04/19/2018

Ando, A.W., A. Howlader, and M. Mallory. 2018. “Diversifying to reduce conservation outcome uncertainty in multiple environmental objectives.” Agricultural and Resource Economics Review. Forthcoming.

 

Ando, A.W. and N. Netusil. 2018. “Valuing the benefits of green stormwater infrastructure.” Oxford Encyclopedia of Water Resources Management and Policy. Forthcoming.

 

Ando, A.W. and C. Langpap. 2018. “The economics of species conservation.” Annual Review of Resource Economics. Forthcoming.

 

Bastian, C. T., C. M. Keske, D. M. McLeod, and D. L. Hoag. 2017. “Landowner and Land Trust Agent Preferences for Conservation Easements: Implications for Sustainable Land Uses and Landscapes,” Landscape and Urban Planning. 157:1-13. Lead article.

 

Bauer, D.M., Bell, K.P., Nelson, E.J. and A.J.K. Calhoun. 2017. “Managing small natural features: a synthesis of emergent economic issues and opportunities.” Biological Conservation 211:Part B:80-87, DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2017.01.001.

 

Behrer, A. Patrick*, Dale T. Manning, and Andrew Seidl. 2017. “The Impact of Institutional and Land Use Change on Local Incomes in Chilean Patagonia.” Journal of Development Studies. Forthcoming

 

Calhoun AJK, Mushet DM, Bell KP, Boix D, Fitzsimons JA, Isselin-Nondedeu F.  2017. “Temporary wetlands:  challenges and solutions for protecting a "disappearing" ecosystem.” Biological Conservation 211 (Part B):3-11, DOI:10.1016/j.biocon.2016.11.024.

 

Calvin, K., K. Fisher-Vanden, 2017. “Climate Change Impacts on Agriculture: The role of Integrated Assessment Models.” Environmental Research Letters, 12:115004, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa843c.

 

Davlasheridze, M., K. Fisher-Vanden, A. Klaiber, 2017. “The Effects of Adaptation Measures on Hurricane Induced Property Losses,” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 81:93-114.

 

Dundas, S. J., R. H. von Haefen, and C. Mansfield. 2018. “Recreation Costs of Endangered

Species Protection: Evidence from Cape Hatteras National Seashore,” Marine Resource Economics 33:1:1-25.

 

Dundas, S. J. 2017. “Benefits and Ancillary Costs of Natural Infrastructure: Evidence from the

New Jersey Coast.” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 85:62-80.

 

Ehrlich*, O., X. Bi, T. Borisova, S. Larkin. 2017. “A Latent Class Analysis of Public Attitudes toward Water Resources with Implications for Recreational Demand.” Ecosystem Services, 28:A:124-132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2017.10.019

 

Evans, K.S., Noblet, C.L., Fox, E., Bell, K.P., and A. Kaminski. 2017. “Public acceptance of coastal zone management efforts: The role of citizen preferences in the allocation of funds,” Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, 46:2: 268-295, DOI: 10.1017/age.2017.9

 

Favero, A., Mendelsohn, R. and Sohngen, B., 2017. “Using forests for climate mitigation: sequester carbon or produce woody biomass?” Climatic Change. 144:2:195-206.

 

Fortmann, L., Sohngen, B. and Southgate, D., 2017. “Assessing the Role of Group Heterogeneity in Community Forest Concessions in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve.” Land Economics. 93:3:503-526.

 

Gopalakrishnan, S., Landry, C.E. and Smith, M.D., 2017. “Climate Change Adaptation in Coastal Environments: Modeling Challenges for Resource and Environmental Economists.” Review of Environmental Economics and Policy. https://doi.org/10.1093/reep/rex020

 

Gopalakrishnan, S., McNamara, D., Smith, M.D. and Murray, A.B., 2017. “Decentralized management hinders coastal climate adaptation: the spatial-dynamics of beach nourishment.” Environmental and Resource Economics, 67:4:761-787.

 

Haab, Timothy, and John Whitehead. 2017. “What do Environmental Economists Think? Results from a survey of AERE members.” Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, 11:1:43-58.

 

Hansen, K., C. T. Bastian, A. Nagler, and C Jones Ritten. 2017. “Designing Markets for Habitat Conservation: Lessons Learned from Agricultural Markets Research.” Bulletin. Cooperative Extension Service, University of Wyoming, B-1297.

 

Haruna, B., Sohngen, B., Yahaya, I. and Wiredu, A.N., 2017. “Effects of Weather-Index Insurance: The Case of Smallholder Maize Farmers in Northern Ghana.” International Journal of Food and Agricultural Economics. 5:3:75-85.

 

Hrozencik, Aaron*, Dale T. Manning, Jordan Suter, Christopher Goemans, and Ryan Bailey 2017. “The Heterogeneous Impacts of Groundwater Management Policies in the Republican River Basin of Colorado.” Water Resources Research. 53/12: 10757-10778.

 

Huanping, H., J. M. Winter, E. C. Osterberg, R. M. Horton, B. Beckage. 2017. “Total and extreme precipitation changes over the Northeastern United States.” Journal of Hydrometeorology. 18(6): 1783-1798. DOI: 10.1175/JHM-D-16-0195.1.

 

Hunter, M.L., Acuña, V., Bauer, D.M., Bell, K.P., Calhoun, A.J.K., Felipe-Lucia, M.R., Fitzsimons, J.A., González, E., Kinnison, M., Lindenmayer, D., Lundquist, C., Medellin, R., Nelson, E.J., and P Poschlod. 2017. “Conserving small natural features with large ecological roles: a synthetic overview.” Biological Conservation. 211:Part B:88-95, DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2016.12.020.

 

Irwin, NB, Klaiber, HA and Irwin, EG. 2017.  “Do Stormwater Basins Generate Co-Benefits? Evidence from Baltimore County, Maryland.”  Ecological Economics. 141:202-212.

 

Jarrad, M., N.R. Netusil, K. Moeltner, A.T. Morzillo, J.A. Yeakley. “Urban Stream

Restoration Projects: Do Project Phase, Distance, and Type Affect Nearby Property Sale Prices? “Land Economics.  Forthcoming.

 

Johnson, E., Bell, K.P., and J.E. Leahy. 2017. “Changing course: Comparing emerging watershed institutions in river restoration contexts.” Society & Natural Resources. 30:6:765-781, DOI:10.1080/08941920.2016.1239292.

 

Johnson, E.S., Bell, K.P., and J.E. Leahy. 2018. “Disamenity to amenity: spatial and temporal patterns of social response to river restoration progress.” Landscape and Urban Planning. 169: 208-219, DOI: 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2017.09.008.

 

Jones Ritten, C., C. T. Bastian, J. F. Shogren, T. Panchalingam, M. Ehmke, and G. Parkhurst.  2017. “Understanding Pollinator Habitat Conservation Under the Current Policy Using Economic Experiments,” Land. 6:57(2017):2-13.  Available online August 24.  doi:10.3390/land6030057.

 

Kaminski, A., Bell, K.P., Noblet, C.L. and K.S. Evans. 2017. “An Economic Analysis of Coastal Beach Safety Information-Seeking Behavior.” Agricultural and Resource Economics Review. 46:2:365-387, DOI: 10.1017/age.2017.17

 

Keiser, D.A., and N.Z. Muller. 2017. “Air and Water: Integrated Assessment Models for Multiple Media.” Annual Review of Resource Economics. 9:1:165-184.

 

Kim, J.B., E. Monier, B. Sohngen, G. Pitts, R. Drapek, J. McFarland, S. Ohrel, and J. Cole, 2017. “Assessing climate change impacts, benefits of mitigation, and uncertainties on major global forest regions under multiple socioeconomic and emissions scenarios.” Environmental Research Letters. 12:4:045001

 

Klaiber, HA, Abbott, JK and Smith, VK.  2017. “Some Like it (Less) Hot:  Joint Valuation of the Urban Heat Island and Cooling Vegetation in an Arid City.”  Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resoure Economists.  4:1053-1079.

 

Klaiber, A.H., Gopalakrishnan, S. and Hasan, S. 2017. “Missing the forest for the trees: balancing shale exploration and conservation goals through policy.” Conservation Letters. 10:1:153-159.

 

Klaiber, HA, Salhofer, K and Thompson, SR. 2017. “Capitalisation of the SPS into Farmland Rental Rates under the 2013 CAP Reform.”  Journal fo Agricultural Economics.  68:710-726.

 

Landry, C.E. 2017. “Experimental Methods in Economic Valuation” Chapter 10 in A Primer on Non-Market Valuation, 2^nd Edition, Champ, P., K. Boyle, and T. Brown (Eds), Springer: New York, NY.

 

Li, J. and C.E. Landry. 2018. “Flood Risk, Local Hazard Mitigation, and the Community Rating System of NFIP” forthcoming Land Economics.

 

Landry, C.E., M. Ahmadiani, and G. Colson. 2017. “Structural Empirical Analysis of Decisions under Natural Hazard Risk” in The Future of Risk Management, University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia, PA.

 

Lauer, Stephen, Matthew Sanderson, Dale Manning, Jordan Suter, Aaron Hrozencik, Bridget Guerrero, Karina Schoengold, and Bill Golden. “Values and Groundwater Management in the Ogallala Aquifer Region.”  Journal of Soil and Water Conservation.  Forthcoming.

 

Lieske S., R. Coupal and D. McLeod. “Political jurisdiction, reputation and urban form: a more complete specification of public service costs.” Submitted to Papers in Regional Science. In Review September 2017.

 

Maas, Alexander*, Christopher G. Goemans, Dale T. Manning, Stephan Kroll, Mazdak Arabi and Mariana Rodriguez-McGoffina. 2017. “Evaluating the Effect of Conservation Motivations on Residential Water Demand.” Journal of Environmental Management 196:July:394-401.

 

Maas, Alexander S.*, Christopher G. Goemans, Dale T. Manning, Stephan Kroll, Thomas C. Brown.  2017. “Dilemmas, Coordination and Defection: How Uncertain Tipping Points Induce Common Pool Resource Destruction.” Games and Economic Behavior. 104:760-774.

 

Maas, Alexander*, Dale T. Manning, Christopher Goemans, and Andre Dozier*. 2017. “Water Storage in a Changing Environment: The Impact of Allocation Institutions on Value.” Water Resources Research. 53:1:672-687.

 

Manning, Dale T., Christopher Goemans, and Alexander Maas*. 2017. “Producer Responses to Surface Water Availability and Implications for Climate Change Adaptation.” Land Economics. 93:4:631-653.

 

Manning, Dale T., Salvador Lurbé*, Louise H. Comas, Thomas J. Trout, Nora Flynn, and Steven J. Fonte.  2018. “Economic Viability of Deficit Irrigation in the Western US.” Agricultural Water Management. 196:114-123.

 

Markowski-Lindsay, M., Catanzaro, P., Bell, K.P., Kittredge, D., Leahy, J., Butler, B., Markowitz, E., Milman, A., Zimmerer, R., Allred, S. and M. Sisock. 2017. “Estate planning as a forest stewardship tool: A study of family land ownerships in the northeastern US.” Forest Policy and Economics. 83:36-44, DOI:10.1016/j.forpol.2017.06.004.

 

Mei, Y., Hite, D. and Sohngen, B., 2017. “Demand for urban tree cover: A two-stage hedonic price analysis in California.” Forest Policy and Economics. 83:29-35.

 

Mei, Y., Sohngen, B. and Babb, T., 2018. “Valuing urban wetland quality with hedonic price model.” Ecological Indicators. 84:535-545.

 

Miteva DA, Kramer RA, Brown ZS, Smith MD. 2017. “Spatial Patterns of Market Participation and Resource Extraction: Fuelwood Collection in Northern Uganda.” American Journal of Agricultrural Economics [Internet]. 2017;0(0):1–19. Available from: https://academic.oup.com/ajae/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/ajae/aax027

 

Monger, Randall*, Jordan F. Suter, Dale T. Manning, and Joel P. Schneekloth. 2018. “Retiring Land to Save Water: Participation in Colorado's Republican River Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program.” Land Economics 94:1:36-51.

 

Mueller, Julie M., Lima, Ryan, E., and Springer Abraham E. 2017. “Can Environmental Attributes Influence Protected Area Designation? A Case Study Valuing Preferences for Springs in Grand Canyon National Park.” Land Use Policy. 60:196-205.

 

Oakleaf JR, Matsumoto M, Kennedy C, Baumgarten L, Miteva DA, Sochi K, Kiesecker J.  2017.  “LegalGEO: Conservation Tool to Guide the Siting of Legal Reserves under the Brazilian Forest Code.” Applied Geography. 86, 53e65. Available here:  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0143622816306658

 

Robinson BE, Masuda Y, Kelly A, Holldand M, Bedford C, Childress M, Fletschner D, Game E, Ginsburg C, Hilhorst T, Lawry S, Miteva DA, Musengezi J, Naughton L, Nolte C, Sunderlin W, Veit P.  2017. “Incorporating land tenure security into conservation.” Conservation Letters. (June 2017):1–12. Available here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/conl.12383/full

 

Sills E, Sassi C de, Jagger PA, Lawlor K, Miteva DA, Pattanayak SK, et al.  2017. “Building the evidence base for REDD+: Study design and methods for evaluating the impacts of conservation interventions on local well-being.” Global Environmental Change [Internet]. 2017;43:March:148–60. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2017.02.002

 

Steinman, AD BJ Cardinale, WR.Munns,Jr ME Ogdahl, JD Allan; T Angadie; S Bartlett; KBrauman; M Byappanahallih; M Dossi; D Dupont; A Johnsk; D Kashian; F Lupi; P McIntyre; T Miller; M Moore; RL Muenich; RPoudel; J Pricer; B Provencher A Reat; J Read S Renzetti; B Sohngen; and E Washburn. 2017. “Ecosystem services in the Great Lakes.” Journal of Great Lakes Research. 43:3:161-168. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jglr.2017.02.004

 

Towe, C, Klaiber, HA and Wrenn, D.  2017. “Not My Problem: Growth Spillovers from Uncoordinated Land Use Policy.”  Land Use Policy.  67:679-689.

 

van Berkel, D.B., Rayfield, B., Martinuzzi, S., Lechowicz, M.J., White, E., Bell, K.P., Colocousis, C.R., Kovacs, K.F., Morzillo, A.T., Munroe, D.K., Parmentier, B., Radeloff, V.C., and B.J. McGill. 2017. “Recognizing the ‘sparsely settled forest’: Multi-decade socioecological change dynamics and community exemplars.” Landscape and Urban Planning. DOI: 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2017.10.009.

 

Winter, J. M., B. Beckage, G. Bucini, R. M. Horton, and P. J. Clemins. 2016. “Development and evaluation of high-resolution climate simulations over the mountainous northeastern United States.” Journal of Hydrometeorology. 17:3:881-89.

 

Wrenn, DH, Klaiber, HA and Newburn, DA.  2017. “Confronting Price Endogeneity in a Duration Model of Residential Subdivision Development.”  Journal of Applied Econometrics.  32:661-682. 

 

Wolf*, D and Klaiber, HA.  2017.  “Bloom and Bust: Toxic Algae’s Impact on Nearby Property Values.”  Ecological Economics.  135:209-221.

 

Wolf*, D, Georgic*, W and Klaiber, HA. 2017.  “Reeling in the Damages: Harmful Algal Blooms’ Impact on Lake Erie's Recreational Fishing Industry. Journal of Environmental Management. 199:148-157.

 

Yoder, Jonathan, Jennifer Adam, Michael Brady, Joseph Cook, Stephen Katz, Shane Johnston, Keyvan Malek, John McMillan, and Qingqing Yang. 2017. “Benefit-Cost Analysis of Integrated Water Re- source Management: Accounting for interdependence in the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan.” Journal of the American Water Resources Association 53:2:456-477. DOI: 10.1111/1752-1688.12507.

 

Papers, Presentations, and Reports

Ahmadiani, M and C.E. Landry. 2017. “Economic Value of Multi-peril Coastal Hazard Insurance” Working Paper University of Georgia: Athens, GA; SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2907033

 

Arbogast¹, Alan F., Brad Garmon², Jonathan Jarosz³, Alek Kreiger⁴, Sarah Nicholls¹, Clayton Queen¹, Robert B. Richardson¹, Elaine Sterrett Isely⁵. 2018. Valuing Michigan’s Coastal Dunes: GIS Information and Economic Data to Support Management Partnerships. Report submitted to the Michigan Coastal Zone Management Program, Office of the Great Lakes, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.  (¹Michigan State University, ²Michigan Environmental Council, ³Heart of the Lakes, ⁴Ducks Unlimited, ⁵West Michigan Environmental Action Council)

 

Borisova, Tatiana, Xiang Bi, Alan Hodges and Stephen Holland. 2017. Is the Tide is Changing? Accessing Costs and Benefits of Dam Removal and River Restoration: a Case Study in Florida. Selected paper, Southern Agricultural Economics Association, Mobile, AL, Feb 4-7, 2017. Available at http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/252833/2/Borisova-et-al-SAEA-2017.pdf

 

Borisova, Tatiana, Xiang Bi, Alan Hodges, and Stephen Holand. Paper. Economic Importance and Public Preferences for Water Resource Management of the Ocklawaha River. University of Florida Water Institute Symposium, Gainesville, FL. Feb 6-7. 2018.

 

Griscom B, Adams J, Ellis P, Houghton RA, Lomax G, Miteva DA, Schlesinger WH, Shoch D,  Woodbury P, Zganjar C, Blackman A, Campari J, Conant RT, Delgado C, Elias P, Hamsik M,  Kiesecker J, Landis E, Polasky S, Putz FE, Sanderman J,  Siikamäki J, Silvius M, Wollenberg, L,  Fargione J. 2017. Natural pathways to climate mitigation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114:44:11645-11650. Available here: http://www.pnas.org/content/114/44/11645.full

 

Kriesel, W.,  C.E. Landry, and M. Ahmadiani. 2017. “Are Some Natural Amenities as Good as Gold?  Evidence from Coastal Real Estate and Marshlands” Working Paper University of Georgia: Athens, GA, SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract_id=2885909.

 

Laird, H., C.E. Landry, S. Shonkwiler, and D. Petrolia. 2017. “Riders on the Storm: Hazard Insurance and Mitigation” Working Paper University of Georgia: Athens, GA; SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2957192

Landry, C.E. presentation on risk management, Center for Coastal Physical Oceanography and the Resilience Collaborative, Old Dominion University: Norfolk, VA

 

Landry, C.E. presentation on risk management, American Agricultural Economics Association Annual Meeting: Chicago, IL

 

Landry, C.E. presentation on risk management, Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Kentucky: Lexington, KY

 

Landry, C.E. presentation on risk management, SEC Academic Conference, The Future of Water: Regional Collaboration on Shared Climate, Coastlines, and Watersheds: Starkville, MS

 

Landry, C.E. and J.C. Whitehead. 2017. “Estimating Willingness to Pay with Referendum Follow-up Multiple-Bounded Payment Cards” Working Paper University of Georgia: Athens, GA.

