landscape restoration in the Pacific Northwest (Nguyen et al. 2023). The lead author for the study, Tu Nguyen, was an Oregon State University PhD student, and the journal article was based on her dissertation research. The research finds that the public places a relatively higher value on restoring coastal dune landscape closest to its natural configuration before the introduction of invasive, compared with restoration projects that are less ambitious but cover a larger area. Preserving access for recreators within restored areas is also preferred by the public.</li> </ul>   Texas A&M University <ul> <li>Liqing Li and collaborator Mitch Livy from California State University, Fullerton, study how different types of urban green spaces are capitalized across various housing types and communities using housing transaction data.</li> <li>Liqing Li published a paper estimating the value that people place on urban trees and examining whether tree plantings triggered gentrification in the neighborhoods they were designed to help. The results find that environmental justice policies can provide public goods without significant displacement costs to the existing population.</li> <li>Liqing Li, José J. Sánchez (US Forest Service), and John Loomis (Colorado State University) conducted a choice experiment in Arizona to understand the relationship between perceived and objective fire risk and willingness to pay for fire mitigation programs. The results show that people’s perceived risks and the professional objective fire risks assessed by experts differ significantly, suggesting that managers may need to develop effective messaging and education programs for those communities where risk perceptions differ from expert assessments.</li> <li>Liqing and collaborator Dede Long from Harvey Mudd College study residents' willingness to contribute money and time to community gardens, an essential form of urban agriculture. Our findings indicate that while residents highly value the gardens' private benefits, they are not inclined to contribute to their public benefits. Additionally, residents' preferences for community gardens differ based on their socioeconomic status and accumulated gardening experience.</li> </ul>   University of Florida <ul> <li>Weizhe Weng and collaborators conducted a study that examines cellphone tracking data from 2019-20. The study was able to pinpoint the real-time impacts of COVID-19 on visitation to Central Park, one of the nation’s largest urban parks in one of the areas hit hardest by the pandemic. The clear impact on public park visitation highlights the often-overlooked societal welfare changes that resulted in a $450 million dollar welfare loss.By providing a clearer understanding of the welfare loss in terms of urban park use during the pandemic, this study provides an opportunity for informed site management decisions in future similar events. This study has been published in Plos One.</li> </ul>   University of Georgia <ul> <li>Lusi Xie and the collaborator Wiktor Adamowicz (University of Alberta) published a paper that examines the temporal reliability of contingent behavior trip data in Kuhn-Tucker recreation demand models. Their findings indicate that coefficient and welfare estimates remain largely reliable over time. This paper enhances confidence in using contingent behavior trip data to model demands within and beyond recreation contexts and provide insights into the broader application of Kuhn-Tucker models.</li> <li>Craig Landry (Presentation): "Valuing Green & Hybrid Infrastructure for Flood Control, Ecosystem Service Enhancement, and Resiliency on Tybee Island (GA)" Georgia Water Resources Conference: Athens, GA</li> </ul>   University of Rhode Island <ul> <li>Corey Lang collaborated with URI graduate students Luran Dong and Vasu Gaur to examine externalities related to onshore wind turbines using hedonic valuation methods. The purpose of this paper is to update and extend prior studies that examine the impact of onshore wind turbines on property values. Our data come from Massachusetts and Rhode Island, two states that are population dense and rapidly transitioning to renewable energy. We use a difference-in-differences identification strategy with treatment defined by proximity. In contrast to prior research in these states, our results suggest that property values decline when wind turbines are built. These negative impacts are mostly confined to properties within 1 km of a turbine. However, we delve deeper into these aggregate results by examining how treatment effects vary for different regions and how treatment effects vary over time. Importantly, we find that the negative impacts found are almost entirely driven by Cape Cod and Nantucket, Massachusetts. We estimate small and typically insignificant effects for other regions of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Further, we estimate dynamic models that allow for heterogeneous treatment effects in time since construction. These results suggest that negative impacts abate over time, though in the case of Cape Cod and Nantucket never go to zero. Possible explanations for our complex findings include contagion from opposition to Cape Wind, preference-based sorting, and acclimatization. This paper was published in Energy Policy.</li> <li>Corey Lang collaborated with Jarron VanCeylon (URI) and Amy Ando (Ohio State) to examine how land conservation impacts different households financially. Land conservation efforts throughout the United States sustain ecological benefits while generating wealth in the housing market through capitalization of amenities. This paper estimates the benefits of conservation that are capitalized into proximate home values and quantifies how those benefits are distributed across demographic groups. Using detailed property and household-level data from Massachusetts, we estimate that new land conservation led to $62 million in new housing wealth equity. However, houses owned by low-income or Black or Hispanic households are less likely to be located near protected areas, and hence, these populations are less likely to benefit financially. Direct study of the distribution of this new wealth from capitalized conservation is highly unequal, with the richest quartile of households receiving 43%, White households receiving 91%, and the richest White households receiving 40%, which is nearly 140% more than would be expected under equal distribution. We extend our analysis using census data for the entire United States and observe parallel patterns. We estimate that recent land conservation generated $9.8 billion in wealth through the housing market and that wealthier and White households benefited disproportionately. These findings suggest regressive and racially disparate incidence of the wealth benefits of land conservation policy. This paper was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.</li> <li>Corey Lang collaborated with Shanna Pearson‐Merkowitz (U. Maryland) and Zachary Scott (URI) to examine how voters respond to changes in how costs are presented on ballot referendums. Using an original survey experiment, we examine willingness to approve bonds, randomizing both the total cost of the bond and the framing of the cost as either a personal cost or an aggregate amount. We find that respondents are less supportive of bonds when the bond is framed as a personal expense and that respondents are more cost responsive when they see personal costs. There is also substantial heterogeneity based on the respondent's partisanship and the policy domain of the bond. This paper was published in Public Budgeting & Finance.</li> <li>Corey Lang collaborated with Shanna Pearson‐Merkowitz (U. Maryland) and Andrew Bechard (URI) to examine how voters respond to total bond cost relative to other features of the ballot. Municipal and state governments are often constitutionally bound to ask voters to approve new government debt through voting on bond referendums. Generally, politicians expect voters to balk at higher-cost bonds and be more willing to approve lower-cost bonds. However, there is minimal research on how the amount of a bond affects voter support. We implement a survey experiment that presents respondents with hypothetical ballots, in which the cost of proposed bonds, the number of bonds on the ballot, and the order in which they are presented, are all randomized. Our results suggest that support is not responsive to the amount of the bond, even when the cost is well outside what is typical and within the bounds of what the government can afford. In contrast, we find other aspects of the ballot matter significantly more for bond referendum approval. The more bonds on the ballot and being placed lower on the ballot both reduce support significantly. This paper was published in State Politics & Policy Quarterly.</li> </ul>   Virginia Tech <ul> <li>During the 2023/24 reporting period, Moeltner continued work on a new estimation framework that combines output from hedonic regression and matching estimators to identify the most efficient model at lowest risk of mis-specification bias. I submitted a manuscript to a leading field journal.</li> <li>Moeltner also started work on a novel estimation framework that combines random forests (a machine learning tool) with nonparametric willingness to-pay models. Preliminary results based on simulated data illustrate the advantages of this framework.</li> <li>During the 2023/24 reporting period, Moeltner continued to refine the Locally Weighted Regression (LWR) framework I developed during the previous reporting period. I also initiated work on a classical version of the LWR to enhance computational speed compared to the Bayesian version I had originally developed.</li> </ul>       Objective 3: Integrated Policy and Decision-Making   Colorado State University <ul> <li>Jesse Burkhardt entered into a cooperative agreement with the US Forest Service. The project is run by Sonja Kolstoe, another W5133 member and is broadly about understanding the relationships between wildfires and community drinking water systems.</li> <li>We worked on integrating water allocation models with economic outcomes to assess the benefits of demand reductions, storage capacity, and institutional change in the face of climate change-driven changes in surface water availability.</li> </ul>   Oregon State University <ul> <li>“Examining the Effectiveness of Nonprofit Groups’ Expenditures on Species Recovery: the Case of Pacific Salmon and Steelhead” The project uses data from 115 watersheds in Washington, Oregon, California, and Idaho on salmonid population counts and expenditures by environmental nonprofit organizations and government agencies during the period 2000 – 2018. These data are used to empirically measure the impact of expenditures by these organizations and agencies on counts of salmonids at the watershed level.</li> <li>Kling coauthored a conceptual analysis of "ecological federalism", which describes polities like the United States where social-ecological systems are managed simultaneously by different levels of government (e.g., state and federal) (Sanchirico et al. 2023). This paper is among the first to map out issues raised by contemporary ecological federalism that differ from the related but distinct concept of environmental federalism. For example, the nature of spillover across jurisdictional boundaries. While spillover of invasive species is similar to environmental federalism concerns about polluting industries, positive spillovers - like those connecting harvested marine species - are more likely to occur in ecological federalism problems.</li> </ul>   University of Florida <ul> <li>As a water policy specialist, Weizhe Weng has worked together with diverse stakeholders to develop innovative analysis tools to quantify the complex interactions between human decisions and water quality and quantity. The related project has resulted in the delivery of 7 academic and extension presentations, with around 240 attendees. In particular, the extension efforts have led to more than 10 office consultations, participation of approximately 900 individuals in group learning activities, 81 consultations via telephone and zoom, 4 email consultations, and approximate 35,000 visits to the social media platforms.</li> </ul>   University of Maryland <ul> <li>To date, this project has conducted two separate investigations of issues related to the design of CREP and similar conservation subsidy programs: (1) a theoretical investigation of contract design and project selection with a focus on premature contract termination and (2) an econometric investigation of how CREP contract terms influence landowners’ willingness to participate, with a focus on the roles of contract length and tradeoffs between upfront and annual payments.</li> <li>We have used economic theory to evaluate the design of long term conservation subsidy contracts in light of the fact that farmland owners may opt out of that contract before the contract’s expiration date. We show that the current contract structure makes premature opt-out too attractive and derive an alternative contract structure that reduces premature project cancellation, increases environmental benefits, and improves the cost-effectiveness of a conservation subsidy program. A numerical simulation indicates that the improvements in performance are large enough to be economically significant.</li> <li>We have conducted a stated preference study using data from a survey of owners of farmland with riparian frontage to investigate the levels of upfront and annual payments needed to induce farmland owners’ to enroll in a program like CREP (willingness to accept). Data from that survey indicate that a large plurality of farmland owners have no interest in enrolling in such programs at any levels of upfront or annual payments that would be considered reasonable. That finding indicates that there are limits to the levels of nutrient emissions reductions a voluntary program like CREP can achieve. Statistical analysis of the data indicates that, among those that are potentially willing to consider enrolling in programs like CREP, the average subsidy level required to induce enrollment is substantially greater than current subsidy levels, raising questions about the cost-effectiveness of such programs. Statistical analysis of the data indicates that whether payment is front-loaded or provided gradually over the lifetime of the contract makes very little difference to landowners potentially willing to enroll in programs like CREP. Finally, statistical analysis of the data indicates that streamside buffers are considered to pose substantial risks to farming operations; the data are insufficient to identify the nature of those risks, however.</li> </ul>   University of Wyoming <ul> <li>Economic Assessment of Nonpoint Source Pollution Management in the Tongue River Basin, WY. Best Management Practices (BMPs) matched with WTP levels derived from meta-analysis. Herein is the opportunity to utilize existing secondary data from modified enterprise budgets with previous surface water demand studies. Best management practices (BMPs) undertaken by private landowners generates private and public benefits. Determining a payment above project costs to incentivize voluntary adoption is vital for land managers going forward as public funding decreases and climate change stresses our water supplies.  In the Tongue River Basin, WY, excellent water quality provides trout habitat and related ecosystem goods and services.  Tourism and agriculture are two of the largest industries in the area- yet one contributes to NPS pollution while the other relies on clean water for recreational opportunities.  We conducted a meta-analysis to determine willingness to pay for water quality improvements.  We then built a ranch model to determine willingness to accept payment for best management practices.  With these two estimates, we assessed the zone of potential contract agreement for adoption of BMPs in the Tongue River Basin, WY.</li> </ul>