 

Landry, C.E. and T. Allen. 2017. “Hedonic Property Prices and Coastal Beach Width” Working Paper University of Georgia: Athens, GA; SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2474276

 

Landry, C.E., J.S. Shonkwiler, and J.C. Whitehead. 2017. “Economic Values of Coastal Erosion Management: Joint Estimation of Use and Passive Use Values with Recreation Demand and Contingent Valuation Data” Working Paper University of Georgia: Athens, GA.

 

Miao H., Trandafir, S., Uchida, E., Price, M., 2018. "The Effect of Informational Nudges to Promote Voluntary Behavior to Reduce Nonpoint Source Pollution: A Randomized Controlled Trial in the Field",  Paper presented at the 6^th World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists (WCERE), Gothenburg, Sweden.

 

Miao H., Trandafir, S., Uchida, E., Price, M., 2017.  "The Effect of Informational Nudges to Promote Voluntary Behavior to Reduce Nonpoint Source Pollution: A Randomized Controlled Trial in the Field", Paper presented at the Conference on Behavioral and Experimental Agri-Environmental Research: Methodological Advancements and Applications to Policy (CBEAR_MAAP), Shepherdstown, West Virginia.

 

Miao H., Trandafir, S., Uchida, E., Price, M., 2017.  "The Effect of Informational Nudges to Promote Voluntary Behavior to Reduce Nonpoint Source Pollution: A Randomized Controlled Trial in the Field", Paper presented at the 19th BIOECON conference, Tilburg University, the Netherlands.

 

Padowski, Julie C., Michael P. Brady, Eric Jessup, Qingqing Yang, Jonathan K. Yoder. 2016. Coordinating Mitigation Strategies for Meeting In-Stream Flow Requirements in the Skagit River Basin, WA. American Geophysical Union Conference, Dec 12-16, San Francisco, CA.

 

Qianyan Wu(g), Xiang Bi, Tatiana Borisova, and Kelly Grogran. Valuing the Recreation Benefits of Springs in North Central Florida. Spring Protection Forum, Gainesville, FL., U.S. Feb 15, 2018.

 

Richardson, Robert B. 2017. “Characterizing ecosystem services of freshwater coastal dunes.” Presented at the biennial meeting of the U.S. Society for Ecological Economics, Saint Paul, Minnesota, July 27, 2017.

 

Yoder, Jonathan. 2017. Economic Assessment of Integrated Water Resource Management. The Yakima Basin Integrated Plan. October 18. Invited Lecture, Oregon State University, Corvallis.

05/08/2019

Publications:

Ahmadiani, Mona, Susana Ferreira, and Craig E. Landry. 2019. “Flood Insurance and Risk Reduction: Market Penetration, Coverage, and Mitigation in Coastal North Carolina” Southern Journal of Economics. DOI: 10.1002/soej.12332

Ando, A.W., A. Howlader, and M. Mallory. 2018. “Diversifying to reduce conservation outcome uncertainty in multiple environmental objectives.” Agricultural and Resource Economics Review 47(2): 220–238. doi.org/10.1017/age.2018.7.

Ando, A.W., J. Fraterrigo, G. Guntenspergen, A. Howlader, M. Mallory, J. Olker, and S. Stickley. 2018. “When portfolio theory can help environmental investment planning to reduce climate risk to future environmental outcomes – and when it cannot.” Conservation Letters. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/conl.12596.

Ando, A.W. and N. Netusil. 2018. “Valuing the benefits of green stormwater infrastructure.” Oxford Encyclopedia of Environmental Science. doi: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199389414.013.605.

Ando, A.W. and C. Langpap. 2018. “The economics of species conservation.” Annual Review of Resource Economics 10: 445-467. doi.org/10.1146/annurev-resource-100517-022921.

Balukas, J.E., Bell, K.P., and D.M. Bauer. 2019. Classifying private landowners to improve understanding of management decisions and conservation opportunities in urbanizing forested landscapes, Journal of Environmental Management, 232: 751-758, DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2018.11.128.

Bell, K.P., Markowski-Lindsay, M., Catanzaro, P., and J.E. Leahy. 2018. Family-forest owner decisions, landscape context, and landscape change, Landscape and Urban Planning, DOI: 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2018.08.023 (posted online 2018 October).

Bi, Xiang, Tatiana Borisova, and Alan Hodges.  2019. Economic Value of Visitation to Free-Flowing and Impounded Portions of a River: Implications for Management River Flow.  Forthcoming. Review of Regional Studies.

Byrd, ES, NJO Widmar, BM Gramig. "Presentation Matters: Number of Attributes Presented Impacts Estimated Preferences." Agribusiness: an International Journal, 34(2):377-389, 2018.

Cho, S., S. Moon, B. English, T.E. Yu, C. Boyer. 2019. “Targeting Payments for Forest Carbon Sequestration Given Ecological and Economic Objectives.” Forest Policy and Economics 100:214-226.

Doering, OC, BM Gramig and D Jeong. “Economic and Policy Implications of Nitrogen Management.” Soil Nitrogen Uses and Environmental Impacts, Advances in Soil Science: Soil Nitrogen volume, eds. R. Lal and B.A. Stewart. CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group: 2018.

Dundas, S. J., R. H. von Haefen, and C. Mansfield. 2018. Recreation Costs of Endangered Species Protection: Evidence from Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Marine Resource Economics 33(1): 1-25.

English, E., Roger von Haefen, J. Herriges, C. Leggett, Frank Lupi, K. McConnell, M. Welsh, A. Domanski, N. Meade. 2018. Estimating the value of lost recreation days from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. J. Environmental Economics and Management. 91:26-45.

Fu, Guanlong, Muna Shah, Emi Uchida, Xiangzheng Deng. (2018) “Impact of the Grain for Green program on forest cover in China.” Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy. https://doi.org/10.1080/21606544.2018.1552626

Gramig, BM and NJO Widmar. "Farmer Preferences for Agricultural Soil Carbon Sequestration Schemes." Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, 40(3):502-521, 2018.

Jakus, Paul M., and Sherzod B. Akhundjanov. 2018. “Neither Boon nor Bane: The Economic Effects of a Landscape-Scale National Monument.” Land Economics, 94(3):323-339.

Jakus, Paul M. 2018. “A Review of Economic Studies Related to the Bureau of Land Management’s Wild Horse and Burro Program.” Human-Wildlife Interactions, 12(1):58-74.

Johnston, R., K. Moeltner (published online Jan. 2019). Special Flood Hazard Effects on Coastal and Interior Home Values: One Size Does Not Fit All, Environmental and Resource Economics.

Lang, C., & Cavanagh, P. (2018). Incomplete Information and Adverse Impacts of Environmental Cleanup. Land Economics, 94(3), 386-404. Lang, C. (2018). Assessing the efficiency of local open space provision. Journal of Public Economics, 158, 12-24.

LaRiviere, Jacob, David M. Kling, James N. Sanchirico, Charles Sims, and Michael Springborn. 2018. "The treatment of uncertainty and learning in the economics of natural resource and environmental management." Review of Environmental Economics and Policy 12(1): 92-112.

Lewis, D.J., and S. Polasky. 2018. “An Auction Mechanism for the Optimal Provision of Ecosystem Services under Climate Change.” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 92: 20-34.

Li, Jingyuan, Craig E. Landry. 2018. “Flood Risk, Local Hazard Mitigation, and the Community Rating System of NFIP” Land Economics 94(2): 175-198 doi: 10.3368/le.94.2.175

Liu, Tingting, James Opaluch, Emi Uchida. (2017) “The impact of water quality improvement in Narragansett Bay on housing prices.” Water Resources Research 53, doi:10.1002/2016WR019606.

Liu, Y, MR Langemeier, IM Small, L Joseph, WE Fry, JB Ristaino, A Saville, BM Gramig, PV Preckel. "A Risk Analysis of Precision Agriculture Technology to Manage Tomato Late Blight." Sustainability 10(9), 3108, 2018.

Markowski-Lindsay, M., Catanzaro, P., Bell, K.P., Kittredge, D., Markowitz, E., Leahy, J.E., Butler, B., Milman, A., and S. Allred. 2018. In Forest and Intact: Designating Future Use of Family-Forest-Owned Land, Journal of Forestry, 116(4):357–366, DOI: 10.1093/jofore/fvy015.

Moeltner, K., (2019). Bayesian Nonlinear Meta Regression for Benefit Transfer, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 93, 44-62.

Mueller, Julie M., Soder, Adrienne B., and Springer, Abraham E. (2019). “Valuing attributes of restoration in a semi-arid watershed.” Landscape and Urban Planning 184: 78-87.

Mueller, Julie M., Lima, Ryan E., Springer, Abraham E. and Schiefer, Erik. (2018). “Using matching methods to estimate impacts of wildfire and post-wildfire flooding on house prices.” Water Resources Research 54(9):6189-6201

Nohner, J., Frank Lupi and W. Taylor, 2018. Lakefront property owners' willingness to accept easements for conservation of water quality and habitat. Water Resources Research. 54(3):1533-48.

Netusil, N.R., M. Jarrad, K. Moeltner (2019). Research Note: The Effect of Stream Restoration Project Attributes on Property Sale Prices, Landscape and Urban Planning 185, 158-162.

Penn J, and W Hu. 2018. Understanding Hypothetical Bias: An Enhanced Meta-Analysis. American Journal of Agricultural Economics. 100(4): 1186-1206.

Penn JM, Hu W, and LJ Cox. 2019. Forced Choice with Constant Choice Experiment Complexity. Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics. 44(2): 439-455.

Penn J, Penn H, and W Hu. 2018. Public knowledge of monarch conservation in Kentucky. Sustainability. 10(3). doi:10.3390/su10030807

Sullivan, Karen, Thomas Sproul, Emi Uchida, and Jintao Xu. (2018) “Prospect theory and tenure reform: Impacts on forest management”. Land Economics 94(3): 405-424.

Swallow, S, C Anderson, Emi Uchida. (2018) The Bobolink Project: Selling Public Goods From Ecosystem Services Using Provision Point Mechanisms. Ecological Economics 143: 236-252.

Trull N, Penn J, and W Hu. 2018. Public Support for Growth and Funding in Built Environments: Case of an Arboretum. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment. 33(4): 829-841.

Uchida, Emi, Stephen Swallow, Arthur Gold, James Opaluch, Achyut Kafle, Nathaniel Merrill, Clayton Michaud, and Carrie Gill. (2018) “Integrating watershed hydrology and economics to establish a local market for water quality improvement: A field experiment.” Ecological Economics 146: 17-25.

Wu, Qianyan, Xiang Bi, Kelly Grogan, and Tatiana Borisova.  2018. Valuing Recreation Benefits of Natural Springs in Florida.  Water.  10(10): 1379. https://doi.org/10.3390/w10101379.

Yang, H., Frank Lupi, J. Zhang, X. Chen and J. Liu, 2018, Feedback of telecoupling: The case of a payment for ecosystem services program, Ecology and Society. 23(2):45.

Zhong H, Hu W and J Penn. 2018. Farmers’ Willingness and Expected Economic Benefit to Adopt BMPs: An Application of Multivariate Imputation by Chained Equation Method. Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics. 43(1): 78-102.

Forthcoming

Hess, Joshua, Dale Manning, Terry Iverson, and Harvey Cutler (forthcoming). Uncertainty, Learning, and Local Opposition to Hydraulic Fracturing. Resource and Energy Economics.

Lamb, K.*, K. Hansen, C. T. Bastian, C. Jones Ritten, and A. Nagler, “Investigating Potential Impacts of Credit Failure Risk Mitigation on Habitat Exchange Outcomes.”  Environmental and Resource Economics. Conference on Behavioral and Experimental Agri-Environmental Research Special Issue.  (Currently in Press).

Maas, Alexander, Chris Goemans, Jesse Burkhardt, and Mazdak Arabe (forthcoming). Complements of the House: Estimating Demand-side Linkages between Residential Water and Electricity, Water Resources and Economics.

Manning, Dale, and Jordan Suter (forthcoming). The Role of Well Capacity Constraints in Determining Gains from Groundwater Management. Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

Mutyasira, Vine, Dana Hoag, Dustin Pendell, and Dale Manning (forthcoming).  Sustainable Intensification in Ethiopian Smallholder Farming Systems. Sustainability.

Mutyasira , Vine, Dana Hoag, Dale Manning, and Dustin Pendell (forthcoming). Assessing the Relative Sustainability of   Smallholder Farming Systems in Ethiopian Highlands, Agricultural Systems.

Shepler, Ryan, Jordan Suter, Dale Manning, and Chris Goemans (forthcoming).  Private Actions and Preferences for Coordinated Groundwater Conservation in Colorado’s Republican River Basin, Journal of the American Water Resource Association.

Soh, M., S. Cho. 2019. “Spatial Targeting of Payments for Ecosystem Services to Achieve Conservation Goals and Promote Social Equity and Economic Impact.” Natural Resource Modeling, In press.

Other Publications

Barfield, Ashley and Craig E. Landry. 2018. “Valuation of Beach Quality” in Oxford Encyclopedia of Environmental Economics, Oxford University Press, Earth & Environmental Science.

Miao, Haoran. 2017. Three Essays on the Impact of Information on Nonpoint Source polluters’ Behavior. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, University of Rhode Island.

Jakus, Paul M., Commentary, “Large National Monuments Don’t Damage Rural Economies--But They Don’t Help Either”, Deseret News (40,000 weekday circulation), August 23, 2018.

Jakus, Paul M., Radio Interview, “Large National Monuments Don’t Damage Rural Economies--But They Don’t Help Either”, KNRS 105.9 (Salt Lake City—125,000 drive time listeners), August 23, 2018.

Von Haefen. NC State University Press Release, “What’s the Value of Lost Recreation Days from the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill?” August 2018.

Von Haefen. Extension article (with Steven Dundas), “Conflicts on Public Lands: The Case of Off-Road Vehicle Restrictions on Cape Hatteras National Seashore,” NC State Economist, Summer 2018.

Von Haefen. Interview, “Costs and Benefits of Cape Hatteras ORV Restrictions,” WUNC Radio, January 2018.

Von Haefen. NC State University Press Release, “Benefits of Off-Road Vehicle Restrictions May Outweigh the Costs,” January 2018.

Von Haefen. Extension article (with Steven Dundas), “Conflicts on Public Lands: The Case of Off-Road Vehicle Restrictions on Cape Hatteras National Seashore,” NC State Economist, Summer 2018.

Von Haefen. Interview, “Costs and Benefits of Cape Hatteras ORV Restrictions,” WUNC Radio, January 2018.

Von Haefen. NC State University Press Release, “Benefits of Off-Road Vehicle Restrictions May Outweigh the Costs,” January 2018.

Papers, Presentations, and Reports

Ando, A. “Environmental Economic Approaches to Soil Health as a Capital Stock.” Soil Health on Rented Lands in Indiana: A Workshop for Agricultural, Conservation and Landowner Service Professionals to Explore Potential Solutions convened by The Nature Conservancy at the NCAA Hall of Champions, Indianapolis, IN. March 23, 2018.

Jakus, Paul M. and Sherzod B. Akhundjanov. 2018. “The Antiquities Act, Large National Monuments, and Regional Income.” Presentations at Colorado State University (September), University of Tennessee (October), and Weber State University (November).

Penn J, and W Hu. 2018. Understanding Hypothetical Bias in Willingness to Accept: A Meta-Analysis and Experiment. Accepted presentation, SEA, Nov 18-20, Washington DC.

Penn J, and W Hu. 2018. Cheap Talk, Consequentiality, and Certainty Follow-up as Hypothetical Bias Mitigation Techniques: A Cross Country Comparison. Accepted presentation, AAEA, Aug 5-7, Washington DC.

Penn J, Hu W, and H Penn. 2019. Support for Native, Solitary Pollinator Conservation Among the Public Versus Hobby Beekeepers. Invited track presentation, ASSA, Atlanta, GA.

Sardana, Kavita, John C. Bergstrom, and Oleksiy Tokovenko. “A Latent Class Approach for Modeling Arbitrariness in the Definition of ‘Visitors’ for Individual Trip Behavior”, Selected Paper, 6th World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists, Gothenburg, Sweden, June, 2018.

Steele, Amanda Harker and John C. Bergstrom. “Investigating the Effects of Energy Efficient Technology on Household Energy Security: A Stochastic Production Frontier Approach”.  Selected Paper to be presented at the 6th World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists, Gothenberg, Sweden, June, 2018.

Steele, Amanda Harker and John C. Bergstrom. “Does Energy Efficiency Affect Energy Security? An Analysis of Energy Efficient Upgrades and Household Energy Security”.  Selected Paper to be presented at the Annual Meetings of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, Washington, D.C., August, 2018.

Steele, Amanda Harker and John C. Bergstrom. “Tackling Wicked Problems when Teaching Applied Economics: An Application to the Bears Ears National Monument”.  Invited Case Study and Selected Poster to be presented at the Annual Meetings of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, Washington, D.C., August, 2018.

Steele, Amanda Harker and John C. Bergstrom. ”Tackling Wicked Problems when Teaching Applied Economics: An Application to the Bears Ears National Monument”.  Selected Poster Presentation, University System of Georgia Teaching and Learning Conference, Athens, GA, April, 2018.

von Haefen, Roger H. “Weather Effects on the Demand for Coastal Recreational Fishing: Implications for a Changing Climate,” World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists, Gothenburg, Sweden, July 2018.

von Haefen, Roger H. “Weather Effects on the Demand for Coastal Recreational Fishing: Implications for a Changing Climate,” Appalachian State University Experimental and Environmental Policy Workshop, Blowing Rock, NC, April 2018.

von Haefen, Roger H. “The Natural Resource Damages from the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill,” Duke Kunshan University, July 2018.

von Haefen, Roger H. “Weather Effects on the Demand for Coastal Recreational Fishing: Implications for a Changing Climate,” Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, April 2018.

von Haefen, Roger H. “The Natural Resource Damages from the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill,” University of Alberta, Edmonton Alberta, February 2018.

2019 MEETING ABSTRACTS

Title: The Impact of Bison Reintroduction on the Local Economy

Authors: Liqing Li and Amy W. Ando (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

W4133 task: 1-1

Presenter: Amy Ando

Presenter email: amyando@illinois.edu

Abstract:

This paper contributes to W4133 Task 1-1 by estimating the economic impact of changing rural environments by reintroducing bison.

Government agencies and non-profit conservation groups are restoring prairies and reintroducing bison to facilitate ecological restoration and reclaim this iconic mammal from the brink of extinction in the wild (Zumbach, 2015). Currently, there are forty-eight bison herds exist in the U.S., including both wild and non-wild bison herds. Bison reintroduction provides chances to help local tourism through wildlife marketing (Vasile, 2018). However, there is an opportunity cost to land dedicated to bison and ranchers have expressed concern about disease spreading from bison to cattle. Thus, the net economic impact of bison reintroduction on rural communities is unclear. This paper conducts a nation-wide assessment of the economic impacts of bison reintroduction so rural communities can take economic well-being into account when considering their future decisions regarding bison restoration.

Previous research has studied the effects of protecting nature on local economic activity Early studies raised concern that protected areas can be a threat to local economic well-being (Rasker,1993). Later research shows that it is possible that protected areas can change the structure of local economies in a positive way. For example, increased tourism can provide more employment opportunities (Andam et al. 2008; Andam et al. 2010). However, most of these studies focus on conservation and reintroduction of wildlife in developing countries. A study focuses on the northern forest region in the U.S. shows that conservation land has no significant impact on employment growth. (Lewis et al. 2002) and a small amount of work has studied the impact of bison or wolf populations on the desirability to visit particular recreational sites in the U.S. (Loomis & Caughlan, 2010; Duffield et al. 2008). There has been no nation-wide evaluation of how the reintroduction of bison into grassland areas affect the economic well-being of the residents. This paper fills this gap by providing a descriptive analysis of the presence of U.S. bison herds and estimating the causal relationship between bison reintroduction and local economic health.

First, we use a probit model to show correlations between the presence of bison herds in a county and the county’s physical and socioeconomic characteristics. Results indicate that the presence of bison herds is positively correlated with a county’s per capita income and (for non-wild bison herds) negatively correlated with unemployment rates. In this naïve analysis, bison herds are linked to economic prosperity.

Because correlation is a poor measure of causality, we carry out other analyses to estimate the impact of bison reintroduction on local employment, population, and per capita income. We use cross-sectional propensity score matching (PSM), matching with difference-in-difference (DD), and the synthetic control method (SCM).

We use cross-sectional PSM to evaluate the effects of bison reintroduction by comparing economic prosperity in the counties with bison herds to those of similar counties without bison herds. We match counties based on county characteristics that are fixed over time and unlikely to have been affected by bison reintroduction. Such variables include geographic and climate characteristics like elevation, precipitation, mean temperature, county size, the percentage of grassland in a county, and protected areas under different conservation mechanisms in a county. Then we compare the average outcomes from the treatment and control counties measured after bison reintroduction. We choose the year 2016 for our analysis since it is the year in which we can include the largest number of bison herds in the regression with the latest available county characteristics data. In the cross-sectional matching analyses, fifty-five counties with bison herds are considered as treatment counties. Different matching specifications, including nearest neighbor (NN) matching with caliper and kernel matching, are applied to identify the impact of bison reintroduction on local economic health.

One limitation of the PSM comes from matching on observables. If unobserved factors confound both bison reintroduction decisions and outcomes, the estimated impact of bison reintroduction gained by cross-sectional PSM is biased.  Applying PSM with DD can control for unobserved factors that are time-invariant. When we use 1980 as the baseline year and 2016 as the endline year, 24 counties that have bison herds established between 1980 and 2016 are included in the treated group. PSM is first applied to find controls for the treated counties, and DD is applied on the matched sample after matching to generate the causal estimates of bison reintroduction on local employment, population, and per capita income.

The SCM introduced by Abadie et al. (2010) extends the traditional DD framework by allowing for the presence of time-varying unobserved variables and constructs a better counterfactual for each of the treated counties. The basic idea behind the SCM is to construct a synthetic control unit as the counterfactual of the treated county by weighting average of several untreated counties (Abadie and Gardeazabal, 2003; Abadie et al., 2010). The weight of each control county is determined based on how closely the characteristics of the control match those of the treated counties in the pre-treatment period. As a comparative case study approach, this method provides more informative results not only on how bison reintroduction affects the local economy in each treated county, but also the trend of effects on outcome variables during the post-treatment period.

We find little evidence of a significant impact of bison reintroduction on local economic activity. Results from the cross-sectional PSM show that the effects of bison reintroduction on income, population, and the total number of jobs are positive in sign but insignificant, while bison reintroduction has a negative and significant impact on the unemployment rate. Results from our DD analysis show that bison reintroduction has a positive but insignificant impact on the total number of jobs, while the impact of reintroduction on the per capita income and the population are negative and insignificant. Results from the SCM are consistent with the findings of the DD analysis; for each county with bison herds, bison reintroduction has an insignificant impact on local economic health. Naïve cross-sectional analysis might imply that bison reintroduction is good for the local economy, but causal inference methods find no significant effect.

Title:  The Inefficiencies in Wildfire Suppression Resource Allocation

Authors: Jude Bayham

W4133 task: Task 1-2: Economic Analysis of Natural Hazards

Presenter: Jude Bayham

Presenter email: jbayham@colostate.edu

Abstract:

Federal, state, and local expenditures on wildfire suppression are reaching unprecedented levels.  While the underlying causes include climate change, a growing wildland urban interface, and historical management practices, the way in which wildfire suppression resources are allocated may also contribute to rising cost.  Economists are well aware of the problems that arise with common pool resources.  An analogous problem exists in the allocation of wildfire suppression resources.  Individual fire managers do not directly bear the cost of the resources they use, nor do they realize the opportunity costs imposed on other fire managers when resources are unavailable.

We develop a dynamic economic model to demonstrate the divergence between the incentives of individual fire managers and a social planner.  The model generates an important hypothesis: fire managers have an incentive to behave strategically by pre-emptively requesting resources to maintain excess suppression capacity in anticipation of increased fire activity.  We test this hypothesis using data compiled from several sources.  We collect daily data on the quantity and type of wildfire suppression resources ordered and assigned to fires from the federal Resource Ordering Status System (ROSS).  We also collect data on the so called preparedness level, which is a rating on a five point scale to indicate the level of suppression capacity in a region given expected fire behavior.  We integrate this data with fire conditions, weather, and other environmental conditions.  We test the hypothesis that fire managers strategically order resources and declare less suppression capacity when they believe that other managers competing for the same resources are likely to do the same.  We then use the empirical results to simulate the economically efficient allocation of suppression resources to demonstrate the consequences of ignoring opportunity costs.

This work addresses Task 1-2: Economic Analysis of Natural Hazards by studying inefficiencies in how federal agencies respond to wildfire.

Title: Environmental change and recreation demand: Assessing interactions between beach width and beach recreation demand

Authors: Kathleen P. Bell (University of Maine)

W4133 task: Task 3-2: Economic Analysis of Recreation Services

Presenter: Kathleen P. Bell

Presenter email: kpbell@maine.edu

Abstract:

In coastal areas of the US, where beaches serve as prominent recreation and tourism resources, mounting vulnerabilities to environmental change make the sustainability of recreation services uncertain. As natural resource managers face intensifying disturbances, multifaceted policy challenges, and, in some instances, shrinking budgets, numerous questions arise about the impacts of environmental change on coastal recreation services and the implications of these impacts for management strategies, communities, industries, and individuals. In this paper, we summarize the results of an economic analysis of the impacts of shoreline change on coastal beach recreation services (W4133 Task 3-2) at Popham Beach State Park, Maine. Our empirical analysis includes visual and statistical summaries of survey responses collected from beach visitors and recreation demand modeling of their beach day-trips. Working collaboratively with regional coastal manager, we designed our research to align with identified knowledge gaps about the impacts of shoreline change on visitors’ recreation experiences, awareness of changing shorelines, and attitudes’ about alternative management responses.

Our analyses of respondent survey responses provide insights about how visitors conceptualize shoreline change and assess distinct alternative management strategies. The majority of our survey respondents noted recognizing changes to the beach and shoreline at Popham Beach State Park. Notably, respondents acknowledged different types of change and offered diverse explanations for these changes. Further, analysis of open-ended responses revealed varied interpretations of the impacts of beach narrowing on recreation experiences as well as varied levels of support for alternative future management strategies. When asked about potential future management responses at Popham Beach State Park, respondents were split, with forty-nine percent of participants reporting a desire for the state to take management action, forty percent of respondents indicating the state should let nature take its course, and eleven percent of respondents uncertain about the state’s preferred strategy. Our findings have implications for how coastal managers in Maine and beyond engage with visitors about and respond to environmental change, and offer insights for recreation demand modelers interested in simulating visitor responses to different types of change.

Our recreation demand modeling of beach day-trips complements the descriptive and exploratory components of our work by simulating and quantifying the impacts of environmental change on coastal recreation services. We estimate a series of single-site, quasi-panel recreation demand models of day-trips to Popham Beach State Park to assess changes in beach recreation that might occur from beach narrowing and shoreline change. We integrate stated and revealed preference data collected onsite from visitors in August 2016, and intentionally follow conventions assessing trip responses to changes in beach width to bolster comparison with prior work. For example, our base model run produced a mean per-trip consumer surplus estimate or access value per trip of approximately $53.30 and predicted a mean loss per trip of $11.25 if the beach width at Popham Beach State Park were to be reduced by one half. Comparing the consistency of modeling and consumer surplus estimates from our Maine site with prior results, we found that our per-trip consumer surplus estimates fell in between estimates from Delaware Bay and North Carolina and that our predicted mean loss per trip exceeded prior estimates. We are investigating the sensitivity of model performance and valuation estimates to different modeling choices and assumptions, including the robustness of findings to different corrections for onsite sampling bias, measures of travel costs, and alternative treatments of heterogeneous recreation preferences.

In summary, by sharing insights about how coastal recreationists respond to changing beach width and other forms of environmental change, this work helps support management decisions and guide advances in economic analysis of recreation services.

Title: The Effect of Pollution on Aggressive Behavior: Evidence from Wildfire Smoke and Crime

Authors: Jesse Burkhardt, Jude Bayham, Ander Wilson, Ellison Carter, Katelyn O’Dell, Bonne Ford, Emily Fischer, Jesse Berman, Jeffery Pierce

W4133 task: Task 1-2: Economic Analysis of Natural Hazards (fire, invasive species, climate change)

Presenter: Jesse Burkhardt    

Presenter email: jesse.burkhardt@colostate.edu

Abstract: We estimate the effect of short-term air pollution (PM2.5) exposure on several categories of crime with a particular emphasis on aggressive behavior. To identify this relationship, we combine detailed daily data on crime, PM2.5, and satellite-derived smoke plumes for an eight-year period across the United States.  We develop two methods to correct measurement error in satellite-based wildfire smoke plume data and use the remaining exogenous variation as an instrument for overall changes in PM2.5. Our findings indicate a strong and robust positive effect of increased PM2.5 on violent crimes, and specifically assaults. However, we find no statistical relationship between increases in PM2.5 and property crimes or other non-violent crimes. The results suggest that a 1μg/m3 reduction in daily PM2.5 could save $1 billion in crime costs per year, a previously overlooked cost associated with pollution.

Title: TRAVEL COST MODELS USING CONTINUOUS NON-NEGATIVE DISTRIBUTIONS AND MEASURING OUT OF SAMPLE PERFORMANCE

Authors: Jeffrey Englin, Thomas Holmes and Octavio Valdez Larfarga

Presenter: Jeffrey Englin

Presenter email: jenglin@asu.edu

Abstract:

Big data is becoming more prevalent in the valuation of non-market goods. This is partly due to large environmental events with widespread impacts such as Deepwater Horizon, partly due to the ability to merge large detailed ecological data sets onto behavioral datasets but also due to the realization that administrative data can be used to infer environmental values. This analysis uses both large ecological and administrative data sets. The econometric analysis introduces the excess zero exponential and excess zero log normal distributions to travel cost modeling. Traditional excess zero count models are also employed for comparative purposes. The new distributions allow large national data sets to be applied to specific areas, in this case wilderness areas, and derive nationally valid welfare estimates. In particular, they allow for extremely high usage counts (popular sites) while dealing effectively with an excess number of zeros as well.

The data is driven by wilderness back country permits and the Environmental Protection Agency Level III ecosystem map. The wildernesses are located in the Cascades, Sierra Nevada, Rocky Mountains and the High Plains of the Midwest. The ecosystems studied include the Blue Mountain, Cascades Central Cascades and High Plains. The analysis proceeds by using five stratified sampling without replacement from a 70 million observation data set to repeated samples of 700,000 observations. The samples are stratified based on wilderness and year so as to retain a representative subsample.

Models using the new continuous distributions and the classic count models are estimated in the conventional way on one subsample. The estimated parameters are then applied to the remaining samples to analyze the potential of over fitting the models to first sample. It also allows the generalizability of the original set of estimates to be assessed. Finally, model averaging is applied since one cannot be sure of the correct distribution. The welfare results for the averaged model are also presented.

The performance of each model and method is analyzed and compared. This analysis works to achieve Objective 2 Task 2-1 and Objective 3 Tasks 3-1 and 3-2.

Title: Estimating Preferences for Water Quality when Water Quality Data is Scarce

Authors: Caroline Kelsoe, Matt Interis, & Seong Yun

W4133 task: Task 3-1, Task 3-2, Task 3-3

Presenter: Caroline Kelsoe

Presenter email: caroline.kelsoe13@gmail.com

Abstract:

In its 2012 National Lakes Assessment, the EPA determined that nutrients are the most widespread stressor of US Lakes, with one-third of US lakes containing excess nitrogen and/or phosphorus. In response, states are developing Numeric Nutrient Criteria to regulate the allowable amount of nutrients in surface waterbodies. Our study fits into the larger benefit-cost assessment of this policy in Mississippi as we attempt to estimate the benefits of improved water quality in Mississippi lakes. A major challenge, however, is the lack of water quality data for many Mississippi lakes. 

We present estimates of the benefits from improved water quality in Mississippi lakes based on travel cost data from Mississippi residents and introduce possible solutions to potential choice set specification issues caused by a lack of water quality data for Mississippi lakes. Specifically, respondents recorded trip information for over 100 lakes in Mississippi, but only 17 of those lakes have water quality data for the year the respondents reported trip information. In order to understand the extent to which a constrained choice set from inadequate data affects welfare estimates, we introduce a water quality prediction model from water science literature. Using a panel dataset of water quality data from Mississippi lakes both included and excluded from the choice set, we estimate a regression model to predict water quality in the 80+ lakes that lack water quality data. We then compare welfare estimates from a full and constrained choice set to determine evaluate the extent to which inadequate data could affect policy-making decisions.

Title: Hold the Line: Modeling Private Coastal Adaptation through Shoreline Armoring Decisions 

Authors: W. Jason Beasley, Steven J. Dundas

W4133 tasks: Task 1-2: Economic Analysis of Natural Hazards (fire, invasive species, climate change) Task 2-3: Advances in Spatial/Environmental Nexus Task 3-1: Economic Analysis of Ecosystem Services Flows

Presenter: Steven J. Dundas

Presenter email: steven.dundas@oregonstate.edu

Abstract

Managing and preparing for risks presented by sea-level rise (SLR) is an emerging issue of primary importance for coastal climate adaptation globally. Recent research suggest the majority of the expenditure on coastal adaptation in the U.S. by 2100 will be through private investments in shoreline armoring. Yet, decisions about public adaptation to coastal risk through beach nourishment has garnered most of the attention in the economic literature to date. This gap is significant because there are key differences between the public adaptation decision of nourishment and private shoreline armoring decisions.

This paper explores the economics of private coastal adaptation to climate change by modeling shoreline armoring decisions. We develop an analytical framework that suggests that negative spatial externalities, peer effects and neighbor interactions may lead to the oversupply of coastal protection when these decisions are made by individuals. To test our framework empirically, we assemble a parcel-level panel dataset of oceanfront land in Oregon from 1990 to 2015 where we observe the location and 1 timing of each armoring decision. For each parcel, we construct a detailed set of highresolution variables characterizing the geomorphological risk profile of land, peer effects of adjacent and proximate armoring of neighboring parcels, and indicators for seasonal shocks (El Ni˜no–Southern Oscillation) likely to impact armoring decisions. We use a correlated random-effects approach to estimate our econometric model to overcome endogeneity concerns related to modeling repeated decisions over time and unobserved time-invariant parcel level characteristics, while also allowing credible identification of the impact of neighboring land-use (i.e., peer effects) and land characteristics (i.e., risk conveyance) on the armoring decision over time. Our results show that land characteristics, peer effects and cost-sharing coalition effects increase the probability of observing an installation decision. Importantly, we show peer effects tend to dominate the impacts of risk characteristics of land.

We then construct Monte Carlo landscape simulations that capture the dynamic nature of the armoring decision. We first compare total armoring counts and spatial densities between a pure risk model (baseline model) and model that includes peer effects. Results suggest that the inclusion of peer effects leads a 93 percent increases in armoring counts and a five-fold increase in clustering of shoreline armoring. Then, using the peer effects framework as our preferred specification, we simulate a counterfactual policy that relaxes armoring restrictions under Oregon’s Goal 18. We find this policy change could result in an additional 350 parcels choosing to armor over the next 40 years. This suggests the current policy may be an effective tool to preserve the public good (beach access and natural landscapes) but highlights a growing tension between coastal preservation and risk to private property. Lastly, we run a SLR simulation by varying parcel elevation, distance from the parcel structure to the shoreline, and erosion rates based on NOAA projections of SLR. Our results indicate that under a moderate (worst-case) SLR scenario, we would expect a statistically significant 16 (26) percent increase in the count of armored parcels within three decades. Importantly, we find that the relaxation of current land-use policies combined with modest (worst-case) SLR predictions has potential to increase armoring in excess of 200 (230) percent over the same time period – highlighting the critical role policy is likely to have in shaping our future coastlines.

Title: “Preliminary Results from a Meta-analysis of US Farmer Adoption of Agricultural Best Management Practices”

Authors: B.M. Gramig (UIUC), K. Floress (USFS), L.S. Prokopy (Purdue), A. Singh (CSU-Sacramento), F. Eanes (Bates College), S. Church (Purdue), P Ranjan (Purdue), Y Gao (UC-Berkeley), and J. Arbuckle (Iowa State)

W4133 task: Task 1-1: Economic Analysis of Agriculture, Forest, and Rangeland Resources, Open Space, and WUI Zones

Presenter: Gramig

Presenter email: bgramig@illinois.edu

Abstract: We construct a database of 35 years (1982-2017) of agricultural conservation practice adoption studies to perform a quantitative meta-analysis of the determinants of adoption findings published in the academic literature. The database contains all reported model statistics and estimated parameters, including dependent and independent variable descriptions, from 171 separate quantitative studies conducted by economists and non-economists. Preliminary results of a statistical meta-analysis of these data are presented, and ideas for further and more refined analysis will be solicited from meeting participants. We apply conventional statistical methods to analyze study-level determinants of conservation practice adoption behavior under Hatch Multi-State project W-4133 Task 1-1.Co-authors Arbuckle, Floress, Gramig and Prokopy are also members of the NC-1190 multi-state Hatch project. Researchers from California, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Maine are engaged in this research, as well as one researcher from the US Forest Service’s Northern Research Station.

Title: Has the “Mighty 5” Ad Campaign Boosted National Park Tourism in Utah?