Publications

Impact Statements

Objective 1: Evaluate Natural Resource Management Decisions and the Effects of Climate Change to Understand Associated Welfare Impacts Colorado State University • My work on wildfire management has attracted funding from the US Forest Service via cooperative agreement with CSU (21-CS-11221636-151). • NOAA: Evacuation and Mobility Valuation Study grant. PI: Jordan Suter, Co-PIs: Chris Goemans, Jude Bayham, and Dale Manning (499,724) • We have informed private company and public sector efforts to incentivize changes in agricultural practices. We also ask the implications for buyers of carbon offsets. Michigan State University • Lupi collaborated with The Ohio State University (Brent Sohngen) to measure beachgoer’s preferences and their aversion to harmful algal blooms (HAB) and high bacterial levels at Lake Erie beaches. The work resulted in a publication in Ecological Economics (Buedreaux et al. 2023) and addresses hazards under Task 1-2 and recreation services under Task 1-3. Lupi was invited by NOAA to give a national HAB webinar on the results. • Lupi collaborated with North Carolina State University (Roger von Haefen) to measure beachgoer’s preferences for different levels of congestion at coastal beaches in the Southeastern U.S. The work is ongoing and addresses Task 1-2. North Carolina State University • Dr. Craig Landry at UGA and I received roughly $250,000 in funding from USACE to investigate beach nourishment policies in Puerto Rico and the Southeastern US. • Funding: Estimating Recreation Value And Recreation NED Benefits for Federal Shore Protection Policies (Project #583529), PI, %10 effort, USACE through the University of Georgia, 2020-2024, $100,000 University of Illinois Urban-Champaign • Atallah and colleagues at the University of Illinois received the following grants USDA NIFA UIE. “Robotics Integrated High Tunnels (RobInHighTs): Creating profitable food oases in urban ecosystems”, 2023-2025. Role: co-PI (Total: $975,000). This grant will generate knowledge on urban farmers' willingness to adopt small robots in high tunnels for low-land-footprint vegetable production. • USDA NIFA. “i-COVER: Innovative Cover-crop Opportunity, Verification and Economy stimulating technology for underserved farmers using Robotics”. Role: co-PI (Total: $5 M). This grant will generate knowledge on farmer willingness to adopt cover cropping to produce climate-smart commodities and consumer demand for climate-smart products. Oregon State University • David Lewis was a contributing author to Ch. 4 of the USDA Forest Service's Resources Planning Act (RPA), a snapshot of US forest and rangeland conditions updated every ten years. Lewis collaborated on developing an econometric-based land-use change model capable of projecting future land-use as a function of alternative climate change scenarios. The estimated land-use change model formed the foundation for all land-use impacts within the RPA. In addition to Ch. 4 of the RPA, Lewis contributed a published journal article and a published dataset based on this work. The RPA provides significant federal policy guidance by identifying drivers of change for US natural resources. • Public and private organizations that work towards improving water quality, including stakeholders such as the US EPA and state environmental agencies, benefit from a better understanding of how different segments of society, including environmental nonprofit organizations, can contribute to reaching water quality improvement goals. • The broader public, including individuals and households who contribute to environmental nonprofit organizations, benefit from a better understanding of how and to what extent their contributions impact water quality. • Results from Lowe Mackenzie et al. (2023) provide evidence to help land managers at state and federal (USFS, NPS, BLN) levels understand and adapt to the emerging social media paradigm and improve stewardship of highly used natural resources. Important takeaways that could benefit land managers include monitoring social media presence of certain locations to better match staffing to visitation surges and making the case to policy makers for increased staffing/funding to help prevent resource degradation from overcrowding. Dundas and collaborators were interviewed by many leading media outlets in Oregon (The Oregonian, OPB) and helped produced a podcast episode (Peak Northwest) to help disseminate our results to the broader public. • In Hashida and Dundas (2023), our findings demonstrate coastal housing market implications of different policy outcomes that can inform government action in response to increased flood risk. Voluntary government interventions directly in housing markets offer a distinctly different policy option for coastal regions, and understanding the impacts of such policies is important for assessing how these areas may best respond to climate change. This study may demonstrate to the broader public that concerns about coastal land use interventions by governments are unlikely to have large and lasting negative impacts that people tend to expect. University of Florida • Work by Weng and collaborators has been featured at the Global water forum (https://www.globalwaterforum.org/2023/12/14/a-watershed-moment-integrated-economic-and-agronomic-models-unveil-hidden-benefits-of-land-and-nitrogen-management/), an initiative of the United Nations Educational ,Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). University of Georgia • The work on buying back irrigation water is guiding the state agency on potential modifications to the existing water management program. • The collaborative efforts with USDA in the cooperative agreement will yield significant insights for the agency, specifically concerning the efficacy of financial and technical assistance in involving farmers to enhance the environmental outcomes of the Conservation Reserve Program. • I started a joint venture research project with USDA Forest Service to study carbon sequestration benefits of prescribed burns in the southeastern U.S. A Ph.D. student is funded through the initiative to conduct empirical research in the next three years. University of Wyoming • These results have been communicated to the Wyoming State Trails program and they are disseminating to interested parties. These parties are using the information to develop long-term plans associated with these potential changes in recreation demand and related economic impacts. Virginia Tech Objective 2: Advance Economic Valuation Methods and Uses to Enhance Natural Resource Management, Policy, and Decision-Making Colorado State University • Jesse Burkhardt published an article estimating the value of wolf reintroduction in Colorado. The work was intended to help the Colorado Department of Wildlife. • Jesse Burkhardt published an article on the impact of pollution on agricultural workers. We estimate the costs of pollution increases on worker health and productivity. • Our hope is that the paper on discrimination and env/resource methods will make env/resource economists think more carefully about how racism (past and present) may be affecting policy recommendations. • Our carbon market access work is informing an Environmental Defense Fund report on carbon markets and their challenges. • EDF: Assessing equity in access of Midwestern farmers to the US voluntary soil carbon sequestration market $339,495 , with Amy Ando, McKenzie Johnson, and Chloe Wardropper Michigan State University • We completed a statewide valuation of water quality in Michigan and published the results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Lupi et al. 2023). The research compared valuation using a commonly used water quality index (WQI) to valuation results that decomposed some of the services within the WQI and found that the less aggregated model outperforms the WQI-based model, which has implications for future water quality valuations and for the vast benefits transfer literature based on the WQI. The work relates to Task 2-1 and Task 3-2. Relatedly, this project compared valuation results from less-costly non-probability samples from Qualtrics and MTurk to results from an address-based push-to-web probability sample. The work was published in AEPP (Sandstrom-Mistry et al. 2023) and found that the non-probability based samples produced larger valuations than the probability sample, especially for the MTurk sample. However, for many, but not all, services examined the on-line panel marginal valuations were similar to the more-costly address-based sample. Oregon State University • Work conducted by Dundas and Kling include a survey was developed with significant stakeholder input from coastal land managers, including US Forest Service, and endangered species specialists with U.S. Fish and Wildlife (Nguyen et al. 2023). These agencies will use the values estimated in our paper to help plan, finance, and justify from a benefit-cost analysis perspective on-going dune restoration efforts in Oregon, Washington, and California. A small subset of the broader public learned about differences in natural dunes compared to those shaped by invasive species through focus groups and taking our survey. Since all US households have a stake in public land management, our results provide their opinions and values to enter restoration and land use decisions on coastal public lands (Nguyen et al. 2023). • Kling and Dundas's survey of public preferences for Pacific Northwest dune landscape restoration was developed with substantial input from stakeholders, including regional environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the federal government (Nguyen et al. 2023). This research provides the first (to our knowledge) empirical estimates of nonmarket values for dune landscape restoration. These results can be used in cost-benefit analysis of restoration of coastal dune landscapes around the United States. University of Florida • Weizhe Weng has been awarded an early career grant (serving as PI) from the University of Florida to investigate the health and economic impacts of nitrate pollution. University of Rhode Island • Corey Lang was hired as an expert witness to discuss his 2019 article on tourism impacts of offshore wind energy. • Corey Lang was invited to present at the Rhode Island Land and Water Summit regarding his research on distributional impacts of land conservation. Virginia Tech • The target audience for output generated under the first task (hedonic matching) includes government agencies dealing with natural hazards, such as FEMA and NOAA, the real estate and construction industry, urban and regional planers, and peers and practitioners working on the impact of environmental change on housing markets. • The random forest / contingent valuation model will be useful to agencies, peers, and practitioners in any environmental valuation context. I presented this work at the W5133 Regional Project Meetings, Ft. Collins, Feb. 28-Mar.1, 2024. • The target audience for task 2 is primarily the EPA, which uses these models categorically for water-related rulemaking. Other target audiences include peers and practitioners that work on meta-analyses related to environmental quality change. A third audience is USDA, who applies these methods to better understand the benefits from land conservation programs, Overall, this audience is regional, national, and international. • This past year, the EPA continued to use methods developed through this project to assess water quality benefits in the Delaware River watershed. Objective 3: Integrated Policy and Decision-Making Colorado State University • Our analyses can inform use of IRA funds geared toward investment in water infrastructure. North Carolina State University • As part of a interdisciplinary team of engineers, decision scientists, and economists, we quantified the total economic of improving water quality in urban streams throughout the central Piedmont of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. We developed policy tools that facilitate benefit transfer by government agencies for new policies. Oregon State University • Public and private organizations that work towards recovering endangered salmonid populations, including stakeholders such as the US FWS and state wildlife agencies, benefit from a better understanding of how different segments of society, including environmental nonprofit organizations, can contribute to reaching salmonid recovery goals. • The broader public, including individuals and households who contribute to environmental nonprofit organizations, benefit from a better understanding of how environmental groups can contribute to recovery of endangered species. • Kling's analysis of ecosystem federalism will primarily help funding agencies target their investment in multidisciplinary research on natural resource management and ecosystem services. The interactions among local, state, and federal authority over social-ecological systems are sometimes overlooked in decision support studies, despite being consequential for the success of associated public policies. This work offers a new framework for describing ecological federalism, and identifies areas where additional research needed for decision support tools that can be applied in contexts where coordination among local, state, and federal authorities is important for management success. University of Florida • Weizhe Weng has been awarded two grants (serving as Co-PI) from the Florida Department of Agricultural and Consumer Services to provide decision support tools to agricultural producers regarding the economic viability of cover crops and other best management practices. University of Maryland • The Environmental Protection Agency is currently in the process of formulating regulations governing agricultural nonpoint nutrient emissions into the Chesapeake Bay. The Maryland Department of Agriculture, in collaboration with USDA’s Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, offers subsidies for the installation of riparian buffers, which play a central role in plans for agriculture to meet its obligations under these new regulations. The studies conducted under the auspices of this project will help the Maryland Department of Agriculture and other entities design and implement programs to meet those requirements. The public at large will benefit from a cleaner Chesapeake Bay achieved at lower cost as a result. University of Wyoming • Intended development of incentive programs to encourage ranch/landowner employment of Best Management Practices (BMPs) in a small rural watershed.

Date of Annual Report: 04/07/2025

Report Information

Annual Meeting Dates: 03/05/2025 - 03/07/2025
Period the Report Covers: 03/01/2024 - 02/28/2025

Participants

Brief Summary of Minutes

Accomplishments

Objective 1: Evaluate Natural Resource Management Decisions and the Effects of Climate Change to Understand Associated Welfare Impacts   Colorado State University <ul> <li>Jesse Burkhardt worked with the US National Park Service employing one graduate student and one undergraduate student to assess visitor spending at national parks and to write a manuscript evaluating travel cost surveys for 50 national parks and sites to estimate the value of a fraction of the national park system. He also worked with the US Forest Service and the EPA on estimating the impact of wildfires on drinking water quality and assessing exposure to wildfire. </li> <li>Jesse Burkhardt is also working with a graduate student and researchers at NOAA and NASA on using machine learning to train a computer to detect wildfire smoke in the atmosphere. This project will be useful for researchers and policymakers concerned with the distribution of wildfire smoke across the globe because currently, we do not know where wildfire smoke is.</li> </ul>   Kansas State University <ul> <li>We have developed a dataset estimating agricultural losses due to wildfire that examine crop loss across different crops and losses to potential forage for grazing across the Southern Great Plains at a county level from 2008 to 2022. This data product is available for researchers and organizations and we are in the process of developing a publication about wildfire impacts on agricultural lands in the Southern Great Plains.</li> </ul>   Mississippi State University <ul> <li>Presentation: Jungers, B. "Evaluation of an invasive species management initiative (recreational harvest incentive program)." Presented to Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Group, January 2024.</li> <li>Presentation: Petrolia, D. “What is the Value of Ecosystem Services Provided by Recent Restoration Efforts on the Northern Gulf Coast.” Presented to Mississippi Environmental NGO Focus Group, Virtual, February 21, 2025. </li> </ul> North Carolina State University <ul> <li>Roger von Haefen supervised Yiqing Liu's NC State Dissertation, "Three Essays on the Nonmarket Valuation of Air Pollution and Extreme Weather: Implications for Outdoor Recreation, who successfully defended in October 2024. The research measures how air pollution and weather influence outdoor recreation behavior and quantifies welfare measures for several policy-relevant scenarios.  She is now a tenure-track Assistant Professor at Meredith College in Raleigh, NC.</li> <li>Spencer Banzhaf Helped develop a model for how including offsets for activities on natural and working lands can reduce the cost of pollution abatement.</li> </ul> North Dakota State University <ul> <li>David Roberts developed a panel dataset tracking the shares of crop areas and non-agricultural land uses at 11,691 gridded locations throughout North Dakota from 1997 to 2024 based on the USDA's cropland data layer. The dataset also tracks monthly weather variables at each gridded location during the time period. The aim of the developing study is to create interlinked models of biophysical linkages between economic drivers of crop selection decisions and the impacts of those crop selection decisions on weather and climate outcomes.</li> </ul> Ohio State University <ul> <li>Ohio State University worked on Task 1-5: Develop and Evaluate Strategies for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation. One area where research was conducted was impacts of climate change and sea level rise on coastal communities. The research specifically addressed how market forces and policies could slow the negative effects of climate change on coastal housing prices. This research also developed novel insights into modeling of coupled human-natural systems. Ohio State University researchers also focused on Task 1-1: Quantify the Direct and Indirect Impacts of Management Decisions Affecting Agricultural Land, Forests, and Land Use Change. For instance, researchers studied how maintenance of forest cover, especially in tropical forests, could reduce mortality from malaria. Other research explored how different types of leasing arrangements could affect forest losses. Ohio State University researchers also addressed Task 1-2: Assess How Public and Private Actions Impact Water Quality and Scarcity by examining how farmer perspectives influenced their decisions about entering water quality programs.</li> </ul>   Oregon State University <ul> <li>Under Tasks 1-2 and 1-5, Steven Dundas collaborated with hydrologists to investigate the effect of future weather and climate on municipal water demand in coastal communities with tourist-centric economies (Rupp et al. 2024). The research uses an econometric model of monthly water demand that allowed for non-linear responses to weather variables to estimate temperature-response functions for demand from a sample of communities in the Oregon Mid-Coast. A main result is that local temperature was not a significant driver of variability in monthly water demand but that temperature in the Willamette Valley—the source of most tourists to the Oregon coast—was. Applying the temperature response functions to scenarios of future climate to the year 2070 led to projected increases in water demand independent of other factors.</li> <li>Under Task 1-3, Dundas and a W5133 collaborator at the University of Hawaii examine the relationship between increases in people using public lands with activity on a popular social media app (Lowe Mackenzie et al. 2024). They explore this issue in the Oregon State Park system by combining visitation data with park-specific georeferenced content and engagement indicators from Instagram. Using several empirical specifications, they show suggestive evidence that Instagram is not likely correlated to increased visitation everywhere, but only in a few locations generating high user participation within the app. They find no contemporary effect and a positive association with cumulative Instagram engagement indicators on visits at this subset of parks.</li> <li>Under Tasks 1-4 and 1-5, Dundas and W5133 collaborator at the University of Georgia investigated barriers to implementation of managed retreat programs intended to reduce the economic impact of natural hazards and adapt to climate change. The research develops a conceptual framework and a set of empirical models with data from a buyout program in a coastal state to develop descriptive evidence on potential barriers to successful managed-retreat policies in high-risk coastal areas. Key factors influencing buyout success can be associated with municipal budgets, including revenues, expenditures, debt, and government transfers. Importantly, revenue impacts related to property taxes appear to contribute to fewer buyouts, suggesting a potential principal-agent problem related to climate resilience in high-value coastal housing markets. Recognition of the combination of factors that may represent barriers to adoption may help the design and implementation of future programs and improve coastal climate adaptation strategies.</li> <li>Recent increases in the rate and size of large western U.S. wildfires can alter landowners’ expectations of the arrival of stand-destroying wildfires, which can reduce the value of forestland. The research by Lewis and a co-author uses a large pooled cross-section of individual private timberland transactions across the three Pacific states to estimate the effects of large local wildfire events on timberland prices. Results indicate that the recent increase in wildfires and drought stress have reduced the economic value of forests by approximately 10% ($11 billion). Outputs include one journal article.</li> <li>There has been expanded suitability for planting yellow pine plantations in regions north of their current range in the southeastern U.S. The research by Lewis and a co-author uses plot-level forest management panel data from the USDA Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) data to estimate the role of climate on private forestland owners’ decisions i) of whether to harvest their forest, and ii) whether to plant yellow pines or regenerate hardwoods. The estimated model emphasizes the role of cold weather variability as a constraint on northward expansion of pine plantations, and a simulation shows how the long-term adaptation path varies with a range of projected changes in climate suitability. The main output is a journal article.</li> <li>Christian Langpap Activities and Outputs: The project uses nation-wide data on water quality measurements and expenditures by environmental nonprofit organizations and contributions to these organizations during the period 2009 – 2017. These data are used to empirically measure the impact of contributions to and expenditures by these organizations on local water quality both near and far away from border areas where streams leave states. </li> </ul> South Dakota State University <ul> <li>Rachel Short: Task 1-5: Develop and Evaluate Strategies for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation. In the project, "Assessing Conservation Planning in South Dakota: Challenges and Opportunities in Collaboration, Public Participation, and Climate Information," we used an inductive, qualitative research approach, including interviews with 35 experts and content analysis of 53 conservation plans. In the project about measuring the impacts of shocks on food security for vulnerable people in India, Rachel Short analyzed data from 1200 households across 13 months using a doubly robust difference-in-difference (BACI) framework. The first project is a contribution to a larger project funded by a competitive Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities grant awarded by USDA NRCS. My project is studying the impacts of agricultural practices on wildlife and vegetation. I worked with a vendor, Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI), to conduct thorough surveys on six intensively monitored ranches during the summer of 2024. The ranches span a large precipitation gradient from eastern Wyoming to eastern South Dakota. BRI surveyed the mammals (large and small), birds, amphibians, insects (dung beetles and grasshoppers, primarily), and vegetation. BRI is currently processing all of the data and will repeat the surveys in 2027 to determine impacts. The second project investigates the morphology and population ecology of feral cats on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. The feral cats are known to predate multiple species of threatened seabirds that nest and breed on the island. A MS student (Sarah Gheida) is studying how the skulls, bite force, age, and sex of the cats predict which cats are more likely to predate threatened seabirds. We collected additional data in Hawaii during summer 2024 and analyses are ongoing. The third project investigates the role that agricultural and invasive species have on our models of trait-environment relationships in communities of herbivorous mammals. I used four modern community compositions to determine how the modern trait-environment relationship shifts. I compared those modern communities to fossil communities in the same locations and to projections of future climate. Communities with agricultural species included align with the fossil communities whereas communities with the invasive species included align with the future expectations. </li> </ul> Texas A&M University <ul> <li>Liqing Li collaborated with Dilek Uz (University of Nevada), Mani Rouhi Rad (Texas A&M university), and R. Aaron Hrozencik (ERS) to examine the short-run and long-run impact of increasing temperature on agricultural electricity demand for irrigation. We also examined how depopulation and climate change would affect the operations of rural electric cooperatives.</li> <li>Liqing Li and José J. Sánchez (US Forest Service) initiated a project on estimating the cost of wildfire evacuations through both stated preference and revealed preference approach.</li> <li>Richard Woodward, using mobility data, placed value on offshore infrastructures to recreational fishing in the Gulf of Mexico. This work has been shared with stakeholders in the region. Demonstrated how racial aversion affects location choice by marine recreational anglers.