Tatiana Drugova, Man-Keun Kim, and Paul M. Jakus
Abstract:

Utah’s “Mighty 5” ad campaign was designed to attract out-of-state visitors to Southern Utah’s five National Parks (NP). Using the synthetic control method, we find the campaign to have been effective in raising visitation at three of Utah’s five NPs: Arches, Canyonlands, and Capitol Reef. No ad campaign effect was found for Bryce Canyon and Zion NP which implies that recent increased visitation in Bryce Canyon and Zion NPs has been driven by the national trends and not the promotional effects of the Mighty 5 campaign. Arches, Bryce Canyon, and Zion NPs currently suffer from excess demand (congestion), and the US National Park Service (USNPS) is actively engaged in visitor management efforts to mitigate the environmental pressures associated with over-visitation. This study provides evidence that an opportunity exists for state and federal officials to craft a coordinated “demarketing” campaign that relieves congestion at overcrowded sites, allows the USNPS to relieve pressure on sensitive ecological systems, and promote tourism to high quality alternative sites.

Title: Low snowpack and Wildfires: A Welfare Double-Edge Sword for Hikers

Author: Sonja Kolstoe

W4133 task: Objectives 1 (Task 1-1 & 1-2) & 3 (Task 3-2)

Presenter: Sonja Kolstoe

Presenter email: shkolstoe@salisbury.edu

Abstract:

The first decade of the 21st century provides us with early examples of the weather anomalies to expect in the future under climate change and thus a unique opportunity to look at the early-onset effects of climate change (Obj. 1, Task 1-2) on outdoor recreation such as hiking (Obj. 3, Task 3-2). Historically large wildfires were infrequent but have in recent times become the new normal in the western part of the United States (Barbero et al., 2015; Flannigan et al., 2013). Earlier studies have looked at how outdoor recreationalists’ value of forests and their attributes change in the presence of wildfires; however, they are looking at time periods with more infrequent wildfires and use a limited amount of spatial data (Englin et al., 1996; Loomis et al., 2001; Hesseln et al., 2003; Englin et al., 2006; Simões et al., 2013). I seek to address this void in the literature using data from the first decade and a half of the 21^st century that captures this shift in the frequency and intensity of wildfires. I also incorporate temporally varying spatial data to more accurately capture the state of the site attributes. In addition, I compare how the timing and magnitude of the fire changes hiker welfare, by estimating both monthly and yearly repeated count models.

I use U.S. Forest Service wilderness permit data from three wilderness areas, Indian Heaven, Mount Adams and Trapper Creek, located in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and managed by the Mount Adams Ranger station, to explore how visits and hikers’ willingness to pay (WTP) change for forests and hiking trails as a result of wildfires in the study area (Obj. 1, Tasks 1-1 & 1-2, Obj. 3 Task 3-2). The permit data starts in 2001 when hikers were first required to fill out a wilderness permit to hike within these three wilderness areas. I include spatial data on land cover from the USGS, trail attribute data from the U.S. Forest Service through their FSGeodata Clearinghouse as well as monthly data on burned areas from MCD45A1, a dataset on Google Earth Engine. I look at how WTP changes over time as my analysis includes hiking trips from 2001-2014, a time period which includes three smaller fires (less than 500 acres) and two large-scale wildfires (approximately 8,000 acres and 20,000 acres) which occurred in 2008 and 2012. The 2008 wildfire was one of the largest of 29 major fires in the area since 1970 per the National Interagency Fire Report, Cold Springs Fire Long Term Suppression Strategy and Implementation Plan (2008).

The absence of a large wildfire (500+ acres) in any of these areas until July 2008, when the smaller of the two larger wildfires occurred, and then a subsequent larger wildfire affords me the unique opportunity to look at how the scale and intensity difference of wildfires change hikers’ welfare. Their welfare is affected through two different channels: site-closures during the wildfire, as well as long-term alternation of the landscape due to the significant resulting burn scars after each of the large wildfires. Results suggest hikers’ WTP decreased for trails along areas of timber affected by the wildfires while hikers’ WTP does not change for trails through alpine meadows within the area affected by the wildfires.

Title: Measuring Risk Preferences and Perceptions in the Field

Authors: Craig E. Landry, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Georgia; Dylan Turner, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Georgia

We devise an experimental design that should permit assessment of risk preferences within the context of a mail or internet survey, while allowing further exploration of risk perception. Utilizing historical weather data, we present mail survey respondents with information about rainfall and temperature probabilities. We then allow them to “gamble” their $5 incentive payment on one of four possible weather outcomes, each designed to bracket a range or risk preference parameters (via Constant Relative Risk Aversion formulation of Expected Utility). Responses permit inference on risk tolerance in the context of weather, which is relevant for the survey subject matter – flood risk and climate change. We also assess subjective beliefs about historical weather outcomes to produce information that is useful for Bayesian updating of weather beliefs. Lastly, we utilize novel instruments to assess subjective perceptions of risk (likelihood of hurricane strike) and outcome (conditional damage to structure in hurricane). We present empirical results to explore the utility and limitations of these approaches to assessing decision making under natural hazard risk.

Title: Biases of using aggregate data to infer individual voting preferences 

Authors: Corey Lang and Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz
W4133 task: Task 2-1: Advances in Stated/Revealed Preference Methods
Presenter: Corey Lang
Presenter email: clang@uri.edu
Abstract:
Voting is one of the main determinants of public good provision (Fischel 2001) and an important source of data for examining revealed preferences for environmental goods. Economists have often used aggregated voting data matched with aggregate census data to estimate demand for various environmental goods (e.g., Deacon and Shapiro 1975, Kahn and Matsusaka 1997, Kotchen and Powers 2006, Banzhaf et al. 2010, Holian and Kahn 2015, Burkhardt and Chan 2017).

The purpose of this paper is to assess the extent and causes of bias when using aggregate data to understand individual determinants of voting decisions. This research improves methods of using voting data as a measure of revealed preferences (4133 Task 2.1). Two distinct factors complicate the analysis of aggregate voting data. First, the voting population is fundamentally different than the non-voting population (Leighley and Nagler 2013), and using aggregated population characteristics essentially introduces systematic measurement error due to this mismatch. Second, analysis of aggregate voting data necessarily uses only spatial variation (i.e., between-precinct variation), whereas analysis of individual voting can use both within- and between-precinct variation. In the presence of omitted spatial variables, exclusively using spatial variation can lead to biased coefficient estimates. Monte Carlo analysis identifies conditions when mismatched population data and omitted variables lead to biased inference and the direction of bias.

To empirically assess biases of using aggregate data to infer individual voting preferences, we collect two datasets related to voting on a statewide environmental referendum in Rhode Island called the Green Economy Bonds (GEB). The first dataset mirrors prior studies; we match precinct-level, aggregate voting outcomes to demographic information from the American Community Survey. Second, to obtain individual voting data, we completed a statewide exit poll on Election Day. We enlisted 80 undergraduate and graduate student volunteers who surveyed at 37 sample precinct locations and collected over 2,000 surveys. We treat the individual data and the results that stem from them as correct, and compare the aggregate data and results against this baseline to assess bias.

From basic summary statistics, we find support for conditions leading to the two sources of bias. First, there are statistically significant and large differences among census and voting population. For example, while 22.4% of Rhode Island’s population has a college degree, 34.6% of our exit poll sample was at that education level. Second, there is a large degree of within-precinct variation among the voting and socioeconomic variables. On average, about 95% of variation is within precinct, meaning that aggregate models are using only 5% of total variation to estimate coefficients.

We estimate identical models of voting preferences for GEB using the aggregate data and the individual exit poll data, regressing GEB vote on presidential vote and a large set of socioeconomic characteristics (education, income, race, etc.). We find strong differences between the two models. Coefficients on presidential vote are substantially different: the aggregate model’s coefficient on Voted for Clinton is 28% larger than the individual model, and voting for third party candidates is off by orders of magnitude. The coefficient on college degree is 0.039 for the individual model and 0.073 for the aggregate. The upward bias of the aggregate model is consistent with the simulation finding that groups more likely to vote will have inflated coefficients, though the bias could also be a result of an omitted variable. In additional specifications, we are able to demonstrate the presence of spatial omitted variables and the biasing effect of a mismeasured voting population. However, no adjustment can mitigate the bias of the aggregate model. The conclusion of this paper is that aggregate data cannot infer unbiased individual voting preferences and should be used only with this caveat.

Title: Early Exposure to Nature and Willingness-To-Pay for Conservation

Authors: Liqing Li (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign); Amy Ando (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign);

W4133 task:

Task 3-2: Economic Analysis of Recreation Services

Task 1-1: Economic Analysis of Agriculture, Forest, and Rangeland Resources, Open Space, and WUI Zones

Presenter: Liqing Li

Presenter email: lli40@illinois.edu

Abstract:

[Include reference to w4133 task]

Current urban spatial structures reduce the interaction between nature and human beings. However, it is unclear how changes in people’s exposure to nature affect people’s preference for nature. Based on the standard assumption in neoclassical economics that individual preferences are fixed over time, the marginal value of nature increases with its scarcity. However, this pattern may not hold true if the changes in an individual’s interaction with nature affect his/her preference for nature. A negative change in an individual’s preference for nature shifts the demand curve to the left. People’s marginal value for nature may stay the same or even decrease with scarcity of nature. This paper uses a choice experiment (CE) and data on individuals’ childhood experiences with nature to evaluate which pattern holds true.  

An individual’s demand for local amenities affects people’s location choice decision. Existing research has examined factors that affect an individual’s demand for different types of local amenities (Bishop et al., 2018; Isen et al., 2017). Nature has been found to be an important amenity, but the drivers of people’s demand for nature amenity has been little examined. Childhood plays an important role in building up an individual’s experience with nature. Current urban spatial structures can affect the next generation’s interaction with nature and thus affect the individual’s willingness to pay (WTP) for nature via experience. This paper quantifies how the current generation’s early-life experience with nature affects their current WTP for nature.

A concept of amenity capital (human capital) (Krupk, 2009) may be used to explain the relationship between nature amenity and experience. The first generation’s choice of residential location affects the following generation’s ability to build up amenity capital by experience. Children build up nature related amenity capital through experiencing nature, and this amenity capital helps them enjoy nature more as it generates higher utility when visiting nature.

In our hypotheses, we expect that childhood experience with nature affects respondents’ WTP for open space conservation. Respondents’ early-life experiences are measured in different dimensions, including: how often the individual visited nature and engaged in nature-related recreational activities, how often the individual received environmental education, and how easy it was for an individual to interact with nature (measured by the percentage of land that was developed in respondents’ hometowns). To test our hypotheses, we carry out a CE in three states - Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota - to estimate individuals’ WTP for different features and recreational activities of a hypothetical restored grassland. We also gather data on respondents’ early-life experience with nature and test whether those features of individuals affect their current WTP for preserving nature. We conduct this study in the context of hypothetical grassland restoration. Thus, this paper also expands our understanding of the values people place on preservation of grassland ecosystems; only Dissanayake and Ando (2014) have estimated the social value of grassland ecosystems and that work did not estimate values of recreation attributes.

To examine the relationship between early-life experience and individual’s WTP, we use a mixed multinomial logit model with interaction term to analyze responses from the choice experiment. We also use a random parameter latent class model as an alternative perspective to study the effects of childhood experiences on value for grassland.

The results reveal whether the demand of environmental goods is affected by an individual’s childhood experience and whether the impact of current urbanization on the next generation’s valuation for nature needs to be taken seriously (Task 1-1). Our findings also estimate respondents’ average WTP for the availability of different recreational activities of a hypothetical restored grassland (Task 3-2). That information can guide policymakers by indicating which recreational activities of a restored grassland should be prioritized.

Title: Estimating the Impact of Fires on Recreation in the Angeles National Forest Using Combined Revealed and Stated Preference Methods

Authors: Sophia Tanner, Frank Lupi*, Cloe Garnache

W4133 task: fits any of Obj 1-1, 1-2; 2-1 or 3-2.

Presenter: Frank Lupi

Presenter email: lupi@msu.edu

Abstract:

Wildfire frequency and severity are increasingly important issues in the western United States, as fires threaten lives, properties and outdoor amenities. This paper uses a novel combination of revealed preference data from site intercepts and stated preference data from online surveys to estimate the welfare impacts of different fire scenarios at recreation sites within the Angeles National Forest, which is a popular recreation destination on the outskirts of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. In 2016, we collected onsite visitation data at 32 sites in the Angeles National Forest. Site visitation was measured by randomly sampling recreation sites within three strata defined by expected use level (high or low), weekend or weekday, and morning or afternoon. The on-site visitation data includes on-site counts and short intercept interviews of 2,266 visitors. Next, we followed up with an online survey to collect contingent behavior data. Under eight different fire history scenarios which corresponded to the vegetation at the site they visited, respondents were asked contingent behavior questions to ascertain if they would still make the same trip as before. Our empirical strategy exploits both the onsite and contingent behavior data to estimate welfare effects of fires. The sampling design weights and site counts allow us to estimate total visits to each site as well as the number of visits a site receives from each origin zip code. With the zonal visitation data, we estimate a multi-site zonal travel cost model following the approach developed by von Haefen et al. for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The zonal model uses on-site sampling and intercept probabilities to estimate rates of visitation from each origin zip code, allowing us to estimate a multi-site recreation demand system with a full set of alternative specific constants (ASCs). This model provides estimates of visitation to each site under unchanged conditions which are then calibrated via contraction maps to estimates of the percentage of visitors who would have still visited the site at which they were intercepted under alternate fire history scenarios. The contingent behavior responses are thus embedded within the demand system and the implied fire preference parameters are estimated using contraction maps. This novel RP/SP estimation procedure allows us to value both site closures and the impacts of fire history on sites after they reopen. Results contribute to forest management when facing increasing threats of site closures by providing insight into potential impacts during and after closures in a popular urban national forest. Of the fire scenarios presented, recent forest fires are the costliest, causing estimated welfare losses of over $2.2 million per summer season for an average affected site. We find that recent forest fires cause larger trip and welfare losses than less recent forest fires or shrub fires, with forest fires decreasing welfare by roughly $29 per lost trip. Applying this method to a large fire that affected many sites in our study area, we illustrate how losses decrease over time, but can continue well after sites are re-opened due to lasting effects on the landscape.

Author: Taro Mieno 

Abstract:
In this study, we will seek to understand the how crop insurance and groundwater allocation limits with temporal flexibility affect agricultural producers’ groundwater use. Groundwater is a vital resource for high-productivity agriculture in U.S. Due to ever growing demand for water in the competing sectors, agricultural producers are under increasing pressure to conserve water. One of the popular policy tools to limit groundwater use is groundwater use quota: allocation limits. Several Natural Resources Districts (NRD) in Nebraska and LEMA region in Kansas has adopted allocation limits to conserve groundwater. Given the high annual variability in precipitation and evapotranspiration, major determinants of crop water demand, allocation limit policies typically have temporal flexibility. That is, instead of setting a hard groundwater extraction cap each year, farmers have a flexibility to satisfy allocation limits over multiple years. For example, Upper Republican NRD has a total of 65 inches per acre over 5 years. Producers are allowed to use however much water they would like in a year as long as the total groundwater extraction does not exceed 65 inches per acre. The problem producers face under such a policy is a dynamic optimization of groundwater use. Presumably, producers should save some water in early years so that they would have enough water to avoid a catastrophic crop failure in later years when a severe drought hits. While it is straightforward to imagine how producers behave under allocation limits with temporal flexibility, it is hard to imagine how allocation limits interacts with crop insurance to affect groundwater use behavior by agricultural producers. Since producers are safeguarded by catastrophic profit loss by crop insurance even when producers run out of allocation in a dry year in the later years, it seems that producers can behave more similarly to the case when there is no allocation limits.

The objectives of this study is two-fold: we will seek to examine (1) how irrigation pattern changes within an allocation period and (2) if total water use within an allocation period is greater under crop insurance compared to the case without crop insurance. To achieve this goal, we will employ a numerical dynamic simulation approach based on crop water production function generated by AquaCrop, a crop simulation model. Our preliminary results indicate that producers use more water in early years, and gradually reduces water use on average over the allocation period under crop insurance. On other hand, producers use less water in early years, and gradually increases water use on average over the allocation period without crop insurance. That is, water use pattern within an allocation period reverses when producers are under crop insurance. The impact of crop insurance on water use is mixed: it could either increase or decrease total water use.

This study contributes to the literature of crop insurance and water resource economics. Crop insurance is typically evaluated by itself without its potential interactive impacts with other resource use policies. This study is innovative in that we are the first to explore the interaction of a water resource use policy and crop insurance.

Waters of the United States: Upgrading wetland valuation via benefit transfer

Klaus Moeltner, Jessica Balukas, Elena Besedin, Ben Holland

W4133 Objectives:

Objective 2-2: Advances in BT Methods

Objective 3-3: Economic Analysis of Water Quality

Abstract:

With this study we respond to the ongoing debate on the legal protection of wetlands, and the concurrent need to understand the societal benefits created by them. Using updated meta-data on wetland valuation we illustrate how a state-of-the-art meta-regression framework that is consistent with economic theory can be adapted to generate benefit transfer predictions for incremental changes in wetland acreage over space and time. We apply this framework to estimate losses in benefits for realistic changes in wetland acreage for some sub-watersheds, as can be expected under the proposed re-definition of the “Waters of the United States” to be protected under the Clean Water Act.

Title: Spatial Leakages from Conservation Policies: An Application to the Kansas Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program

Authors: Mani Rouhi Rad, Dale Manning, Jordan Suter, Chris Goemans, and Zaichen Xiang

W4133 tasks: Task 1-1: Economic Analysis of Agriculture, Forest, and Rangeland Resources, Open Space, and WUI Zones

Task 2-3: Advances in Spatial/Environmental Nexus

Presenter: Dale Manning

Presenter email: dale.manning@colostate.edu

Abstract:

Conservation incentive programs provide a vital tool for federal policymakers to encourage the country’s agricultural producers to adopt practices and strategies consistent with local and national objectives.  For example, the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP) partners with local managers and regulators to achieve local conservation goals.  CREP in the Arkansas River Basin (ARB) of Kansas aims to reduce groundwater use by paying producers to retire irrigated land.  While the policy prevents GW pumping at the retired wells, the responses of active neighboring wells determine the final impact of the program. In this paper, we examine the spatial leakages around this program, and how they affect the program’s impact over time.  Theoretically, a retired well leads to fewer competitors and decreased pumping at neighboring wells, conditional on water availability.  Yet, less pumping means that more water becomes available over time, leading to an increase in pumping.  Finally, as neighbors adopt conservation behavior, this may lead to a behavioral leakage as others become more conservation minded. 