</li> </ul> University of California Berkeley <ul> <li>Meredith Fowlie’s project focuses on building datasets, developing analytical frameworks, conducting empirical analysis of climate change adaptation/wildfire risk mitigation in the utility and insurance sectors. I am particularly interested in understanding how state-of-the-art wildfire catastrophe modeling/wildfire risk analytics are being used to inform high stakes decision making in these sectors (e.g. power sector investments in risk mitigation, insurance pricing and underwriting). I finished two working papers this year that generated lots of attention from key stakeholders (e.g. utility decisionmakers, regulators, legislators). I have testified in legislative proceedings, convened a legislative briefing, and met with multiple groups (ratepayer advocates, wildland fire modelers, utility risk modeling teams) who want to understand and engage with our work.</li> </ul>   University of Georgia <ul> <li>Two of Yukiko Hashida’s Ph.D. students presented at the AERE summer meetings 2024, one about the storm damage reduction benefits of mangroves in Florida, and another on the effects of tidal wetlands on birdwatching activities. NOAA ESLR project aiming to quantify the ecosystem benefits values of tidal marshes has progressed with interdisciplinary researchers, including a quarterly meeting with stakeholders.</li> <li>Yukiko Hashida concluded a project funded by the Sea Grant in collaboration with the Nature Conservancy, which examined the storm damage reduction benefits of salt marshes in Georgia. This project connected various stakeholders, and we presented at a number of conferences and workshops targeted for local and regional resource planners and land managers. We also published a technical report, GIS Storymap, and infographics on TNC's website. I am also working with another Ph.D. student on research funded by the Forest Service, looking at the carbon sequestration benefits of prescribed fires.</li> <li>Task 1-1: Lusi Xie, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Tennessee, Albany State University, and USDA Economic Research Service, designed an online stated preference survey with farmers in Georgia to elicit preferences and required compensation to reduce irrigation water use for endangered for protecting endangered aquatic species during droughts. The findings will provide important insights into designing contracts in agricultural water conservation programs.</li> <li>Task 1-1: Lusi Xie is designing a randomized controlled trial in partnership with researchers from Texas A&M University and the University of Delaware to evaluate the relative effectiveness of small financial assistance incentives and lottery-style financial incentives in encouraging Conservation Reserve Program participants to engage in performing prescribed burns for CRP land management.</li> <li>Task 1-4: Lusi Xie is examining groundwater pumping behavior under conditions of varying risks of saltwater intrusion through laboratory experiments. This research aims to shed light on how individuals respond to heterogeneous risks, offering perspectives on water resource management strategies in areas prone to such challenges.</li> </ul> University of Hawaii at Manoa <ul> <li>Kirsten Oleson’s & Ashley Lowe Mackenzie’s key outreach milestone was the presentation of GoWebinar at the NOAA OAP Virtual Workshop: Regional Resiliency & Vulnerability Assessments, where findings were shared our findings on ecological modeling and economic valuation of changes to the marine environment with policymakers, scientists, and resource managers to support resilience planning efforts. Our lab presented at 6 conferences on natural capital, recreational modeling and fisheries valuation.</li> </ul>   University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign <ul> <li>Becca Taylor completed a working paper for Task 1-2. This working paper is part of a project that examines how international plastic waste trade policies impact single-use plastic coastal litter (see title and abstract below). This working paper will be presented at conferences and workshops in the upcoming year to refine and enhance the working paper for journal publication. Title: Plastic Waste Trade & Coastal Litter: Evidence from Citizen Science Data Abstract: Plastic waste is an internationally traded commodity, where importing countries recycle plastic waste into usable materials. However, there are concerns that the importation process creates plastic litter—a negative externality—in importing countries. While this concern has received much media and policy attention, quantifying the magnitude of this externality has been hindered by a lack of data on plastic litter across countries and over time. To this end, we use unconventional citizen science data on litter from Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup, together with the United Nations Comtrade Database, to estimate the correlation between traded plastic waste and coastal litter from 2003 to 2022. We find that a 10% increase in the amount of plastic waste a country imports is associated with a 0.6% increase in the amount of littered plastic collected. Heterogeneity analyses show this correlation is driven by countries with higher rates of waste mismanagement. Our results suggest that the country- and international-level regulatory policies implemented in the waste trade industry since 2018 may have contributed to mitigating plastic pollution.</li> <li>Shadi Atallah published a paper on the optimal management of invasive shrubs in white pine forests, where the shrub affects one timber type and one recreation type of landowner.</li> <li>Shadi Atallah and PhD student Khashi Ghorbani developed a model that separately simulated the direct (temperature) vs indirect (disease-related) climatic impacts in an agroforestry system.</li> </ul> University of Maine <ul> <li>Task 1-3: During the reporting period, Kathleen Bell continued to collaborate with Maine state agencies (e.g., Maine Office of Outdoor Recreation, Maine Department of Marine Resources, Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands), recreation industry groups, and non-profit organizations as well as other UMaine colleagues to improve understanding of the economic contribution of outdoor recreation in Maine, inform future natural resource management and economic development decisions related to outdoor recreation, and understand how public and private actions impact outdoor recreation. We assessed the economic contribution of outdoor recreation in Maine and other US states from 2017 to 2022. As part of this analysis, we examined how the contribution changed during the COVID-19 pandemic and explored Maine's specialization in terms of recreational activities and industry sectors. We also completed a detailed analysis of recent trends in recreation participation and recreation infrastructure to inform an economic analysis of future opportunities and challenges for Maine's outdoor recreation sectors. Working with UMaine and University of Southern Maine colleagues, we conducted a detailed study of outdoor recreation and coastal boat launch facilities in Maine. Coastal boat launches provide the public with access to Maine's coastal and marine waters and serve an important role in providing outdoor recreation opportunities to residents and visitors. Working with various state coastal and land management agencies and non-profit organizations, including the Maine Department of Marine Resources, we updated information about the condition and site characteristics of these facilities, collected information about recent trends in use and management challenges, and documented the impacts of recent extreme storms on boat launch facilities. Together, these efforts set the foundation for future recreation demand modeling and analyses. Task 1-4: Working with colleagues from UMaine, the University of Southern Maine, and Bowdoin College, we continued to assess recent municipal actions to enhance resiliency to changing economic and environmental conditions. We collected extensive data documenting municipal digital and grant capacities in Maine and continue to analyze these data to inform decisions related to maintaining and strengthening community infrastructure in rural areas. Our work to date suggests information infrastructure, including digital approaches, appear critical to local government responses to natural hazards such as extreme storms. Our work also suggests municipal grant capacity, including managerial and financial, is associated with grant awards.</li> </ul> University of Rhode Island <ul> <li>Corey Lang collaborated with URI Professor of Sociology Julie Keller and URI student Blake Harrison to assess how land trusts meet the needs of farmers and gardeners from marginalized backgrounds. Land trusts in the U.S. play an important role in preventing the loss of farmland to development. Farmers seeking affordable land may benefit from these conservation efforts. Yet the distribution of these benefits across farmer groups is unclear. Interviews with land trust staff and focus groups with marginalized farmers and gardeners in New England, USA reveal discrepancies in how diversity and land access are discussed. Access to adequate, affordable land was a serious concern among farmers and gardeners, yet few land trusts had programs to increase access for diverse populations. Land trusts approached diversity, equity, and inclusion work by making limited commitments, pivoting to social class, and avoidance due to perceptions of mission drift. These findings have significant implications for who benefits and who is excluded from private farmland conservation. This paper was published in Society & Natural Resources.</li> </ul> University of Tennessee <ul> <li>Dale Manning and collaborators completed an analysis of interactions between crop insurance policies (subsidies) and groundwater use in the Ogallala region. this is output from a USDA grant that was facilitated by w5133.</li> <li>Dale Manning and collaborators quantified the impact of weather shocks on the use of risky inputs in developing countries, distinguishing between direct/behavioral mechanisms and income channels.</li> </ul> University of Wyoming <ul> <li>Task 1-4 People in Teton County Wyoming are concerned about the potential impacts associated with climate change. Focus groups indicate that stakeholders are concerned about the impacts on recreational angling in the area. Christopher Bastian and collaborators conducted a survey of anglers using a discrete choice experiment, asking anglers' trip choice given five angling trip attributes including: smoke from wildfires, change in trout populations and probability of catching a native cutthroat trout, crowding, access to angling locations, and trip cost. Preliminary results indicate increased incidence of wildfire smoke during an angling trip, and reduced probability of catching a native cutthroat trout had the largest negative impact on taking a trip in the Snake River headwaters area. We are currently working on publications from this research.</li> <li>Task 1-1 Stakeholders in the upper green river, which feeds into the Colorado River Basin, are concerned about continued alternative water demands impacting potential agricultural operations in the area. Christopher Bastion and collaboratore conducted an economic analysis of various land use impacts affecting irrigation in the area and their related economic values. We find that while adding opportunities to gain rents from ecological services from return flows to support minimum stream flows to fisheries impacts values, agricultural landowners still have an economic incentive to sell land and related water rights for housing development. We published a journal article with our findings and have communicated our findings to the state engineer's office as well as stakeholders in the area.</li> <li>Don McLeod worked on research relating to the provision of public goods and services. Exurban sprawl and landscape fragmentation continue to be critical issues with respect to resource management, local governance and rural community development. There are implications for the costs of infrastructure development and public service provision as per the arrangement of people on the landscape and the conversion of extensive agricultural lands into large lot exurban parcels. The bulk of the work I am involved in sheds some light onto the outcomes of parcelization and fragmentation of rural lands. If jurisdictions differ in their provision of local public goods, then the citizen's choice of location reflects their preferences. The chosen location offers the suite of local public goods closest to the citizen's ideal. This includes wildlife habitat, law enforcement and fire prevention among others. The framework integrates characterization of the landscape, social and political decision factors into economic decision-making. This is thought to occur by extending prior public services modeling approaches that identify measurable target service metrics to focus on a public service cost function. We incorporate social/political incentives facing public decision-makers while managing consumer preferences of development and resource management that fit resident preferences. </li> </ul> Virginia Tech <ul> <li>Accomplishments under this objective overlap to some extent with Objective 2 below due to application to the management of water quality in New England rivers and streams, and the state of Virginia, respectively.</li> </ul>   West Virginia University <ul> <li>Julian Hwang analyzed survey data that collected information about forest landowners’ perceptions and preferences for carbon offset programs in West Virginia.</li> </ul>   Objective 2: Advance Economic Valuation Methods and Uses to Enhance Natural Resource Management, Policy, and Decision-Making   Colorado State University <ul> <li>Jesse Burkhardt worked with the National Park Service to incorporate social costs in travel cost methods. We prepared a manuscript for publication, which is currently under review.</li> </ul>   North Carolina State University <ul> <li>Spencer Banzhaf developed a non-parameteric model for estimating the value of environmental improvements. Published model and estimates of values for ecosystem services in a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper.</li> </ul>   Ohio State University <ul> <li>Ohio State University researchers contributed to Task 2-1: Develop Innovative Stated and Revealed Preference Research Methods. In particular, the researchers developed new methods to integrate noise related externalities into hedonic analysis.</li> </ul>   Oregon State University <ul> <li>Christian Langpap’s project uses nation-wide data on water quality measurements and location of monitors, as well as census-tract level demographic characteristics. These data are used to empirically evaluate monitor coverage and water quality as they correlate with community characteristics.</li> <li>PI Kling presented preliminary findings from the forest natural capital survey development process to the State Forests Division Chief of the Oregon Department of Forestry, a key stakeholder for the project. He communicated to the Chief (Mike Wilson) what was learned from the first public focus group, and the ODF staff offered several suggestions for improving the survey instrument, in particular ways to make the results more useful to end-users of the forest natural capital pricing analysis.</li> </ul> South Dakota State University <ul> <li>Rachel Short’s project is supported by a NSF Building Research Capacity of New Faculty in Biology grant awarded in summer 2024. With my co-PI at South Dakota School of Mines, we identified four fossil sites in Wind Cave National Park that span ~200,000 years. Specimens from these sites are housed at the South Dakota Mines Museum of Geology, and their student employees are curating the specimens. I have started a MS student (Ariel Berenyi-Tonesi) to work on changes in community compositions of these sites. A PhD student (Bruce) will work on the paleoenvironmental interpretations of these sites and will develop vectors of change to illustrate changes in trait-environment relationships through time and into the future.</li> <li>PI Short’s second project integrates three functional traits (heel bone, dental metrics, and body size) into one model for carnivorans. This project will be the first instance of a multi-trait single-order model of trait-environment relationships. I started a PhD student (Charles Bruce) to work on this project. He is in the process of assembling data and beginning to construct the models. This project will require first building the body size model independently. That analysis is almost complete so that the integrated model can begin.</li> </ul>   Texas A&M University <ul> <li>Liqing Li and collaborator Mitch Livy from California State University, Fullerton, published a study on how different types of urban green spaces are capitalized across various housing types and communities using housing transaction data. The results show that neighborhood parks and community gardens are valued more for properties lacking private or communal spaces. community gardens are highly valued in low-income, non-white neighborhoods.</li> <li>Liqing Li, José J. Sánchez (US Forest Service), and John Loomis (Colorado State University) conducted a choice experiment in Arizona to understand the relationship between perceived and objective fire risk and willingness to pay for fire mitigation programs. The results show that people’s perceived risks and the professional objective fire risks assessed by experts differ significantly, suggesting that managers may need to develop effective messaging and education programs for those communities where risk perceptions differ from expert assessments.</li> <li>Liqing and collaborator Dede Long from Harvey Mudd College published a paper on residents' willingness to contribute money and time to community gardens, an essential form of urban agriculture. Our findings indicate that while residents highly value the gardens' private benefits, they are not inclined to contribute to their public benefits. Additionally, residents' preferences for community gardens differ based on their socioeconomic status and accumulated gardening experience.</li> <li>Richard Woodward developed innovative methods using mobility data to track recreational the activity of marine recreational fishing. These methods have been shared with NOAA Fisheries, which has indicated continued interest in their use and development. </li> </ul> University of Georgia <ul> <li>Task 2-1: Lusi Xie, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Delaware and the University of Alberta, is designing a field experiment that tests the impacts of strategic behavior and social desirability bias on stated preference willingness-to-pay for private goods. </li> </ul> University of Hawaii at Manoa <ul> <li>Task 2-2: Ela Ural and collaborators derive economic value estimates for the nearshore fisheries of the Main Hawaiian Islands. Our definition of value follows that of Exchange Value (EV) under the United Nations System of Environmental Economic Accounting-Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA-EA) framework. This is accomplished using a resource rent approach for commercial fisheries (years 1997-present) and non-commercial fisheries (2005-present). Our estimates are spatially explicit, and further allocated by Ecosystem Type. </li> </ul> University of Maryland <ul> <li>Erik Lichtenberg and collaborators have conducted a stated preference study using data from a survey of owners of farmland with riparian frontage to investigate the levels of upfront and annual payments needed to induce farmland owners’ to enroll in a program like CREP (willingness to accept). Uptake of payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs is often less than desired, leading policymakers to experiment with alternative contract designs aimed at increasing participation. We use data from a discrete choice experiment within a farmland owner survey to explore how stated preference (SP) studies could inform those efforts. We examine program design attributes for long-term conservation practices such as riparian buffers using a standard discrete choice model and hurdle models, where the latter considers serial nonparticipation that occurs commonly in SP studies involving PES programs. All model specifications indicate that both the one-time bonus and annual recurring payments provide economically meaningful incentives for participation. The marginal rate of substitution between these two payments reveals a strong preference for receiving payments upfront, suggesting that landowners discount future payments at high rates. Controlling for serial nonparticipation makes little difference in estimates of predicted uptake rates or tradeoffs between upfront and recurring annual payments. Our policy simulations varying the one-time bonus and annual recurring payments, while holding total payments constant in present values, indicate that uptake can be increased by frontloading payments. Overall, our analysis indicates that SP methods can help design more effective PES contracts. An article reporting these findings is under journal review.</li> </ul> University of Rhode Island <ul> <li>Corey Lang collaborated with URI graduate student Vasu Gaur, East Carolina University Greg Howard, and East Carolina University graduate student Ruth Quinoo to examine how econometric modeling of choice experiment data can affect loss aversion estimates. The experiment examined preferences for utility-scale solar energy siting based on a series of installation attributes and changes in household electric bill (the payment vehicle, which can increase or decrease relative to the status-quo). We employ multiple discrete choice modeling approaches and show that, across all models, the implications of accounting for loss aversion are qualitatively similar and match theoretical predictions. Despite this similarity, when comparing results across models we find that model choice has substantial impacts on estimated loss aversion. Specifically, different models estimate loss/gain ratios below two and in excess of six for the same data set. Thus, the consequences of framing decisions, which are an important aspect of nonmarket valuation, are not just the provenance of survey and choice experiment design but may also be heavily influenced by empirical model choice. This paper was published in Journal of Choice Modelling.</li> <li>Corey Lang collaborated with Casey Wichman (Georgia Tech), Michael Wier (WHOI), and Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz (Maryland) to understand voter perceptions of the private costs of providing public goods through referendums. Public good provision is often determined through referendums by voters, who weigh benefits against costs. We evaluate voter perceptions of the private costs of providing public goods by conducting three exit polls of New England voters and an online survey of California voters. By comparing cost perceptions to actual tax incidence, we find pervasive evidence that voters misperceive costs. Fewer than 20% of voters in our samples reported perceived costs within 25% of estimated actual costs. Further, our analysis suggests that actual costs have no statistical bearing on voter choice, but at least in the New England sample voter approval is affected by perceived costs. Thus, misperceptions of referendum costs can lead to voter choice errors, misallocation of public funds, and errors in valuation estimates derived from voting data. This paper was published in American Journal of Agricultural Economics.</li> <li>Corey Lang collaborated with URI graduate student Luran Dong URI professor of Natural Resource Science Jason Parent to assess homeowners’ willingness to pay to avoid having views of wind turbines from their property and to improve methods of assessing viewshed impacts. Onshore wind turbine capacity continues to grow and will only accelerate, though siting can be challenging given community opposition. We apply the hedonic valuation method with residential property sales data to assess nearby residents’ willingness to pay to avoid having views of turbines from their property. In doing so, we aim to improve methods of assessing viewshed impacts for turbines and other amenities and disamenities that have a visual component. Our recommended viewshed approach uses a digital surface model (DSM), which accounts for trees and buildings that obstruct views. For comparison, we also create viewsheds based on bare-earth digital elevation model (DEM), which has been more typically used other studies. Using data from New England, USA, we use a difference-in-differences identification strategy with treatment defined by the visibility of a wind turbine, while also controlling for proximity-based treatment effects. The results suggest that property values decline by 2.2% to 2.5% when a wind turbine is visible, with larger impacts in urban and coastal areas. DEM methods misclassify viewshed for about 75% of properties, when compared to the DSM-based viewshed, and the resulting DEM-based valuation estimates are attenuated. This paper was published in Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. </li> </ul> University of Tennessee <ul> <li>Dale Manning and collaborators completed an analysis of the use of stated preference methods to generate supply curves and estimate the scope and composition of abatement supply curves in agriculture. This was a collaboration with Amy Ando, a fellow member of w5133.