The relative magnitudes of these effects determine the net impact of the program over time.  Therefore, to resolve the theoretical ambiguity, we use well-level data on pumping in the ARB to econometrically identify the spatial leakages associated with CREP.  We begin with a difference -in-difference specification to estimate the impact of CREP enrollment on pumping at wells that remain active.  Next, a model with well fixed effects and time controls allows us to explore the mechanisms driving the spatial leakages.  Finally, to examine the net impact of CREP on GW use over time, we link a MODFLOW model of the ARB with a water demand function to simulate the impact of well retirement on neighboring wells’ water availability and pumping.

We find that CREP enrollment causes neighboring wells to pump less water on average, and this holds conditional on water availability.  Further, we find no evidence of a move towards conservation-mindedness.  This suggests that the CREP impact is driven by changes in pumping resulting from fewer competitors using the common property resource.  Simulations using the linked model suggest that the competition effect dominates for X years, beyond which more water availability leads to more pumping than would have happened without the CREP program.

This result relates to the W4133 task 1-1 because it provides an economic analysis of agricultural use of a common property resource that creates substantial value for landowners and well operators.  Spatial spillovers from resource management policies has important implications for users of many public and private natural resources, including forests, rangeland, and residential development.  The spatial nature of aquifer resources means that modeling its uses also requires innovations at the spatial/environmental nexus (task 2-3).  Important policy implications include the potential for positive conservation spillovers from programs that reduce competition for shared resources.  In this case, policy goals may be reached at a cheaper cost than anticipated, as private responses have synergies with the direct impact of management programs.

Title:  Assistance Needed?  The Willingness to Pay for Flood Insurance

Authors:  Noelwah R. Netusil, Carolyn Kousky, and Howard Kunreuther

W4133 tasks: Task 1-2; Task 2-1

Presenter: Noelwah R. Netusil

Presenter email: netusil@reed.edu

Abstract:

Flooding is the natural disaster that causes the most property damage in the United States. Federal disaster aid for victims is currently limited, so to rebuild or replace damaged property without either incurring additional debt, drawing down savings, or diverting current consumption, those at risk need flood insurance.  Yet, nationwide, many people forgo flood coverage.  High premiums are likely a key driver of this decision, but the price elasticity of flood insurance has been difficult to estimate empirically due to a number of challenges. These include the following factors: homeowners in high risk areas are mandated to purchase a flood policy if they have a federally insured mortgage, premiums are correlated with risk, and price is not observed for the uninsured. This study draws on contingent valuation methods to elicit willingness-to-pay (WTP) for flood insurance from a sample of residents in two Portland, Oregon neighborhoods at risk of flooding.  We examine how WTP varies with income, risk perceptions, objective risk, previous experience with flooding, and the length of time residing in one’s current home and neighborhood, which relates to W4133 Task 2-1.  We also investigate how participant uncertainty about their responses influences their overall WTP for flood insurance.  Results from this study can inform the ongoing policy debate about whether and how premium assistance should be provided to help encourage the purchase of flood insurance for residents in hazard-prone areas, which is related to W4133 Task 1-2.

Title: The Price of Powder: Evidence on the demand for snow from short term property rentals 

Authors: Bryan Parthum, Peter Christensen
W4133 tasks:

• 2-1: Advances in Revealed Preference Methods
  • 1-2: Economic Analysis of Natural Hazards (climate change)
  • 3-2: Economic Analysis of Recreation Services

Presenter: Bryan Parthum

Presenter email: parthum2@illinois.edu

Abstract: We estimate structural demand parameters for wintertime recreation in 31 destination markets across the contiguous United States. Our first stage introduces a highfrequency hedonic method to instrument for the endogenous price of a short term property rental. By exploiting short-run shocks in weather and recreation demand, we derive hedonic price schedules for 237 ski resort towns and estimate daily state-specific implicit prices for mountain snowpack. We then estimate utility functions for snow tourists in each state. These resulting demand parameters allow us to project damages under two future climate scenarios, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. We incorporate snow tourist information to map estimates of willingness to accept to each U.S. state and show that significant heterogeneity exists across states. Lastly, we estimate a lower-bound on total willingness to accept across the U.S. to be between $5.9 to $8.09 billion per snow season due only to reductions in mountain snowpack.

Title: Meta-Analysis to compare Certainty Follow-up and Cheap Talk to Reduce Hypothetical Bias

Authors: Jerrod Penn-Louisiana State University and Wuyang Hu-Ohio State University

W4133 Task: 2-Economic Valuation Methods

Presenter: Jerrod Penn

Presenter email: jpenn@agcenter.lsu.edu

Abstract: Hypothetical Bias (HB) continues to be a major concern among stated preference practitioners (Task 2). Two of the earliest and most popular methods to reduce HB are certainty follow-up and cheap talk. Certainty follow-up reduces HB by asking respondents how certain they are of their answer to the valuation question. Cheap Talk works by explicitly warning respondents about HB and to answer as if it were a real purchase decision. A number of studies have implemented either technique, a hypothetical control elicitation to establish their efficacy relative to an uncorrected hypothetical welfare estimate, as well as a real elicitation to demonstrate their efficacy to reduce actual HB. We use meta-analysis to investigate and compare the relative ability of both approaches using both sets of measures, the ability of certainty follow-up and cheap talk to alter welfare estimates relative to hypothetical control and real welfare estimates. At present, 19 studies certainty follow-up and 30 cheap talk studies meet the requisites for inclusion. Preliminary analysis shows that certainty follow-up is more effective than cheap talk at reducing the welfare estimate relative to hypothetical controls and correspondingly, the extent of HB when comparing against the real elicitation welfare estimates.  

Title: WATER AND CONCRETE: COMPLEMENTARITY (NOT SUBSTITUTION) BETWEEN NATURAL AND PRODUCED CAPITAL

Authors: Mani Rouhi Rad, Wiktor (Vic) Adamowicz, Alicia Entem, Eli P. Fenichel, and Patrick Lloyd-Smith

W4133 Task: Task 2-1: Advances in Stated/Revealed Preference Methods

Presenting author: Mani Rouhi Rad

Presenting author email: mani.rouhi_rad@colostate.edu

Estimating the substitutability of natural capital is important for the valuation of natural capital and the ecosystem services provided. The existing theoretical and empirical literature in natural capital focuses on the substitutability of natural capital and other forms of capital (Hartwick 1977) or the flows of ecosystem services and materials (Cohen et al. 2018) rather than the stock of natural capital.

We contribute to natural capital theory and derive conditions under which produced and natural capital are complements. In short, produced capital investment often occurs following a short-run cost curve, because market forces do not lead to increased production of natural capital in order to reach a new point on the long-run cost curve. Natural capital remains quasi-fixed - a defining feature of nature capital and short-run cost curves. This holds despite produced capital investments being made with a relatively long-term planning horizon. We then provide empirical evidence on complementarities between natural capital (fresh water) and produced capital (a new lock system) in the case of the Panama Canal expansion.

The Panama Canal consists of two sets of locks (produced capital) that connect Gatun Lake to the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The depth of Gatun Lake provides clearance for ships’ draft and serves as the natural capital for ships passing through the canal. Passage of ships through the locks requires the release of water from the lake (utilization of natural capital). Under the pressure of increasing cargo ship sizes and investments by competitors such as the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal Authority invested in a new path including six new locks that opened in June 2016 to allow the transit of larger ships and water saving basins which reduce the release of water from the Gatun Lake per transit (investment in conservation).

We contribute to the literature on the complementarity or substitution between natural and produced capital in two ways. First, we distinguish between the capital space and the utilization space. The literature mostly considers utilization (or flows) of inputs and does not distinguish capital levels (stocks) from flows. We show that stocks and flows may not have the same relationship. We also show that the substitution or complementarity relationship depends on the type of investment. The nature of the relationship is not clear ex-ante. The observed construction of water saving basins leads the water and locks to be complements. We show that without these water saving basins, the natural and produced capital would have been substitutes in capital space.

Second, we provide empirical evidence of the complementarity between natural capital and produced capital. The main focus of the natural capital literature has been on substitutability of natural capital and other forms of capital, and Van den Bergh (1999) suggests that finding complementarity will be “very difficult to impossible”. We show that while the investment in produced capital has resulted in substitution in the utilization space, there is complementarity between produced capital and natural capital.

Our study contributes to the valuation of natural capital and ecosystem services provided using revealed production decisions of the firm (Task 2-1). Substitution or complementarity of natural and produced capital are critical for such valuations. Our theoretical analysis derives conditions for complementarity and substitution of these two forms of capital and our empirical analysis provides evidence for existence of complementarity between them. Importantly, our study finds that distinction between capital space and flow space is critical for valuation of natural capital and ecosystem services. Investments in produced capital in the form of infrastructure are often used for resource management. Our study sheds light on their effects on the value of natural capital and ecosystem services.

Title: Feeling the Burn: The Optimal Timing of Prescribed Fires for Recreational Benefits

Authors: Katherine Zipp, Pennsylvania State University; Yau-Huo (Jimmy) Shr, Iowa State University

W4133 task: 1-1: Economic Analysis of Agriculture, Forest, and Rangeland Resources, Open Space, and WUI Zones; 3-2: Economic Analysis of Recreation Services

Presenter: Yau-Huo (Jimmy) Shr, Iowa State University

Presenter email: yhshr@iastate.edu

Abstract:

Prescribed fire is getting more widely recognized and used in many parts of the United States. Although prescribed fire is an effective approach for fuel reduction and ecosystem restoration, it also comes with concerns such as (short-term) limited forest access and accidental spread. When making decisions about how often to use prescribed fires, public forest managers balance desired ecological and recreational outcomes. However, little is known about the optimal use of prescribed fires to achieve recreational outcomes.

In this paper, we fill this gap and make two contributions to the literature in answering the research question: how often should forest managers use prescribed fires to maximize recreational benefits? Our first contribution is that we use a Faustmann model, a long-standing dynamic optimization model for maximizing timber harvest profits, to estimate the optimal prescribed burn interval for maximizing recreational benefits. Our model builds on previous literature, such as Yoder (2004), that considers prescribed fire being used to maximize timber harvest conditional on the potential damage from wildfire. However, we recognize that the majority of prescribed fires occur on public land that is not managed for timber production but rather managed for recreational benefits. Our second contribution is that we estimate a recreational benefit function over time after a fire by coupling recreational welfare estimates with ecological estimates of forest dynamics after a fire. By using an ecological understanding of how various attributes of a forest change over time after a fire, we are able to improve estimation of the benefits that recreationalists receive from forests after a fire (Boxall, Watson, & Englin, 1996; Englin, Boxall, & Hauer, 2000). With these two contributions we are able to better inform management of forest and wildland urban interface (WUI) areas in terms of improving recreation services.

In 2017-2018, we conducted intercept surveys of 302 forest users in Central Pennsylvania and the New Jersey Pine Barrens. These two areas provide similar recreation services but have drastically different wildfire hazard. The survey includes a choice experiment to estimate the willingness-to-pay for different forest attributes including wildfire hazard, visibility in forest, and wildlife habitat quality. Travel time required to forest area is used as the cost attribute. To translate travel time into monetary cost, we adopt the approach proposed in Lloyd-Smith, Abbott, Adamowicz, & Willard (2017) to estimate the individual value of leisure time. Using a panel of ecological experts, we model how the three forest attributes change over time after a fire. The net benefit function in the Faustmann model is constructed using the information of individual benefits and the dynamic of forest attributes. The personal discount rate is estimated following the standard approach (Coller & Williams, 1999).

Under different model and parameter specifications, the optimal burn intervals are between 5 – 16 and 19 – 33 years in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, respectively. These estimates are in line with the optimal burn interval when solely considering ecosystems (5 – 10 years for NJ and 20 – 30 years for PA), but are greater than the optimal interval considered by fire managers. The results also shed light on the willingness-to-pay for the selected forest conditions and associated heterogeneity between two regions. In addition, our survey results provide one of the first assessments of the citizen perceptions of prescribed fires in the Mid-Atlantic region.

Title: A Physical Input-Output Table (PIOT) model of Illinois for estimating Life Cycle Environmental Impacts of Nitrogen Emissions

Authors: Shweta Singh

W4133 task: 2-1: Advances in Stated/Revealed Preference Methods

Presenter: Shweta Singh

Presenter email: singh294@purdue.edu

Abstract: Input-Output (IO) models allow to calculate total life cycle economic and environmental impacts of production in an economic region. Current methods of economic evaluation fail to capture the full cost of ecosystem services contribution due to limited models that capture the interdependence of economic sectors in physical units. Developing physical input-output table (PIOT) based models allow to capture this physical interdependence between economic sectors in a region. In this work, a PIOT model for Illinois capturing the interactions between agrobased sectors has been developed. The PIOT model captures the physical interactions between sectors in terms of Nitrogen flows. An environmentally extended PIOT is also developed that connects the production in sectors with nitrogen emissions in the state, thus allowing to calculate the total direct and indirect impact of production in the state of Illinois on nitrogen emissions. This physical model can form a basis of economic valuation of nitrogen related ecosystem services using cost of nitrogen emissions in the region. The reliability of the direct and indirect impact estimation is improved as the physical model is based on mass balances that ensures the accuracy of intersectoral dependence. Hence, PIOTs can provide an advancement to improve the accuracy of economic valuations.

Title: Assessing the private and social benefits of forest concessions in the Maya Biosphere Reserve

Authors: Corinne Bocci, Brent Sohngen and Daniela Miteva

W4133 task: Task 2-3: Advances in Spatial/Environmental Nexus

Presenter: Brent Sohngen

Presenter email: Sohngen.1@osu.edu

Abstract:

While forests provide multiple ecosystem services, it is often difficult to measure their amenity and private values. If land markets are efficient and property rights are well-defined, the private benefits of maintaining forest cover, such as harvesting timber and non-timber forest products, will be captured through market transactions.  In many developing regions, however, property rights are not well-defined and there is limited information on private forest values. Additionally, the value of the many ecosystem services that forests provide to the benefit of society is often not quantified and monetized. To promote local conservation of forest stocks, some developing country governments have provided local community groups with property or land-use rights if they agree to manage forest resources sustainably. Community-based common-property resource (CPR) management systems follow the advice of Gordon (1954) and Scott (1955), who recommended privatizing the resource to reduce over-extraction, but rights are vested with groups rather than single individuals or entities.

Most efforts to date to assess community-based tropical forest management strategies have focused on whether the projects have physically reduced deforestation.  Few studies have evaluated whether households involved in managing the resource benefit from the arrangement, and whether there are tradeoffs with providing other ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration. To address this issue, this study evaluates whether households benefit from community-based forest concessions in the Maya Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala, and whether the arrangement increases carbon in the foersts. The household-level benefits are measured as the increase in income gained by community members involved in managing the concessions when their efforts to exert property rights and manage the landscape sustainably are successful.  The broader global benefits are the gains in carbon stored due to avoided deforestation. To calculate the household-level benefits, we use a dataset collected from households in the Maya Biosphere Reserve in 2012 and 2017 and a two-stage least squares, instrumental variable approach to estimate the effect of concession membership on household income.  We calculate the gains in carbon sequestration using a matched panel of concession areas and similar non-concession areas within the reserve. The results show that the value of forest concession management in the Maya Biosphere Reserve from 2012 to 2017 is about $17,166,005.  Most of this benefit is obtained privately by households, which suggests that common-property resource management systems can result in significant welfare gains for households that manage forests.

This study advances the literature in Task 2-3, Advances in Spatial/Environmental Nexus, in the W4133 project by developing methods to value the private and public benefits of a common-property resource management system. One contribution is that we use rigorous impact evaluation methods to determine whether the concessions are effective at reducing deforestation and increasing household income and compare the value of the additional forest carbon sequestered as a result of deforestation reduction and household income benefits to an estimate of concession implementation costs. Another contribution is that we highlight where trade-offs and complementarities between the ecosystem services exist and whether this effect varies based on the characteristics of the concession communities.  We find that, for households with forest-based histories, concessions increase the amount of forest carbon sequestered and increase concession member income.  However, for concessions managed by households from larger towns and cities, our results show that they are receiving the largest income benefit, but are deforesting areas with higher carbon sequestration values.  Nevertheless, our overall results suggest that the community-based forest management in the Maya Biosphere Reserve is an effective conservation and development strategy.

Title: Pursuit of Independence: A study into the households’ willingness to pay for reducing dependence on the local grid for electricity. 

Authors: Dilek Uz, Katie Champaigne
W4133 task: Task 2-1: Advances in Stated/Revealed Preference Methods
Presenter: Dilek Uz
Presenter email: dilekuz@unr.edu
Abstract

Deployment of residential solar photovoltaic (PV) panels have skyrocketed in the recent years in the US. In 2016 alone, PV market grew by 97 %, with more than 370,000 individual installations. Currently more than 40 states have regulatory settings in which a utility customer can get compensated for their exports into the electricity grid (unused portion of their electricity generation sourced by their rooftop solar panels.) Also in many states with renewable portfolio standards (RPS) customers get rebates on solar panel purchases while the local utility gets to count the generated electricity towards RPS compliance. At the federal level, residential solar panels are incentivized by a 30% investment tax credit. The justification for these policies is the public good nature of the environmental services associated with reducing consumption of electricity from the local grid, the majority of which is sourced from fossil fuels.

Having rooftop solar panels also provide various private benefits to the owners. They include savings on power bill, warm-glow, signaling environmental preferences (due to the conspicuous nature of owning solar panels), and the feeling of reduced dependence on the grid.

In this study, we design an online choice experiment to measure the willingness to pay for each of these attributes. Respondents, who are chosen from certain demographic groups, are offered a set of binary and trinary choices. Options are (i) “Default option” (i.e. fully relying on the local electricity supplier with the conventional fuel mix); (ii)“Green pricing” (i.e. still purchasing all electricity from the grid but paying a premium for an increased share of renewables); and (iii) “Solar panels” (i.e. installing a rooftop solar panel and using the electricity generated by the panel and supplementing from the grid when necessary).

There are many studies in the environmental economics literature that study the willingness to pay for renewable energy (e.g. (e.g. Roe et al. (2001), Borchers et al. (2007), Scarpa and Willis (2010)). Recent studies that review the literature include Oerlemans et al. (2016) and Sundt and Rehdanz (2015). A small share of this literature focuses on rooftop solar panels (e.g. Soskin and Squires (2013), Su et al. (2018)) To our knowledge, this is the first study that looks at willingness to pay for reduced dependence on the local electric grid as an attribute. Rooftop solar companies’ sales pitches are known to include the rhetoric that utility companies are monopolies who overcharge for their services and owning solar panels will deliver redemption from them.4 . According to Triandis et al. (1990), being independent is one of the top American values and the solar rooftop sales people seem to be appealing to that. The goal of this study is to quantify this value. Additionally, we look at the heterogeneity of this value with respect to demographic variables as well as political affiliation.

The results of this study will inform policy makers on the appropriate incentive levels for rooftop solar panel deployment. High willingness to pay for private benefits would imply that consumers would still purchase with lower incentives which would save tax payer money.