</li> <li>Dale Manning worked with Lynne Lewis, a friend of w5133 to study the use of images for eliciting the benefits of additional fish stocks for artisanal fishers,</li> </ul>   Virginia Tech <ul> <li>During the 2024/2025 reporting period Klaus Moeltner developed a novel methodological framework to facilitate benefit transfer (BT), the leading approach used by federal agencies to determine the environmental benefits of planned policy interventions. In essence, BT synthesizes benefit estimates and ancillary data reported in the existing literature to predict societal benefits for new policy contexts. This is done in a systematic, quantitative fashion, typically using regression-type approaches. I developed a fully nonparametric framework (= very flexible framework that does not rely on explicit functional relationships) for BT built around Local Linear Forest (LLF), a custom-tailored Machine Learning (ML) technique that has been recently introduced to the applied economic / statistics literature. "Forests" are a type of modeling approach where the relationship between an outcome of interest and a (potentially large) set of explanatory variables is determined by repeatedly splitting the sample based on underlying statistical rules. "Machine Learning" is simply a modern term for applied statistical tools that have also been adopted in the field of Computer Science. Moeltner applied this method to a water quality meta-dataset to predict benefits for water cleanup scenarios in a large watershed. The new method improved predictive accuracy (= how far "off" are the predictions compared to the actual value?) and efficiency (= how wide are confidence intervals for the predictions?) by an order of magnitude compared to traditional approaches, including the Locally-Weighted Meta-Regression (LWR) I developed in the preceding reporting period (= a type of more formal regression approach with a specific functional relationship between outcome and explanatory variables). LWR was a (big) step in the right direction, capturing the general notion that some meta-observations are closer to the policy context than others. LLF builds on this concept, but enhances the statistical properties of the general approach.</li> <li>During the 2024-2025 performance period Klaus Moeltner also developed a new ML-based estimator to process primary valuation data, as typically collected during economic valuation, or "Stated Preference" surveys. Specifically, I introduced a novel, fully nonparametric estimation framework to process data from preference elicitation via Contingent Valuation, i.e. survey-based environmental valuation approaches with a binary, referendum-style choice question (Example: "Would you be willing to pay $[x] in mandatory fees and taxes to obtain the cleaned-up version of this watershed, or stick with the current situation at no extra cost?") My approach combines the construction of choice probabilities via Random Forests (RFs) with welfare predictions via popular distribution-free estimators. Standing alone, these distribution-free methods are poorly suited for the incorporation of observation-specific heterogeneity (= capturing the fact that different individuals have different preferences). In contrast, my new Random Forest Non-Parametric (RFNP) approach produces willingness-to-pay (WTP) estimates at the individual level, conditioned on a potentially large set of explanatory variables. Using simulated data, as well as an empirical application to water quality improvement in New England, I find that the new approach is substantially more robust to mis-specifications of underlying functional relationships (because it AVOIDS any functional relationships by construction), while being able to compete with even correctly specified parametric approaches in terms of asymptotic (= large-sample) efficiency.</li> <li>Moeltner developed an RF model to predict the importance, or "salience" of an existing watershed to a given household or individual based on the watershed's physical and hydro-morphological features. This will become an integral (and novel) component for the "Improved Choice Experiments for agricultural conservation and ecosystem services" project listed in the project initiation report for this multi-state effort. The application is water quality improvement as a result of sustainable agricultural practices in Virginia.</li> </ul>       West Virginia University <ul> <li>Julian Hwang collected survey data about the public’s preferences for coastal wetland restoration in Florida and found that the survey respondents formed perceptions about the benefit and cost of the restoration that were different from what was specified in the survey.</li> </ul>         Objective 3: Develop Solutions for Integration of Economic Valuation with Policy and Decision-Making Ohio State University <ul> <li>Ohio State University researchers addressed Task 3-1: Design Decision Support Tools for Managing Natural Resources, Ecosystem Services, and the Impacts of Natural Hazards through efforts to build modeling tools for integrated assessment and use of satellite images.</li> </ul> Oregon State University <ul> <li>Christian Langpap’s project uses data from 115 watersheds in Washington, Oregon, California, and Idaho on salmonid population counts and expenditures by environmental nonprofit organizations and government agencies during the period 2000 – 2018. These data are used to empirically measure the impact of expenditures by these organizations and agencies on counts of salmonids at the watershed level.</li> </ul> Texas A&M University <ul> <li>Richard Woodward developed analysis locations where offshore infrastructure is most valuable and to assess the relative merits of traditional methods for estimating marine recreational fishing effort. This work was shared with economists from NOAA Fisheries in a webinar.</li> </ul> University of Hawaii at Manoa <ul> <li>Kristen Oleson’s project has held continual weekly meeting with stakeholders Hawaiiʻs Department of Land and Natural Resource on an interdisciplinary collaboration creating a decision tool using structured decision making and incorporating on economic valuation of recreational opportunity on public lands. The team held 2 stakeholder workshops eliciting expert information to incorporate and disseminating the research conducted through out the year of 2024. These partnerships have strengthened the project’s impact and increased its visibility within state and local communities.</li> <li>Task 3-1: Ela Ural and collaborators close to completion of an online application to exhibit our fisheries valuation results. This application is interactive, and disaggregates value by commercial type, species group, and ecosystem type. Users can click and drag for value allocations, and download selected data (for public use, pending our paper publication). </li> </ul> University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign <ul> <li>Atallah and co-authors developed an integrated ecological-economic model of weed spread and technology adoption with peer effects where dynamic adoption decisions are specified using data from a choice experiment.</li> </ul>   University of Maryland <ul> <li>Lichtenberg and collaborators have used economic theory to evaluate the design of long term conservation subsidy contracts in light of the fact that farmland owners may opt out of that contract before the contract’s expiration date. We show that the current contract structure makes premature opt-out too attractive and derive an alternative contract structure that reduces premature project cancellation, increases environmental benefits, and improves the cost-effectiveness of a conservation subsidy program. A numerical simulation indicates that the improvements in performance are large enough to be economically significant.</li> <li>Lichtenberg and collaborators are in the process of combining the econometric estimates from our stated preference analysis with estimates of water quality and carbon sequestration impacts of riparian buffer installation to investigate how carbon credit programs and programs like CREP might interact. Emissions trading programs have been promoted as efficient means to reduce water pollution and sequester carbon from agricultural land. While trading programs are often evaluated in isolation, they compete with longstanding agricultural conservation subsidy programs. Both programs target agroforestry practices that provide environmental benefits using different payment structures: Trading pays for performance while agricultural conservation programs pay for effort. We evaluate the performance of both programs in isolation and competition using an integrated assessment model that combines a stated preference survey of agricultural landowners for establishing forests with biophysical models of water quality and carbon sequestration benefits of forests in the U.S. Chesapeake Bay region. Our numerical policy simulation suggests that the water quality trading program in isolation can provide sufficient financial incentives for landowners to engage in afforestation activities on agricultural land. However, federal agricultural conservation subsidies largely crowd out the trading program when in competition. Stacking payments for carbon offsets with water quality trading payments does not enhance trading participation. Overall, the attractiveness and effectiveness of emissions trading programs for afforestation activities on agricultural land are heavily influenced by the presence and generosity of federal agricultural conservation subsidies.</li> </ul> University of Tennessee <ul> <li>Dale Manning and collaborators completed an integrated model of alternative water allocation institutions in the western US. this was part of a large multi-state grant made possible in part by relationships developed at w5133.</li> </ul> University of Wyoming <ul> <li>Benjamin Rashford: Land conservation to support the provision of ecosystem services and maintain working lands and rural communities continues to be an important public policy goal. Limited budgets, however, imply a greater demand for conservation than available public and private funding can support. Policymakers and NGOs therefore need strategies to cost effectively targeted conservation dollars. Across multiple projects, our research focuses on developing decision tools to improve the effectiveness of land conservation decisions. Over the past year we worked closely with NGO partners to finalize a statistical model that estimates development risk for agricultural land parcels in WY. They combine estimates of development risk, with information about the ecosystem values and potential conservation costs to determine whether to accept proposed conservation easements. We also developed a website that provides private and government sector users access to a navigable map sharing the development risk estimates.</li> <li>On a second project, Rashford and collaborators continued work with USDA ARS to estimate the economic and ecological effectiveness of targeting strategies for Grassland CRP contracts.</li> </ul>   Virginia Tech <ul> <li>The tools developed under objective 3 will support decision-making for environmental policies, and facilitate integration of environmental valuation into broader analytical frameworks as envisioned by objective 3.</li> </ul> West Virginia University <ul> <li>Julian Hwang analyzed participation data for a state program (“lionfish challenge program”) to remove the highly invasive species from Florida waters and measured the economic benefit of the program.</li> </ul>

Publications

Impact Statements