Title: Estimating a Demand Curve for Land Conservation

Authors: Alex Blanchette, Corey Lang, Michelle Peach, Jarron VanCeylon
W4133 task: Task 1-1: Economic analysis of Agriculture, Forest, and Rangeland Resources, Open Space, and WUI Zones
Presenter: Jarron VanCeylon
Presenter email: jvanceylon@uri.edu

Abstract:

Long periods of urban expansion have resulted in the significant loss of open space (US Forest Service 2019). Open space provides benefits to individuals and neighborhoods, from recreational and visual amenities to other ecosystem services like air and water quality (Irwin 2002, Anderson and West 2006, US Forest Service).  As a result, permanently protecting open space is a priority for local, state, and federal governments and NGOs. However, conserving land is costly, and in many cases the benefits of conservation are unknown or are imprecise.

In this paper we examine the effects of open space on housing values across numerous markets in an effort to construct a demand curve for protected open space. Several studies (e.g., Boyle et al. 1999, Netusil et al. 2010, Mei et al. 2017) have used multiple markets to estimate a demand function for an environmental amenity. However, the geographic scale of our data is considerably larger than prior work. We collect housing and population data and land cover data from 214 metropolitan statistical areas (MSA) in the Eastern half of the United States. Housing and population data come from the American Community Survey and are collected at the census block group level, the finest scale publicly available. Land cover data come from the USGS Land Use Land Cover database, USGS elevation rasters, and USGS Protected Areas Database. From these data, we discern protected and unprotected open space, steeply sloped land, and natural inland water features.

Our method involves a two stage framework. The first stage estimates marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) of protected open space for each MSA separately using hedonic valuation. Our specification controls for unprotected open space, a large number of housing and demographic variables, and county fixed effects and quadratic functions of latitude and longitude to guard against spatial unobservables that could be correlated with housing prices and open space. In the second stage, we estimate an inverse demand curve for protected open space by comparing MWTP estimates and geographic and population characteristics across all MSAs. Specifically, we regress estimated MWTP on the quantity of protected open space, average income, and geographic determinants of undevelopable land.

Our first stage results are consistent with previous literature and indicate positive housing premiums associated with proximity to open space. For example, a 1% increase in protected open space is associated with a 0.18% increase in housing prices in the New York City MSA. However, there is considerable heterogeneity in valuation, the 25th and 75th percentiles for estimated MWTP are about $100 and $1000, respectively. In the second stage, we seek to explain that variation in valuation by estimating an inverse demand curve and including multiple shifters of demand. Consistent with expectations, we find that demand slopes downward: a one standard deviation increase in protected open space decreases MWTP $42. We also find that protected open space is a normal good, a one standard deviation increase in average income increases MWTP by $134. Lastly, we include undevelopable area as an additional demand shifter, with the idea that naturally occurring undevelopable area is a substitute to preserved open space. We split undevelopable area into steeply sloped land and water/wetlands, and find that these geographic features have opposite effects on MWTP – steeply sloped land does act as a substitute, but water and wetlands act as a complement.

Title: A Bayesian Model for Small Discrete Choice Samples 

Authors: Lendie Follett, Brian Vander Naald
W4133 task: 2-1
Presenter: Brian Vander Naald
Presenter email: brian.vandernaald@drake.edu
Abstract
Task 2-1: Bayesian estimation has been used in the environmental economics literature to analyze discrete choice data. Train (2003) popularized the Bayesian technique for choice data. Rigby and Burton (2006) employed a Bayesian bounded logit model with an inverse Wishart prior on the variance to estimate a WTP value for genetically modified food. Balcombe et al. (2009) also use an inverse Wishart prior to investigate attribute non-attendance using choice experiment data examining beef produced from stem cell technology. Recently, Akinc and Vandebroek (2018) developed a Bayesian mixed logit model in which they noted that choice of prior in Bayesian estimation is important. They note that use of the inverse Wishart prior on the variance is inappropriate because it exerts too much influence on the results. They use an uninformative prior (LKJ) developed by Lewandowski et al. (2009), which has desirable properties. While they test this model with a large simulated dataset, they do not test it with actual data. We extend their work here, developing a Bayesian mixed logit model using the LKJ prior on the variance to extract inference from a small dataset from choice experiment data gathered in 2015. We estimate posterior probabilities for willingness to pay for reducing the rate of glacier recession, and examine variation in WTP based on sociodemographic differences. To our knowledge, this is the first Bayesian study in the WTP literature to focus on extracting inference from small discrete choice samples. This model is potentially very useful, as it could reduce the cost of conducting discrete choice studies.

We develop a data driven Bayesian framework for the estimation of mixed logit models for small discrete choice samples. In this framework, we build upon past research by incorporating demographics into the mean of the distribution of individuallevel preferences. For the covariance matrix on individual-level preferences, we note issues with the traditionally used inverse Wishart prior. We instead propose a prior on the covariance matrix that allows one to specify independent prior distributions on the correlation matrix and the standard deviations. We propose the use of the LKJ prior for correlation matrices in conjunction with the half Cauchy distribution for standard deviations as a way to be able to accommodate a wide variety of data-generating patterns.

We test the model using choice experiment data gathered in 2015 examining preferences for reducing the rate at which glacier ice is disappearing. 166 surveys were administered, 149 were completed, and after quality control measures were taken, 126 usable surveys remained. Of the 126 reliable surveys, 37 saw four choice scenarios and 89 saw two choice scenarios. Respondent characteristics were similar to those of other visitors during that time. To examine WTP differences along sociodemographic margins, the sample was further limited to those who provided answers for political preferences, sex, and environmental organization membership. After this final sample reduction, we are down to 98 respondents.

Results indicate that the mean monthly WTP for 0.15km3 rate of glacier loss is substantially higher than the WTP for 0.20km3 rate of glacier loss ($149 versus $24). Further, there is a 90% posterior probability that WTP for 0.15km3 rate of glacier loss exceeds zero, compared to a 63% posterior probability that WTP for 0.20km3 rate of glacier loss exceeds zero. These WTP values differ by political preference, membership in an environmental organization, and sex. Females are WTP more for both rates of glacier loss than their male counterparts, regardless of political preference, environmental organizational membership status. On the other hand, females are substantially less likely than their male counterparts to choose an alternative if it uses an insulated ice blanket to achieve a given level of glacier loss.

Title: Spatial and Temporal Dimensions of the Value of Coastal Recreational Fishing in US Waters

Authors: Alexandra Naumenko and Roger H. von Haefen, North Carolina State University

W4133 Objectives: Obj 2: Economic Valuation Methods, Task 2-2: Advances in Benefit Transfer Methods, Task 2-3: Advances in Spatial/Environmental Nexus; Obj 3: Integrated Ecosystem Services Valuation and Management, Task 3-2: Economic Analysis of Recreation Services

Presenter: von Haefen

Presenter Email: rhhaefen@ncsu.edu

Abstract:

The Bureau of Economic Analysis recently estimated that the outdoor recreation economy contributed 2.2% to Gross Domestic Product and was growing slightly faster than the overall U.S. economy.  Similarly, Siikimaki (2007) found that outdoor recreation time use has roughly doubled over the past four decades but has remained relatively flat in the 21st century.  However, how the nonmarket value, or consumer surplus, of outdoor recreation has changed over time as well as across space remains poorly understood.  The current paper aims to fill this gap in the literature by examining trends in the per trip value of coastal recreational fishing over a thirteen-year period from Maine to Louisiana (Task 2-3).  Leveraging data from NOAA’s Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) for approximately 300,000 shoreline angling trips to sites along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts from 2004 to 2016 (Task 3-2), we estimate how the value of a coastal recreational trip varies across time and space.  A repeated discrete choice model of recreational participation and site choice is estimated separately by region (New England, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, Florida and Gulf Coast) and two-month period, and per trip values of lost trips are calculated.  Our results suggest considerable within-year heterogeneity, but surprising homogeneity across years.  The per trip value of recreational fishing was largely unaffected by the Great Recession, although using an internal meta-regression analysis, we find suggestive evidence that per trip values have increased modestly during the recent expansion.  Further, our results reveal substantial spatial heterogeneity across the United States, with angling trips in the Southeast having the highest economic value.  Collectively, these results deepen our understanding of the temporal and spatial dimensions of recreational angling and may assist government agencies working in sparse data environments when transferring benefit estimates from one region and point in time to another (Task 2-2).

Title: The Impact of Drought on Crime in South Africa

Authors: Kyle Wilson

W4133 task: Task 1-2: Economic Analysis of Natural Hazards (fire, invasive species, climate

change)

Presenter: Kyle Wilson

Presenter email: kylew@uoregon.edu

Abstract

All societies rely on water as an essential input for life and economic activity. Droughts and other negative shocks to the water supply may contribute to negative societal outcomes such as crime. This paper tests one channel through which drought affects social outcomes: crime. Specifically, I estimate the effect of South Africa’s recent extreme drought (2015–2018) on crime. Using a police-station by year panel, I exploit variation in the timing of droughts and water management policies to explain changes in crime. I find that violent crimes increase by 10%, police-detected crimes fall by 20%, and that there is no discernible impact on sex crimes or property crimes. These findings suggest that in the future, especially as severe droughts become more prevalent due to climate change, crime prevention may be an important component of climate policy.

Title: Groundwater Use in Agriculture Accounting for Aquifer Flow Dynamics: An Analytical Model of Mississippi Delta

Authors: Kalyn Coatney, Department of Agricultural Economics, Mississippi State University;

Seong Yun, Department of Agricultural Economics, Mississippi State University

W4133 task: Obj 1: Land and Water Resource Management in a Changing Environment, Task 1-1: Economic Analysis of Agriculture, Forest, and Rangeland Resources, Open Space, and WUI Zones

Presenter: Seong Yun, Department of Agricultural Economics, Mississippi State University

Presenter email: seong.yun@msstate.edu

Abstract:

Irrigation is becoming increasingly important to Southeastern crop production. The increased demand and high prices for water-intensive crops (i.e., corn and soybeans) have led more irrigation and higher competition for groundwater. Unlike drylands in the US, the Southeast regions are known for abundant rainfalls. While annual rainfall totals are relatively high in the Southeast, most of the rainfall occurs during the winter months while precipitation during the growing season is often inadequate. Besides, the Mississippi River Valley Alluvial Aquifer (MRVAA) covering the large portion of the Southeast is shallow and has long been observed that the water level of MRVAA is steadily declining. Some Southeast regions have been experienced depletion of groundwater and the tragedy of commons in groundwater is expected to be worsened under climate change and variability.

Due to high concern on efficient groundwater management, economic models of groundwater management including aquifer flow dynamics have been studied well in the regions such as Ogallala Aquifer or aquifers in California. These models are, however, not sufficient enough to explain groundwater issues in MRVAA due to the two significant differences in groundwater flow dynamics. First, the MRVAA is a shallow aquifer with a relatively fast recharge rate. Because of the soils in MRVAA are composed of heavy clay, relatively little recharge can be attributed to percolation. Instead, rivers and streams provide most of the recharge relatively quickly from the side of this shallow aquifer. Second, the MRVAA is not a static aquifer, but appears to have some flow dynamics. From geo-survey, it turns out that the MRVAA generally flows from north to south. Because of the spatial and flow dynamics, producer wells located sequentially along the general flow creates an assignment problem. Producers located at the northern end of the MRVAA’s natural recharge entry point experience higher recharge rates than those to the south and central regions.

Reflecting these flow dynamics specific to the MRVAA, this study contributes to the literature by suggesting a bathtub model with spatially varying recharge rate with shallow aquifer structure. The proposed model is a discrete space and time dynamic optimization model to maximize the net benefit of agricultural production with irrigation subject to the flow dynamics of groundwater. The state equation of water level includes the unidirectional spatial dependence (North to South) recharge rate and extraction. This study first derived the analytical solution and economic implication of the given structure. Using the six producers’ simulation, this study numerically demonstrated how the downstream producers are disadvantageous in groundwater use due to their location. Also, this study showed how cheap altruism or falsely targeted regulation reached to faster and more worsened over-extraction.

01/01/1970

03/17/2020

Publications

 

Objective 1

 

Ahmadiani, Mona, Susana Ferreira, and Craig E. Landry. 2019. “Flood Insurance and Risk Reduction: Market Penetration, Coverage, and Mitigation in Coastal North Carolina” Southern Economics Journal 85(4): 1058-1082, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/soej.12332

 

Bollinger, B., Burkhardt, J., Gillingham, K. Peer Effects in Residential Water Conservation: Evidence from Migration. Forthcoming: American Economic Journal: Economic Policy (2020).

 

Dundas, S.J., and D.J. Lewis. 2020. “Estimating Option Values and Spillover Damages for Coastal Protection: Evidence from Oregon’s Planning Goal 18.” Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (Forthcoming).

 

Foelske, L, CJ Van Riper, W Stewart, A Ando, P Gobster, L Hunt. 2019. “Assessing preferences for growth on the rural-urban fringe using a stated choice analysis.” Landscape and Urban Planning 189: 396-407.

 

Hashida, Y., and D.J. Lewis. 2019. “The Intersection between Climate Adaptation, Mitigation, and Natural Resources: An Empirical Analysis of Forest Management.” Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, 6(5): 893-926.

 

Hashida, Y., Withey, J., Lewis, D.J., Newman, T., and J. Kline. 2020. “Anticipating changes in wildlife habitat induced by private forest owners’ adaptation to climate change and carbon policy.” PLOS ONE (In Press).

 

Hodde, W, JP Sesmero, BM Gramig, TJ Vyn, O Doering. "The effect of projected climate change on the economics of conservation tillage." Agronomy Journal 111(6):1-11, 2019.

 

Jakus, Paul M. and Sherzod B. Akhundjanov. 2019. “The Antiquities Act, Large National Monuments, and the Regional Economy.” J. Environmental Economics and Management, 95(May):102-117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2019.03.004

 

Kim, Man-Keun, and Paul M. Jakus. 2019. “Wildfire, National Park Visitation, and Changes in Regional Economic Activity.” J. Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, 26(June):34-42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jort.2019.03.007

 

Levesque, V., Calhoun, A. and K.P. Bell. 2019. Actions speak louder than words: Designing transdisciplinary approaches to enact solutions, Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 9(2):159-169, DOI: 10.1007/s13412-018-0535-0.

 

Meunier, Simon, Dale T. Manning., Dan Zimmerle, Loic Queval, Judith Cherni, and Philippe Dessante (2019).  Determinants of the marginal willingness to pay for improved domestic water and irrigation in partially electrified Rwandan villages.  International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology.

 

Moeltner, K., J.A. Balukas, E. Besedin, and B. Holland (published online Aug. 2019). Waters of the United States: Upgrading Wetland Valuation via Benefit Transfer, Ecological Economics.

 

Munroe, D.K., Crandall, M.S., Colocousis, C., Bell, K.P., and A.T. Morzillo (2019). Reciprocal relationships between forest management and regional landscape structures: applying concepts from land system science to private forest management, Journal of Land Use Science, DOI: 10.1080/1747423X.2019.1607914.

 

Netusil, N.R., K. Moeltner, M. Jarrad, K. Moeltner (published online Aug. 2019). Floodplain

Designation and Property Sale Prices in an Urban Watershed, Land Use Policy.

 

Opalinski, Nicole, Aditi Bhaskar and Dale T. Manning (2019). Response of Municipal Water Use to Weather across the Contiguous US, JAWRA.  https://doi.org/10.1111/1752-1688.12801.

 

Peterson, Nicole E., Craig E. Landry, Clark Alexander, Brian Bledsoe, and Kevin Samples. 2019. “Socioeconomic and Environmental Predictors of Estuarine Shoreline Hard Armoring” Nature: Scientific Reports, 9, 16288, DOI: doi:10.1038/s41598-019-52504-y

 

Petrolia, D.R., J. Penn, R. Quainoo*, R.H. Caffey, and J.M. Fannin.  2019.  "Know Thy Beach: Values of Beach Condition Information."  Marine Resource Economics 34(4): 331-59.

Penn J, Hu W, and H Penn. 2019. Support for Native, Solitary Pollinator Conservation among the Public versus Beekeepers. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, ASSA invited paper. 101(5): 1386-1400.

 

Riley, D., Mieno, T., Schoengold, K., & Brozović, N. (2019). The impact of land cover on groundwater recharge in the High Plains: An application to the Conservation Reserve Program. Science of the Total Environment, 696, 133871.

 

Scyphers, Stephen B., Michael W. Beck, Kelsi L. Furman, Judy Haner, Lauren I. Josephs, Rebecca Lynskey, Andrew Keeler, Craig E. Landry, Sean P. Powers, Bret M. Webb, and Jonathan H. Grabowski.^. 2019. “A Waterfront View of Coastal Hazards: Exploring Relationships among Exposure, Shoreline Type, and Hazard Concerns” Sustainability 11(23), 6687, DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/su11236687

 

Suter, Jordan, Mani Rouhi Rad, Dale Manning, Chris Goemans, and Matthew Sanderson (forthcoming). Groundwater Depletion, Climate, and the Incremental Value of Groundwater.  Resource and Energy Economics.

 

Trout, Thomas J. and Dale T. Manning (2019). An Economic and Biophysical Model of Deficit Irrigation.  Agronomy Journal. doi:10.2134/agronj2019.03.0209

 

Yun, S. D. and B. M. Gramig, 2019, “Agro-Climatic Data by County (ACDC): A Spatially and Temporally Consistent U.S. Dataset for Agricultural Yields, Weather and Soils,” Data, 4(2): 66.

Nyanzu, F.  2019.  Optimal portfolio design to manage oyster resources.  Master's thesis, Agricultural Economics, Mississippi State University.

 

Zhong, Hua, Michael Taylor, Kimberly Rollins, Dale Manning, and Chris Goemans (2019). Who Pays for Water Scarcity? Evaluating the Welfare Implications of Water Infrastructure Investments for Cities.  The Annals of Regional Science.  The Annals of Regional Science, 63(3), 559-600.

 

Zipp, K.Y., Lewis, D.J., Provencher, B., and J. Vander Zanden. 2019. “The Spatial Dynamics of the Economic Impacts of an Aquatic Invasive Species: An Empirical Analysis.” Land Economics, 95(1): 1-18.

 

Objective 2

 

Ando, AW, Cadavid, CL, N Netusil, and B Parthum. 2020. “Willingness-to -volunteer and stability of preferences between cities: Estimating the benefits of stormwater management.” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 99: 102274.

 

Bi, X., T. Borisova, and A. Hodges. 2019. “Economic Value of Visitation to Free-Flowing and Impounded Portions of a River: Implications for Management River Flow.”  Review of Regional Studies (49): 244-267.

 

Boslett, A., Guilfoos, T., & Lang, C. (2019). Valuation of the external costs of unconventional oil and gas development: The critical importance of mineral rights ownership. Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, 6(3), 531-561.

Prendergast, P., Pearson-Merkowitz, S., & Lang, C. (2019). The individual determinants of support for open space bond referendums. Land use policy, 82, 258-268.

 

Bowker, J. Michael, Ashley E. Askew, Craig E. Landry, Alexis Hedges, and D.B.K. English. 2019. “Wilderness Use, Users, Preferences, and Values: A Look at the National Forest System from 2005 to 2014” In, A Perpetual Flow of Benefits: State of Knowledge Report on the Economic, Social, and Tribal Values of Wilderness in
America, (Ed.: T.P. Holmes, S.  Fox), Southern Research Station General Technical Report, US Forest Service, Asheville, NC.

 

Carr-Harris, A., & Lang, C. (2019). Sustainability and tourism: the effect of the United States’ first offshore wind farm on the vacation rental market. Resource and Energy Economics, 57, 51-67.

 

Dahal, R.P., R.K. Grala, J.S. Gordon, I.A. Munn, D.R. Petrolia, and R. Cummings.  2019.  "A hedonic pricing method to estimate value of waterfront in the Gulf of Mexico."  Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 41(May): 185-94.

 

Dundas, S.J. and R. von Haefen. 2020. “The Effects of Weather on Recreational Fishing Demand and Adaptation: Implications for a Changing Climate,” Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists 7(2): 209-242.

 

English, Eric, Ted McConnell, Joseph Herriges, Frank Lupi and Roger H. von Haefen. "Fixed Costs and Recreation Value," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 101(4): 1082-1097, July 2019.

 

Klaiber, H. Allen & Roger H. von Haefen. "Do Random Coefficient and Alternative Specific Constants Improve Policy Analysis? An Empirical Investigation of Model Fit and Prediction," Environmental and Resource Economics, 73(1): 75-91, May 2019.

 

Landry, Craig E., Andrew G. Keeler, and Stephen Scyphers. 2019. “Household Preferences for Post-storm Coastal Adaptation: An Application of Choice Experiments” Southern Economics Association 89^th Annual Conference: Fort Lauderdale, FL

 

Landry, Craig E., Andrew G. Keeler, and Stephen Scyphers. 2019. “Household Preferences for Post-storm Coastal Adaptation: An Application of Choice Experiments” Forum on Challenges in Natural Resource Economics & Policy, Louisiana State University, 6^th National Forum on Socioeconomic Research in Coastal Systems: New Orleans, LA

 

Lewis, D.J., Dundas, S.J., Kling, D.M., Lew, D.K., and S.D. Hacker. 2019. “The non-market benefits of early and partial gains in managing threatened salmon.” PLOS ONE 14(8): e0220260.

 

Mueller, Julie M., Soder, Adrienne B. and Springer, Abraham E. (2019). “Valuing attributes of restoration in a semi-arid watershed.” Landscape and Urban Planning 184: 78-87.

 

Mueller, Julie M., Lima, Ryan E., Springer, Abraham E. and Schiefer, Erik. (2018). “Using matching methods to estimate impacts of wildfire and post-wildfire flooding on house prices.” Water Resources Research 54(9):6189-6201.

 

Mutandwa, E., R.K. Grala, and D.R. Petrolia.  2019.  “Estimates of willingness to accept compensation to manage pine stands for ecosystem services.”  Forest Policy and Economics 102(May): 75-85.

Naumenko, Alexandra. "Three Essays on the Nonmarket Valuation of the Air and the Sea," Ph.D. Dissertation under the direction of Roger H. von Haefen, Economics Program, North Carolina State University, September 2019.

 

Penn J and W Hu. 2019. Cheap Talk Efficacy under Potential and Actual Hypothetical Bias: A meta-analysis. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. 96: 22-35.

Penn JM, Hu W, and LJ Cox. 2019. Forced Choice with Constant Choice Experiment Complexity. Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics. 44(2): 439-455.

 

Petrolia, D.R. and J. Hwang.  "Accounting for Attribute Non-Attendance in Three Previously-Published Choice Studies of Coastal Resources."  Forthcoming, Marine Resource Economics.

 

Qin, Jin. "A Test of the Relationship between Air Pollution and Exports: The Case of China," Ph.D. Dssertation under the direction of Ivan Kandilov and Roger H. von Haefen, Economics Program, North Carolina State University, January 2019.

 

Trandafir, S., Gaur, V., Behanan, P., Lang, C., Uchida, E., and Miao, H. “Impact of offshore wind turbines on preferences for recreational activities”, submitted on 02/03/2020 to Marine Resource Economics

 

Yehouenou, L., K. Grogan, X. Bi, and T. Borisova. “Improving BMP Cost-Share Enrollment Rates: Insights from a Survey of Florida Farmers”. Agricultural and Resource Economics Review. Accepted.

 

Objective 3

 

Bayham, Jude, Erin J. Belval, Matthew P. Thompson, Christopher Dunn, Crystal S. Stonesifer, and David E. Calkin. 2020. “Weather, Risk, and Resource Orders on Large Wildland Fires in the Western US.” Forests 11 (2): 169.

 

Bayham, Jude and Jonathan K. Yoder.  2020.  “Resource Allocation Under Fire” Land Economics. 96 (1): 92-110.

 

Guilfoos, Todd, Sarah Hayden, Emi Uchida, Vinka Oyanedel-Craver. (2019) WTP for water filters and water quality testing services in Guatemala. Water Resources and Economics. In Press.

 

Khanna, M., BM Gramig, EH DeLucia, X Cai, P Kumar. "Harnessing the Potential of Emerging Technologies to Mitigate the Hypoxia Challenge." Nature Sustainability 2:889-891, 2019.

 

Landry, Craig E., Mona Ahmadiani, and Gregory Colson. 2019. “Structural Empirical Analysis of Decisions under Natural Hazard Risk” in The Future of Risk Management, University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia, PA.

 

Margenot, A, D Kitt, BM Gramig, T Berkshire, N Chatterjee, A Hertzberger, S Aguiar, A Furneaux, N Sharma, R Cusick. "Toward a regional phosphorus (re)cycle in the U.S. Midwest." Journal of Environmental Quality, 48(5):1397-1413.

 

Prokopy, LS, K Floress, JG Arbuckle, SP Church, F Eanes, Y Gao, BM Gramig, P Ranjan, AS Singh. "Adoption of Agricultural Conservation Practices in the United States: Evidence from 35 Years of Quantitative Literature." Journal of Soil and Water Conservation 74(5):520-534, 2019.

 

Roy, Samuel G., Emi Uchida, Simone P. de Souza, Ben Blachly, Emma Fox, Kevin Gardner, Arthur J. Gold, Jessica Jansujwicz, Sharon Klein, Bridie McGreavy, Weiwei Mo, Sean M. C. Smith, Emily Vogler, Karen Wilson, Joseph Zydlewski, David Hart. A multiscale approach to balance trade-offs among dam infrastructure, river restoration, and cost. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Nov 2018, 115 (47) 12069-12074; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1807437115

 

Steele, Amanda Harker, John C. Bergstrom, and J. Wesley Burnett. “Examining the Regional Economic Costs of Electric Power Grid Interruptions Associated with Increased Intermittent Renewable Resource Capacity”, Selected Paper, 2019 North American meetings of the Regional Science Association International, Pittsburgh, PA, November, 2019.

 

Uchida, E., Mead A., Giroux, A., & Hayden, S. (2019). Narragansett Bay Watershed Economy: The ebb and flow of natural capital. Narragansett, R.I.: Coastal Institute at the University of Rhode Island. Available for download https://www.nbweconomy.org/

 

Zia, A., Ding, S., Messer, K. D., Miao, H., Suter, J., Fooks, J. R., Guilfoos, T., Tranda.r, S., Uchida, E., Tsai, Y., Merrill, S., Turnbull, S., and Koliba, C. (2020). Characterizing Heterogeneous Behavior of Non-Point Source Polluters in a Spatial Game under Alternate Sensing and Incentive Designs.  Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management. Accepted.

 

 2020 Meeting Abstracts

 

Title: Do ecological-economic tradeoffs change by types of budget distribution options for forest carbon sequestration in the Central and Southern Appalachian region?

Authors: Cho, Seong-Hoon; Sharma, Bijay P.; Lee, Young Gwan

W4133 task: 1-1

Presenter: Young Lee

Presenter email: ylee51@vols.utk.edu

Abstract:

 

Providing direct payments to landowners is a well-known strategy to preserve and restore ecosystem services (ES). A literature gap dealing with payments for ES is manifest in the lack of attention given to spatial and temporal aspects of cost efficiency in the context of the ecological-economic tradeoff relationship. The purpose of this research is to fill the literature gap by evaluating how different optimal spatial and temporal budget distribution options for protecting ES result in different ecological-economic tradeoffs. As a case study, we develop an empirical framework for the optimal distribution of a given budget for direct payments to forestland owners for forest carbon sequestration in the Central and Southern Appalachian Region in 2001 and 2006. We consistently find concave efficient frontiers between carbon storage and total value-added and also differences in ecological-economic tradeoffs for the three distribution options (i.e., spatially-varying and temporally-fixed distribution options in 2001 and 2006, and a spatially-temporally-varying distribution option for which data are pooled for the two years). The former confirms previous findings of a concave tradeoff relationship, while the latter new finding suggests that balancing weights between the two objectives with preferences of decision makers can be effectively done depending on distribution options.

 

Title: Evidence of Extremeness Aversion in Preferences for Public Park Attributes

Authors: Lendie Folletta and Brian Vander Naald

W4133 task: 2-1

Presenter: Brian Vander Naald

Presenter email: brian.vandernaald@drake.edu

Abstract:

 

Methods for exploring the so-called “compromise effect" in discrete choice experiments was first introduced in the context of brand choice (Simonson 1989). Also termed extremeness aversion in the transportation literature, there does not appear to be much evidence of it in the environmental economics literature, so we explore it here. In November 2012, residents of Polk County, Iowa passed the ten-year, $50 million Polk County Water and Legacy Bond. The goal of the bond was to protect water quality around the two largest watersheds converging in Des Moines. One projected outcome was an improvement in recreational opportunities at watershed dependent public parks in Polk County. Using data from a discrete choice experiment, we estimate willingness to pay for improvements in different public park amenities. Surveys were administered at three different Polk County Parks during the summers of 2017 and 2018 examining preferences for different attributes at public parks. 937 surveys were completed.

Three groups of respondents saw three different sets of attribute levels. Preliminary estimates indicate that users are WTP between $100 and $240 per year for a 100% increase in water clarity, and between $106 and $163 per year for a 100% increase in good game fish at Polk County Parks. Smaller, but still positive, WTP estimates were found for increases in park land and bird diversity. We use a Bayesian Error Components Model to explore the presence of extremeness aversion in responses. We find preliminary evidence of extremeness aversion, wherein WTP values for identical attribute levels are different across

groups who saw different sets of attribute levels.

 

Title: WTP for biodiversity protection: Evidence from Waikamoi Preserve

Authors: Sonja Kolstoe, Brian Vander Naald, and Alison Cohan

W4133 task: 2-1

Presenter: Sonja Kolstoe

Presenter email: shkolstoe@salisbury.edu

Abstract:

 

In Hawai'i, the `Ohi'a tree makes up approximately 80% of the native forests, and serves as

critical habitat for the state's native forest birds. An immediate potential threat to these forests is

Rapid `Ohi'a Death, or ROD, a introduced fungal disease. First found on the Big Island of Hawai'I in 2014, ROD is responsible for killing off large quantities of `Ohi'a trees. ROD has also been found on the island of Kaua'i and, more recently, on Maui and Oahu. The Nature Conservancy manages several land parcels in the state of Hawaii to include Waikmaoi Preserve which is located on the island of Maui. Waikamoi is the single-largest privately held nature preserve in the state and the Nature Conservancy is responsible for protecting the fragile ecosystem per their conservation easement agreement.

Waikamoi Preserve's vast `Ohi'a-dominant forest is the last stronghold for 63 species of rare

plants and 10 species of birds, five of them endangered. These species are threatened by the introduction of invasive species and climate change. Visitors to Waikamoi Preserve mostly commonly come to see Hawai'i's rare and endemic forest bird species, including the `akohekohe or Crested Honeycreeper (endangered), kiwikiu or Maui Parrotbill (critically endangered), i`iwi or Scarlet Honeycreeper (threatened), and the endemic `alauahio or Maui creeper (not currently listed as threatened). ROD has not yet been found near Waikamoi Preserve, but there is concern that it could be introduced in the future. Due to the heightened concerns of introducing ROD or some other introduced species or disease, access to Waikamoi has been limited since in order to reduce risk of introducing new invasive species such as ROD.

In 2016, the American Birding Association added Hawaii to its North American Birding List,

which served as a large and positive demand shock for access to Waikamoi Preserve and The

Nature Conservancy is seeking a long-term solution about how to provide access. We use a discrete choice experiment (DCE) to collect preference data from Qualtric's national sample in Fall 2019 to investigate the following questions: (1) how much are people willing to pay for expanded access to the Preserve and (2) how much they are willing to pay to mitigate the risks to the Preserve posed by invasive species and climate change. The DCE is designed to estimate willingness to pay (WTP) both for expanded access, as well as for di_erent bird abundances and levels of risk of a new invasive species or disease. We will gather preference responses from over 1000 respondents using Qualtrics. We will explore average WTP and how it varies systematically based on observable characteristics.

 

Title: Making sense of applying herbicide in forest

Authors: Yukiko Hashida and David Kling

W4133 task: 1-1

Presenter: Yukiko Hashida

Presenter email: yhashida@uga.edu

Abstract:

 

Meeting human needs for natural resources while conserving biodiversity is one of the critical challenges. Addressing the challenge requires understanding trade-offs between the economic value of commodity production and biodiversity; as many resource management worldwide has intensified and accelerating biodiversity loss, it is becoming increasingly essential to understand the trade-offs that landowners face in determining the management decisions. On the other hand, some argue for harnessing the potential of higher-yield production to make space for nature and free up land for conserving biodiversity and ecosystem services (Phalan et al., 2016). On private industrial forestland, diverse early-seral ecosystems have continued to decline because of intensive forest management practices that convert hardwoods and shrubby areas to conifers, suppress hardwoods in plantations, and accelerate canopy closures (Phalan et al., 2019). Private industrial forest landowners commonly apply herbicide to reduce competing vegetation, even though the application has been controversial from both human and ecosystem health perspectives (Rolando et al., 2017). Because of the substantial opportunity costs associated with forest management (e.g., it takes a long time to establish forest), landowners base their herbicide application decision on the assumption that the profit gain from an increased volume from herbicide outweighs the costs.

Previous ecological study (Newton, 2019; paper is still under review) confirms that without herbicide, we need to spread out forestry operations to get the same amount of lumber, indicating the above trade-off of intensive management and economy of scale. It also states that spraying herbicide does not always generate additional financial values, especially for landowners with higher discount rates (>7%). This finding raises a question of the economic rationale of herbicide application. The fact that private landowners almost exclusively apply herbicide despite the potential financial loss creates an interesting research opportunity to verify it using the empirical herbicide application data and coupling it with the biodiversity species metrics.

This study spatially quantifies the biodiversity-yield tradeoffs with empirical herbicide application data in Oregon. We have privately obtained plot-level herbicide application data from the Oregon Department of Forestry that includes about 100,000 records of herbicide application between 1990 and 2014. The data includes a method of application, acreage of herbicide applied, locations up to PLSS quarter-quad level, owner type (federal, state, private, corporate etc.), and owner names etc. Almost 90% of the areas applied with herbicide are private industrial forestlands, and 60% of the application is done by helicopters (average 100 acres each application). The application has sharply increased until 2006 followed by a sharp decline in usage among private industrial owners.

The study aims to address: 1) identifying the economic factors that drive herbicide applications based on the past application behaviors and 2) linking the economic values from commodity production and negative impact on biodiversity, with the aim to provide policymakers evidence-based rationales to convince landowners where and when herbicide application might not make economic sense.

 

Title: Effects of Stated Attribute Non-attendance and Attribute Importance in Nonmarket Valuation

Authors: Qianyan Wu, Xiang Bi, and Zhifeng Gao

W4133 task: 2-1

Presenter: Xiang Bi

Presenter email: xiangbi@ufl.edu

Abstract:

 

Valuation of complex ecosystems through survey is often confounded with attribute non-attendance (ANA) behaviors in which respondents simplify choices by ignoring one or more attributes of the ecosystem to be valued in discrete choice experiments (DCE). The observed ANA behavior is often assumed to be a heuristic thus should not influence willingness to pay. However, if ANA actually reflects genuine preference instead of a heuristic, this might result in misleading welfare estimates and thus suboptimal policy advice (Heidenreich et al. 2018). Choosing the appropriate method to distinguish ANA heuristic vs. true preference and examining the impacts of treating ANA as heuristic or preference can significantly affect welfare estimates.  Specifically, DCEs in environment and natural resources may be prone to the use of this ANA processing strategies. When experiments include a strong attribute, especially familiar one, individual may be more likely to consider this attribute at the expense of others to overcome some cognitive burden and avoid unfamiliar attributes.

 

One approach to address ANA is to use additional information from the respondents by asking follow-up questions on whether specific attributes are ignored (Cameron and DeShazo, 2010; Alemu et al., 2013; Colombo and Glenk, 2014; Glenk et al., 2015). Then zero impact is assigned to the ignored attributes on the likelihood assuming that self-reported ANA statements is accurate, and the ANA behavior is uniform across choices. However, this might cause measurement errors problems in stated ANA when respondents that state ignoring specific attributes actually do not fully ignore it and put a different importance on it instead. Carlsson et al. (2010) suggest that instead of ignoring attributes completely, respondents may put less weight on attributes they claim to have not pay attention to. For example, they find that the most often ignored attribute is also the attribute that receives the lowest preference ranking. Other empirical studies also find that even though respondents state they ignore specific attributes, this might not be totally true (e.g. Campbell and Lorimer, 2009; Hess and Hensher, 2010). Hence, the conventional method by fixing ignored attribute coefficient to zero is inappropriate. Incorrectly constraining ignored attributes to have a zero coefficient could result in a mis-specified model (Hole et al., 2013). Recently, Scarpa et al. (2012) proposed a tool to validate self-reported stated ANA statements by specifying an indirect utility function with partitioned coefficients for each of the attributes, depending on whether the respondent identified the attribute as considered or ignored when making their decision.

 

In this paper, we propose an extension of the ANA validation approach proposed by Scapa et al (2012) by using additional information on stated importance for each attribute.  Following Scarpa et al. (2012), we validate the ANA statements in which two coefficients for each attribute are estimated (one for the self-reported considered attributes and one for the self-reported ignored attributes). We then partition the ignored attribute into three additional categories: not important, very important, and neither important nor unimportant.  We compare the willingness to pay estimates and model performance using conventional models, ANA models assuming ignored attributes to have zero impact, Scapa’s model, and our proposed model.