Objective 1: Evaluate Natural Resource Management Decisions and the Effects of Climate Change to Understand Associated Welfare Impacts Colorado State University • Jesse Burkhardt has cooperative agreements with the National Park Service and the US Forest Service. Louisiana State University • Bycatch, catching non-target fish species, is harmful outcome to commercial fishers and to the public. Penn (LSU) and Petrolia (MS St) conducted a survey for the Gulf Commercial Shrimp Trawl Fishery to understand their willingness to accept to pull a new bycatch reduction devices (BRDs). Roughly 125 commercial shrimpers participated, with results and journal submission forthcoming. Several presentations of preliminary results to NOAA occurred. Mississippi State University • The National Park Service updated messaging around and the design of a recreational harvest incentive for invasive brown trout based on analysis and feedback from Jungers et al. • Jungers led the design and administration of a stated preference survey that generated data on anglers’ willingness to accept compensation to provide invasive species management. • Grant obtained: Lehrter, J. (PI), S. Yun (co-PI), D. Petrolia (co-PI), R. Baker (co-PI), J. Cebrian (co-PI), B. Dzwonkowski (co-PI), L. Kalin (co-PI), L. Lowe (co-PI), S. Powers (co-PI), D. Tian (co-PI). “Building Resilience for Oysters, Blue Crabs, and Spotted Seatrout to Environmental Trends and Variability in the Gulf of Mexico.” NOAA RESTORE Science Program. September 1, 2019 – August 31, 2025, $2,887,250. • Petrolia, D. (PI), J. Haner (Co-PI) and T. Mohrman (Co-PI). "What is the Value of Ecosystem Services Provided by Recent Restoration Efforts on the Northern Gulf Coast?" Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium. February 1, 2022 – December 31, 2024, $224,945. Ohio State University • New research illustrated how policies and markets could alter the trajectory of climate impacts on housing values in coastal areas. Beach nourishment, for instance, is a powerful adaptation strategy that can be deployed broadly in efforts to adapt to climate change. • Research illustrated that policies that maintain forest cover can reduce disease transmission for Malaria in tropical settings. Other research examined how alternative lease arrangements could slow deforestation in tropical settings. • Research illustrated that farmer perspectives have considerable influence on how various contract designs work to engage farmers in water quality control programs that subsidize various practices. Oregon State Univeristy • Results from published papers by Dundas also benefited stakeholders. Lowe Mackenzie et al. (2024) provide evidence to help land managers at state and federal (USFS, NPS, BLM) levels understand and adapt to the emerging social media paradigm and improve stewardship of highly used natural resources. Important takeaways that could benefit land managers include monitoring social media presence of certain locations to better match staffing to visitation surges and making the case to policy makers for increased staffing/funding to help prevent resource degradation from overcrowding. Rupp et al. (2024) generated evidence that water managers can use to help balance competing water uses in times of scarcity, which are expected to increase with climate change. • The Wang and Lewis (2024) study on wildfire impacts on timberland prices is the first evidence of how recent changes in wildfire have been affecting the economic value of a key piece of natural capital - western U.S. forests. This research developed a method for how to estimate wildfire impacts on forests using parcel-level transaction prices. The role of climate in affecting the economics of forests is a key piece of information for natural resource management under a range of future scenarios, and recent economics work on the linkages between climate and forests has played a large role in the 2020 USDA Forest Service’s Resource Planning Act (RPA) Assessment. This study also received significant media attention in the western U.S., including feature articles in the two large newspapers the Seattle Times and the Oregonian (Portland). A non-technical summary of the article was invited to be featured in the 7th Oregon Climate Assessment to be published in 2025, which is a biannual report on climate impacts on Oregon that is mandated by the state legislature. • The Johnson and Lewis (2024) study projecting future changes in the composition of eastern U.S. forests is the first evidence of how weather variability in cold temperatures serves as a key constraint on adapting hardwood forests to pine plantations. This research developed a method for how to estimate forest management decisions as a function of weather variability, and how to use those estimates to understand a range of future scenarios. The role of climate in affecting the economics of forests is a key piece of information for natural resource management, which has played a large role in the 2020 USDA Forest Service’s Resource Planning Act (RPA) Assessment. • Public and private organizations that work towards improving water quality, including stakeholders such as the US EPA and state environmental agencies, benefit from a better understanding of how different segments of society, including environmental nonprofit organizations, can contribute to reaching water quality improvement goals. The broader public, including individuals and households who contribute to environmental nonprofit organizations, benefit from a better understanding of how and to what extent their contributions impact water quality and how environmental groups can mitigate shortcoming in environmental enforcement by government agencies. South Dakota State University • In the project about conservation planning in South Dakota, we have attended 3 public presentations with South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks and at South Dakota Parks and Recreation Association. And, the graduate student, Vivian Hulugh, also presented at MIT: Hulugh, V. G and Zavaleta Cheek, J., “Assessing Conservation Planning in South Dakota: Challenges in Collaboration, Climate Information, and Public Participation.” Graduate Climate Conference Nov. 2023 MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts. The graduate student on the project, Vivian Hulugh, won a Science Communication Fellowship by the South Dakota Discovery Center and funded by SD EPSCoR. This included a waived fee of $750 to attend. And, we also provided a report to USGS Climate Adaptation Science Center "Zavaleta Cheek, J., Hulugh, V. G, & Redmore, L. (2024, August). Assessing conservation planning in South Dakota: Challenges and opportunities in collaboration, public participation, and climate information. Report provided to the Climate Adaptation Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey." • In the project about understanding shocks facing individuals in India and South Dakota, I have attended one conference to share those findings. Zavaleta Cheek, J. “Trees buffer the short-term effects of heavy rainfall shocks on household food insecurity.” FLARE Rome, Italy October 2, 2024. • The first project was presented at an international conference. A manuscript is planned to document the first round of biodiversity surveys. Potential impacts come from understanding the biological systems that are present on working lands and how management decisions may impact those systems. Preliminary results from the second project were presented at two conferences, and a manuscript is in preparation. Though not geographically focused in the Great Plains, the results will inform management of feral cats, and possibly other invasive species, across diverse ecosystems. For the third project, a manuscript is drafted and is expected to be submitted for publication within Year 3. An understanding of what future communities may look like with changing precipitation will enable stakeholders to make informed decisions about management and conservation. Texas A&M University • Liqing Li and José J. Sánchez have a project funded by USDA-Forest Service on understanding the effectiveness of alert and warning systems for wildfires. Amount: $447,000. Period: 2024-2029 • The research will provide valuable information for state and federal decision makers who make decisions about the placement and removal of man-made infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico. Research on racial aversion provides insights into the roles of race in recreational location choice and offers insights into the more general effect that race has on behavior in the U.S. University of California Berkeley • Our work has received media attention, it has been cited in legislative proceedings. I did receive NSF Funding (Award ID 2425100) which included funds to support further work that would develop tools for modeling avoided damages from different types of investments in wildfire risk mitigations, and study how current regulations affect utility investments in wildfire mitigation Through this project, I will be working closely with stakeholders to identify and evaluate policy modifications based on our findings. University of Georgia • Task 1-1: The collaborative efforts with USDA in the cooperative agreement will yield significant insights for the agency, specifically concerning the efficacy of financial and technical assistance in involving farmers to enhance the environmental outcomes of the Conservation Reserve Program. University of Hawaii at Manoa • This year, several interim impacts and benefits have emerged as key milestones in our ongoing efforts. One significant achievement has been the development of an interface designed to facilitate data sharing and exploration, with the goal of increasing the utility and accessibility of our research. Additionally, our data management lead created an interactive application that will effectively display and share fisheries value estimates, enhancing stakeholder engagement and decision-making processes. Our lab has also gained increased recognition among international statistical agencies and colleagues, further expanding our network and collaborative opportunities. Significant progress has been made in advancing recreational valuation models, which contribute to a deeper understanding of how residents and tourists value Hawaii’s coastal and nearshore environments. Two primary modeling efforts have been the focus: (1) an extension to the existing travel cost recreational model, which refines estimates of nearshore environmental value for residents, and (2) the development of a new recreational model that assesses recreational value for both residents and tourists. Finally, we have strengthened our capacity to conduct coastal accounts, allowing for more comprehensive assessments of ecosystem services and economic valuation related to coastal and marine environments. These advancements collectively contribute to the broader impact and visibility of our work in environmental and economic research. University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign • An article by Atallah was picked up by local and international media outlets such as Springfield Herald News in Illinois (https://springfieldherald.news/forest-landowner-motivation-to-control-invasive-species-depends-on-land-use-p27035-103.htm), the AAAS EurekaAlert (https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1072636), msn.com (https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/9-plants-to-keep-bugs-away-and-your-space-bug-free/ss-AA1xBYVh) and Mirage News in Australia (https://www.miragenews.com/landowner-motivation-tied-to-land-use-study-1402627/). University of Maine • UMaine's work during the reporting period was done in collaboration with external partners to inform decision-making about natural resource management and economic development. Our work on the economic contributions of Maine's outdoor recreation sector increased awareness and understanding of this growing sector and informed the recently released 10-year strategic plan for this industry (Maine Outdoor Recreation Economy Roadmap). Likewise, UMaine's work on coastal boat launches increased awareness and understanding of recreational trends and site conditions to inform future investments in and management of these critical recreation sites. Grants: Noblet, C. (PI), Bell, K.P. (co-PI), and Levesque, V. (co-PI). Assessing Maine's Coastal Public Boat Launch and Waterfront Facility Sites, Maine Department of Marine Resources, $42,248; Ward, J. (PI), Harkins, J. (co-PI), Entsminger, J. (co-PI), Bell, K.P. (co-PI), and Gabe, T. (co-PI), Outdoor Recreation Economy (OREC) Roadmap, Maine Department of Economic & Community Development / US Dept of Commerce,$ 1,767,553. University of Tennessee • Better informed policy related to the possibility to use insurance subsidies to support instead of conflict with other objectives (e.g., water conservation).Work on that project led to future employment for the postdoc on the project. University of Wyoming • The study for the Green River area provides a framework for incorporating social tradeoffs associated with flood irrigation into water resource decision-making; and for internalizing externalities on a landscape where the implications of private decision-making for social benefits can be significant. These results are being used by the state engineer's office regarding decision making for the area as it considers alternatives for water demand and meeting the State of Wyoming's Colorado River obligations. • I offer information to a diverse audience ranging from concerned citizens and ranchers to state and federal policy analysts. These also include land trust personnel, fledgling economics students, under-graduate and graduate non majors, cooperative extension personnel, faculty at other institutions, NRCS personnel and state agencies. West Virginia University • Identified factors that affect forest landowners' decision to participate in carbon offset programs and estimated the corresponding willingness-to-accept (WTA) measures so that policymakers can design better carbon offset programs to increase the participation. Objective 2: Advance Economic Valuation Methods and Uses to Enhance Natural Resource Management, Policy, and Decision-Making Louisiana State University • Hypothetical bias is undermines the validity of stated preference valuation studies, with numerous methods developed to mitigate the issue. Typically only 1 or 2 such methods are tested within one study. Penn (LSU) and Hu (Ohio St) conducted a survey to investigate the efficacy of seven different hypothetical bias mitigation techniques. • Equity weighting for benefit-cost analysis and determining appropriate equity weights is current issue. Penn (LSU) and Li (TAMU) are coordinating a survey to investigate preferences for equity weighting in flood risk protection. This survey is expected to launch in Summer 2025. Ohio State University • Research illustrated how noise related externalities have important impacts on home values in cities and how policies can better be designed to mitigate these impacts. Oregon State University • Public and private organizations that work towards improving water quality, including stakeholders such as the US EPA and state environmental agencies, benefit from a better understanding of how water quality monitor placement decisions are correlated with community demographic characteristics, and the implications for the environmental justice of water quality regulation enforcement. This work improves upon existing methods of evaluating environmental justice by isolating the influence of monitoring bias on observed pollution levels. It enhances the reliability of causal estimates of water quality’s distributional outcomes across different groups. Ultimately, this study contributes to understanding disparities in government monitoring and environmental quality and access to public goods South Dakota State University • The project design was presented at two conferences, including in one invited symposium. A related paper was published and will be used by MS student Berenyi-Tonesi to conduct her work. Potential impacts come from understanding how mammals respond to environmental change before impacts from humans. Then, using our knowledge of the past, we can support anticipatory management of mammals in the future by generating expectations of a functional community structure. Preliminary results from the second project have been presented at two conferences, and have been well-received. A manuscript of the body size-only model is in preparation and analysis on the trait-integrated model has started. The dental metric model was published this year. Potential impacts will come from being able to anticipate the changes that will shape future carnivoran communities as they adapt. Related work that will inform this objective was presented in four conference presentations. Texas A&M University • The methods developed offer a proof of concept for the study of a wide range of activities that are exhibited through movement over the landscape. University of Hawaii at Manoa • A key milestone in these efforts has been the manual verification and data collection required to improve the accuracy of the benefit function transfer model. This process involved confirming amenities at each recreational beach location across the main Hawaiian Islands, including Kauai, Oahu, Maui, Lanai, Molokai, and the island of Hawaii. This work has helped fill critical data gaps and establish a comprehensive, high-resolution dataset of coastal recreational sites. The modeling is providing quantify the welfare impacts of climate change on MHI residents, the project integrates ecological and economic modeling approaches. The Atlantis ecosystem model framework, adapted for Hawaii is being used to predict spatial and temporal changes in nearshore coral biomass through the end of the century under different climate scenarios. These ecological projections inform economic valuation efforts by estimating welfare changes due to shifts in biodiversity and habitat quality, ultimately providing policymakers with data-driven insights into the long-term consequences of environmental change. • By improving the valuation of recreational resources, this research informs policies that support sustainable tourism and recreation, ensuring that Hawaii’s natural assets are preserved while continuing to generate economic value for local communities. Better economic valuation of coastal areas also helps justify investment in solutions that enhance ecosystem resilience and visitor experiences. The integration of ecological and economic models enhances the ability to predict and mitigate the impacts of climate change on coastal recreation. By demonstrating how biodiversity loss and habitat degradation affect recreation-related welfare, this research provides actionable data for policymakers, conservation organizations, and resource managers working to balance economic development with environmental sustainability. • Task 2-2: To our knowledge, ours is the first-ever monetary account for the nearshore fisheries of the Main Hawaiian Islands. This account provides an economic and ecologically-informed way for resource managers to spatially track status trends for fisheries, presented via a standardized framework that is familiar to policymakers. University of Maryland • Installation of streamside buffers is a centerpiece of efforts to meet reductions in agricultural nutrient and sediment runoff required under total maximum daily load regulations for the Chesapeake Bay. Progress in installing streamside buffers has fallen short of desired levels. The State of Maryland recently initiated the Maryland Conservation Buffer Initiative (MCBI) in order to offer contracts for streamside buffers that differ from those allowed under the federal-state Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program. The findings from our stated preference analysis are being used to inform refinements to the MCBI. University of Rhode Island • Corey Lang was hired to provide expert testimony regarding his 2019 article on tourism impacts of offshore wind energy and his 2022 article on property value impacts of offshore wind energy. Virginia Tech • Klaus Moeltner shared the methodological framework and first results of the "RFNP" approach with academic peers, students, practitioners, and policymakers at the Workshop on Environmental and Experimental Economics at App State University, Boone, NC, April 26, 2024. This presentation prompted a talented App State undergraduate student to apply to our Department's PhD program. The student was recently admitted with funding and will start her PhD studies at VT this fall. Klaus Moeltner also presented this work to an international audience of peers and students at an invited seminar at the University of Trento, Italy, on June 12, 2024. This led to continued collaborations with faculty at that university. • Klaus Moeltner presented work on using Random Forests for Benefit Transfer at the Social Cost of Water Pollution workshop, Washington, D.C., Oct. 2-4, 2024. This led to continued collaboration with colleagues at the U.S. EPA water office, who are very interested in this new approach to extract information on household values for environmental clean-up for rulemaking purposes. I've since shared a working paper draft and programing code with that group. The presentation also led to an invitation to participate in a roundtable discussion at the White House complex, hosted by the Executive Office of the President, on the possibility of including environmental performance measures into national capital accounting. West Virginia University • Depending on the direction of the perceptions, the economic value (WTP) measure could fluctuate up to +61 percent and −82 percent, compared to the value from those who evaluate the scenario at the presented levels. Practitioners and researchers should use caution to avoid potential bias from respondents forming their own benefit and cost perceptions. Objective 3: Integrated Policy and Decision-Making Ohio State University • New integrated assessment models provide new approaches to integrate technology with climate impacts when modeling large systems. Oregon State University • Dundas received funding from a joint venture agreement with the US Forest Service to estimate nonmarket values associated with impacts to drinking water quality from wildfire events. In this agreement, Dundas is completing work in the human dimension node of a larger interdisciplinary project with USFS and research partners at other land grant institutions with W5133 members, including Colorado State. The focus is on understanding how wildfires affect the value of ecosystem services within a watershed and the communities who rely on them. We plan to develop a hedonic model using residential land transaction data in the Pacific Northwest and an exogenous large fire event to disentangle the impact on the wildfire - drinking water channel on housing prices. This approach leverages the temporal and spatial variation of residential land transaction data, wildfire locations, and drinking water sources and timing to estimate the impacts of upstream wildfire events on watersheds and water quality on downstream residential prices. This is related to Obj 1. Task 1-4, but the results will be integrated into a larger framework that plans to use integrated assessments to generate decision support tools to help communities in the US West (Objective 3) to better prepare/respond to increased frequency and severity of wildfire events. • Public and private organizations that work towards recovering endangered salmonid populations, including stakeholders such as the US FWS and state wildlife agencies, benefit from a better understanding of how different segments of society, including environmental nonprofit organizations, can contribute to reaching salmonid recovery goals. The broader public, including individuals and households who contribute to environmental nonprofit organizations, benefit from a better understanding of how environmental groups can contribute to recovery of endangered species. • (Task 3-1) Kling, David (lead PI), Betts, M. G., Levi, T., Kim, J. B., Long, D., Sloggy, M. R., "PARTNERSHIP: A Generalized Forest Natural Capital Valuation Model: Improving Scope, Realism, and Uncertainty Quantification," Sponsored by USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Federal, Total $799,343.00, Status: Funded. Texas A&M University • The research shows the potential to use mobility data to complement traditional approaches to estimate recreational fishing effort. University of Maryland • David Newburn and Erik Lichtenberg were awarded a grant totaling $65,514 from the Harry R. Hughes Center for Agro-Ecology, "Evaluating the Effectiveness of Economic Incentives to Enhance Riparian Buffer Adoption and Environmental Benefits for Water Quality and Carbon Sequestration" for the period May 2023-July 2024. We have presented the findings of that project (see item 2 under Objective 3 accomplishments for details) to stakeholders ranging from the Maryland state legislature to Maryland government bodies to local public interest groups. There has been a great deal of interest in those findings and we believe that they are being used in discussions of how to meet agriculture's commitments for nutrient and sediment runoff under total maximum daily load regulations currently under development. University of Tennessee • Graduate student working on the integrated water-econ model obtained a job as a result of his dissertation work that included the analysis of alternative water allocation mechanisms. University of Wyoming • Refining development risk for agricultural lands in Wyoming (Jun 2024 – Sept 2024). PI: Rashford. Sponsor: The Nature Conservancy. Amount: $3,850. • Beyond the general signup: Modeling the grasslands and continuous signups in the Conservation Reserve Program (Sept 2022 – Sept 2025). PI: Rashford. Sponsor: USDA – Economic Research Service. Amount: $240,000. West Virginia University • The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission can use the economic benefit information to justify costs associated with the "lionfish challenge" program.