 

We find that the conventional approach of fixing ignored attributes to zero may not be appropriate since attributes claimed to have been ignored are actually not completely ignored according to the conditional logit model, which confirm the findings of Hess and Hensher (2010) and Carlsson et al. (2010). In mixed logit models, we find that ignore attributes coefficients are insignificant, indicating to some extend of appropriateness of standard ANA approach. Our extension with stated attribute importance has some bearings on the appropriateness of the standard ANA approach. For those respondents who stated they ignored specific attributes and also think this attribute is not important, our model confirm that these respondents actually have zero preference for these ignored attributes. For attributes that are important, our preference parameter estimates are found to be significant different from zero even if the respondents stated that they are ignored.

 

Title: Estimating Willingness to Pay with Referendum Follow-up Multiple-Bounded Uncertainty Choice Questions

Authors: Craig Landry and John C. Whitehead

W4133 task: 2-1

Presenter: John C. Whitehead

Presenter email: whiteheadjc@appstate.edu

Abstract:

 

The hypothetical referendum is considered to be incentive compatible and has become the preferred question format for contingent valuation studies. Yet, it provides a minimal amount of information with which to estimate willingness-to-pay and its determinants. This tends to lead to wide confidence intervals and at times limited evidence of theoretical validity of referendum responses. Follow-up referendum questions have been used to increase statistical efficiency and conduct internal scope and other validity tests but these have been prone to anchoring and incentive incompatibility. Using data from a survey of North Carolina residents about coastal erosion policies we present respondents with a multiple bounded payment card question that explicitly addresses the uncertainty inherent in any hypothetical scenario and allows for the expression of respondent uncertainty. We find that the resulting willingness to pay estimates are not biased when compared to those from the single bound dichotomous choice and they are more efficient, finding scope effects where the single model data does not.

 

Title: Revisiting Opt-out Responses in Contingent Valuation

Authors: Joonghyun Hwang and Daniel R. Petrolia

W4133 task: 2-1

Presenter: Joonghyun Hwang

Presenter email: Joonghyun.Hwang@MyFWC.com

Abstract:

 

This paper revisits the topic of opt-out responses in contingent valuation from a fresh perspective.  We test if opt-out is similar to yes or no based on two criteria: the vector of beta estimates and variances using the nested logit model.  We examine effects of discarding opt-out responses from estimation based on two criteria: the vector of beta estimates and the vector of sample means, given that willingness to pay calculation is based on the two.  This is important because comparing willingness to pay estimates directly may result in a false conclusion if differences in some elements in either beta or sample means vectors between samples are offset by differences in some other elements.  We find evidence that welfare estimates may be affected by discarding opt-out responses. 

 

Title: Price Perception and Willingness to Vote for Public Goods

Authors: Corey Lang, Casey Wichman, and Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz

W4133 task: 2-1

Presenter: Corey Lang

Presenter email: clang@uri.edu

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. In theory, referendums set a price and quantity for public goods and allow voters to do a cost-benefit analysis when deciding how to vote.

The purpose of this paper is to assess how well voters understand referendum costs and the implications of misperceived costs. We conducted exit polls in three municipalities and directly asked voters how much in additional taxes they would pay if a municipal referendum appearing on their November 2018 ballot passed. The referendums varied in terms of targeted public goods (open space, smart growth, road repairs), funding mechanisms (property taxes, bonds), and total costs. Household specific costs varied based on the specifics of the referendum and the respondent’s housing value. We incentivized accuracy and truthful responses by paying respondents for correct answers. Additionally, the survey was self-administered and anonymous, which mitigates social desirability bias.

Basic summary statistics from the survey clearly indicate that voters do not understand the financial consequences of their vote. 59% of respondents did not even guess at the referendum cost. Of those that did register a guess, there is evidence of a common heuristic; distributions are similar across the three municipalities despite one being substantially cheaper than the others. Lastly, there is near-zero correlation with actual cost.

We estimate models of willingness to vote (approve) and include stated cost or actual cost as independent variables, similar to the analysis of a binary contingent valuation choice experiment. Results suggest that stated cost has a negative and statistically significant impact on approval, as would be expected for the cost parameter, but actual cost has a statistically insignificant effect and the coefficient is positive. These results suggest that voters are responsive to price, but are responding to incorrectly perceived price. The implications are that 1) demand modeling using voting data may be biased due to voters misunderstanding of prices and 2) improved understanding of prices may have a substantial impact on which voters approve and the aggregate approval.

 

Title: Status Quo Bias and Public Policy: Evidence in the Context of Carbon Mitigation

Authors: Corey Lang, Michael Weir, and Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz

W4133 task: 1-4, 2-1

Presenter: Michael Weir

Presenter email: michaeljweir@uri.edu

Abstract:

 

Carbon mitigation policy is necessary for managing climate change. Despite broad beliefs in climate change and the need for action (Pew 2019), there have only been two referendums seeking to establish a carbon policy (both in Washington State) and both have failed by large margins. In contrast, New England states and California have created successful carbon mitigation policies through their legislature, and California voters overwhelmingly voted down a measure to scrap their policy when given the option.

What can explain this divergent experience? In this paper, we explore the possibility of status quo bias in public policy preferences. That is, do people prefer policies that are already in place to identical policies that are being proposed? The status quo bias/endowment effect literature is rich, but primarily focuses on private goods (Adamowicz et al. 1993), but also some public goods (Banford et al. 1980). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to look specifically at policy and the context of a ballot referendum for policy.

We conduct a survey of people’s preferences for carbon mitigation policy in Rhode Island. The context of our research is the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which was implemented in 2008 by ten states in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. RGGI established a regional cap on CO2 emissions electric generating facilities that use fossil fuels and required all power plants to purchase permits when they produce CO2. Despite this success and prominence, the reality is that few people know about this policy. We use this ignorance to our advantage to be able to ask the same population questions about approval of a hypothetical carbon mitigation policy that under one frame does not exist and under a second frame already does. To avoid deception, we additionally ask a qualifying question to ensure that anyone that actually knows about RGGI only sees the frame that the policy exists. We build on Kotchen et al. (2017), who conduct a referendum-style, contingent valuation survey to measure willingness to pay (WTP) for a carbon tax.

Preliminary analysis indicates that 70.1% of those in the existing policy frame want to stay in the program versus only 59.6% of those in the new policy frame want to join the program. Further, results suggest a WTP/WTA discrepancy in carbon mitigation policy. For those given the new policy frame, we calculate average WTP is $170 more each year in electric bills to join the initiative (quite comparable to Kotchen et al.’s estimate of $177). For those given the existing policy frame, we calculate average WTA is $427 to leave the policy.

These results extend prior evidence that discrepancies between WTP and WTA should be accounted for in both economic models and policy design. Further, this may provide guidance for states seeking to enact policies that voters would not approve of at the ballot box, but would support once in place.

 

Title: Projecting Irrigation Water Demand

Authors: Jeff Mullen

W4133 task: 1-1

Presenter: Jeff Mullen

Presenter email: jmullen@uga.edu

Abstract:

 

Future climatic conditions are anticipated to have profound effects on agricultural productivity and the demand for irrigation water that vary by location depending on resource endowments and economic conditions. Crop growth simulation models such as DSSAT can offer powerful insight into the effects of weather and management practices on agricultural production. One of the fundamental questions that must be addressed during a simulation exercise, however, is “What is the producer’s objective function?” A researcher’s choice of objective function can significantly affect the predictions derived from a modeling exercise as well as the prescriptive policy recommendations based on those predictions. The economic literature has identified numerous possible objective functions for agricultural producers, the two most prominent of which are yield maximization and profit maximization.

We have currently modeled four crops– corn, cotton, peanut, and soybean – in Georgia. For each crop, we simulate county-level yield and irrigation water use for 7 irrigation management strategies under 4 future climate scenarios through the year 2100. For each year, 100 county-level weather files are developed using MarkSim for 4 representative concentration pathways (RCPs) – RCP 2.6, RCP 4.5, RCP 6.0, and RCP 8.5 – to simulate crop production. Coupling the production simulations with projected water prices and crop prices allows us to generate county-level distributions of yields, net returns, and water use for each RCP and irrigation management strategy.

With our county-level distributional results for each of the nine crops, we are able to estimate the following for each of the 4 RCPs, over both time and space: 1) the economic (crop price and water price) conditions under which yield maximization and profit maximization lead to the same “optimal” irrigation management strategy; 2) thresholds for the economic parameters above which the optimal strategies for the two objective functions diverge; 3) the water price threshold above which profits under rainfed production exceed those of irrigated production; 4) expected yield impacts of climate change under optimal irrigation management; 5) expected irrigated water demand as a function of water price; and 6) the relative profitability of crops.

 

Title: Fall in the Sea, Eventually? A Green Paradox in Climate Adaptation for Coastal Housing Markets

Authors: Lee C. Parton, Steven J. Dundas

W4133 task: 1-2, 3-1

Presenter: Lee Parton

Presenter email: leeparton@boisestate.edu

Abstract:

 

Integration of science into policy is a primary challenge for climate change adaptation. Yet, when communication of climate science results in a policy signal without concurrent political action, the economic incentives created by the expectation of policy change may have unintended consequences. We examine the effect on new housing development resulting from a scientific report by a regulatory agency mandating coastal communities in North Carolina (NC) consider sea-level rise when developing new land-use policies. Estimates from our preferred triple-differences model suggest the policy announcement increased building permits by 32% in coastal NC counties. This result is supported by numerous robustness checks, including alternative controls, placebo tests, and a parcel-level model in Dare County, NC. This green paradox in coastal climate adaptation implies that hundreds of millions of dollars in additional unregulated housing was constructed in NC locations vulnerable to sea-level rise likely due incentives generated by the policy signal.

 

Title: Estimating preservation values for brown bears in Katmai National Park: when the marginal value of an individual matters

Authors: Lynne Lewis and Leslie Richardson

W4133 task: 2-1, 1-3

Presenter: Lynne Lewis

Presenter email: llewis@bates.edu

Abstract:

 

The economic benefits supported by healthy wildlife populations is important in a variety of decision-making contexts on our public lands. This has led to a number of studies examining the direct use values associated with consumptive uses of wildlife, such as fishing and hunting, non-consumptive uses of wildlife, such as wildlife viewing, as well as total economic values derived from the preservation of species, particularly rare and endangered species. The vast majority of this literature has focused on large percentage gains or avoided losses in the population of a particular species or a recreational outcome, such as hunting success. However, there are many contexts in which the estimation of marginal values is more useful for policy. For instance, questions about the benefits of increasing species population numbers above some minimum viable population requires information on incremental values. Further, land management agencies such as the National Park Service often have to determine the value the public places on an individual animal that is poached or accidentally killed. These values are used in the damage assessment and restoration process in an effort to make the public “whole” for such injuries. However, the lack of relevant economic studies on the topic often leads to a reliance on state restitution values or some sort of replacement value, which may not adequately compensate the public for the loss of wildlife resources in national parks and other federal lands. Further, questions often arise as to what sort of value people place on these animals in unique situations where visitors or the general public are able to identify and connect with individual animals through mediums like online webcam viewing, books, or symbolic adoption programs.

 

This research explores various approaches that can be used to determine the marginal value of an iconic individual animal, focusing on both use and passive use values. A case study utilizing unique survey data from viewers of the popular Katmai National Park & Preserve bear webcams is discussed. Using webcam survey data, we explore the contributions to value of a unique individual of a species. Much has been written about charismatic wildlife influencing conservation motivations, but almost nothing has been written about whether certain individuals within subpopulations of species have more influence on conservation motivations, willingness to pay for conservation and/or willingness to pay for viewing privileges of that individual. 

 

We present the results of an on-line survey of bear cam viewers from the summer of 2019. As part of that survey we ask stated preference willingness-to-pay questions focused on the total economic value held for an individual bear at Katmai. In addition, we examine various factors that could influence this value, such as the ability to view the animals off-site through webcams and the ability to identify and connect with individual animals. This research has significant implications for policy and land management decisions related to wildlife. Results of this survey will also inform the design of an on-site visitor survey we expect to implement in the summer of 2020.

 

Title: Wildfire Smoke Avoidance Behavior

Authors: Jude Bayham, Jesse Burkhardt, Christine Dimke, Kevin Berry

W4133 task: 1-1, 1-3, 2-2

Presenter: Jude Bayham

Presenter email: jude.bayham@colostate.edu

Abstract:

 

Each year, hundreds of wildfires bellow smoke into the air exposing millions of people to harmful pollutants, especially in the Western US. Nationwide, wildfire smoke is responsible for over 30% of PM2.5 emissions (EPA 2016). Public health recommendations include foregoing outdoor activities and particularly strenuous activities. While there exists evidence from targeted surveys that individuals do comply with some forms of public service announcement (Sugerman et al. 2012), there is little nationwide evidence that people engage in costly avoidance behavior during smoke events (although, there is evidence that people are willing to pay to avoid smoke exposure (Richardson, Loomis and Champ 2013; Kochi et al. 2016; Jones and Berrens 2017;

Jones 2018) ). We address this gap in the literature by compiling a novel dataset of daily time-use data, smoke plumes, and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) to investigate whether people spend less time on outdoor activities during wildfire smoke events.

Our data come from multiple sources. The American Time Use Survey (ATUS) asks a nationally representative sample of people how they spent 24 hours of their day minute by minute (ATUS 2017). The replies are coded into one of over 400 activity codes and one of 25 activity codes, which allows us to create activity categories such as recreation activities occurring outdoors. We merge the activity data with energy expenditure data to quantify the level of vigor for each activity. The ATUS is a subsample of the Current Population Survey and therefore contains detailed socioeconomic and demographic data including weekly earnings. Satellite-derived

daily smoke plume data is published by the NOAA Hazard Mapping System (HMS 2018). We integrate these data with daily PM2.5 data krigged across the continental US at 15km resolution (Brey et al. 2018). We link individual ATUS respondents to smoke plume and PM2.5 data based on the county (or core-based statistical area) and the date of their diary. Our dataset spans 2006-2017 and includes 114,602 respondents.

Despite the increasing frequency of large wildfires, smoke events are a fairly rare phenomenon for most US residents. Therefore, we use matching methods to estimate the effect of smoke plume exposure. Individuals are matched based on observable demographics. Individuals may avoid fire smoke by reducing the time spent on outdoor activities (intensive margin) or foregoing the activity altogether (extensive margin). We investigate avoidance behavior on the extensive margin.

We estimate the model for a broad definition of outdoor activities as well as specific activities to investigate the heterogeneity in response. We use a similar specification to test our hypothesis of avoidance behavior on the intensive margin where the dependent variable is the number of minutes spent doing the activity conditional on spending at least one

minute. Preliminary estimates suggest that people are 3% less likely to engage in outdoor activities when smoke plumes are present. We plan to investigate the policy-relevant question of which activities are perceived as substitutes when smoke plumes are present. We will also investigate the extent to which people substitute intertemporally. People may delay outdoor exercise until air quality improves. If smoke plumes are present for extended durations, people may become impatient or acclimate to the poor air quality and continue outdoor activities.

We conclude the analysis with a partial analysis of the cost of avoidance behavior. Since the ATUS is a subsample of the CPS, we observe the weekly earnings of employed individuals at the time of the survey. We develop a quasi-travel cost method to estimate the economic damages of wildfire smoke. This paper makes several contributions to the literature on wildfire policy and economics. First, we provide nationwide evidence of smoke avoidance behavior, which implies that exposure to smoke is endogenous and empirical models associating smoke-induced emissions with health outcomes are likely underestimating the true effect (Neidell 2009; Moretti and Neidell 2011). Second, we contribute to the literature on avoidance behavior by studying a visibly salient risk. In contrast to information treatments such as the Air Quality Index

used in (Ward and Beatty 2016), fire smoke can be seen, smelled, and felt in the respiratory system. Lastly, we document the challenge of working with satellite-derived smoke plume data as a source of ground-level air pollution. Many smoke plumes travel and ultimately dissipate in the upper atmosphere having little to no impact on ground-level air pollution. This caution is particularly important given the increasing popularity of satellite-derived smoke and air quality products as sources of exogenous variation.

 

Title: A Laboratory Comparison of Risk Mitigation Strategies in Conservation Markets

Authors: Kristi Hansen, Chian Jones Ritten, Amy Nagler, Chris Bastian

W4133 task: 1-1, 3-1

Presenter: Chian Jones Ritten

Presenter email: chian.jonesritten@uwyo.edu

Abstract:

 

Interest in market-based conservation programs has been growing among public land management agencies and stakeholders (Hansen et al. 2013). One such program type is habitat exchanges, which are designed to provide market-based incentives for landowners to implement science-based conservation without undergoing the relatively onerous process of establishing a conservation bank. Habitat exchanges are under development for greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) and other species of interest in several western U.S. states. Through a habitat exchange, buyers and sellers trade quantifiable, third-party verified units of conservation, called credits. Landowners generate credits by implementing practices that produce measurable conservation outcomes to maintain or enhance habitat for sage-grouse habitat or other species. Initial credit buyers will likely be energy companies seeking off-site compensatory mitigation for impacts from development activities that cannot be avoided, minimized, or reclaimed.

Habitat exchanges are an innovative but largely untested idea. Many issues remain regarding their structure and performance. Trading institution structure coupled with risks faced by conservation providers will affect the quantity of conservation produced and the distribution of benefits between buyers and sellers. To create a successful exchange, it is crucial to establish trading institutions and incentives appropriate to the resource from program inception. Yet many questions regarding efficient market institutions for exchanges remain unaddressed.

In particular, we know from agricultural market research that the various risks borne by sellers in the production of conventional agricultural commodities impact market outcomes (Menkhaus et al. 2007; Phillips et al. 2014). How does the post-production risk of credit failure—the risk that conservation credits fail to maintain measurable habitat improvements over their contract life—further impact market outcomes? In cases where this credit failure risk is significant, how should a market-based conservation program be structured to both encourage landowner participation and increase measurable conservation?

Lamb et al. (2019) find that credit failure risk significantly reduces habitat credit production and trade in this market environment. They further find that a private party risk mitigation strategy of buyers reimbursing sellers for production costs on failed units could mitigate these impacts. Specifically, reimbursing sellers for production costs on credits that fail to maintain habitat quality for their contract life can significantly mitigate reductions in conservation production resulting from this risk. In this study we build on their findings to explore whether an insurance instrument could further improve market efficiency.

We compare the relative market efficiency of two mechanisms for mitigating the risk of post-production credit failure in habitat exchanges: cost reimbursement (buyers automatically reimburse sellers when credits fail post-transaction) and insurance (where participants choose ex ante whether to buy insurance). We also explore whether market efficiency improves more if sellers versus buyers bear the risk of credit failure (and thus choose whether to buy insurance); and how buyers and sellers respond to an actuarially fair versus subsidized insurance premium.

We implement a simplified private negotiation laboratory market to assess the relative impact of seller cost reimbursement and an insurance instrument on market outcomes (quantity traded, price, overall earnings, distribution of earnings between buyers and sellers) in the presence of credit failure risk. Our questions and objectives suggest six treatments (all in the presence of credit failure risk) that vary by who bears credit failure risk (buyer versus seller), risk mitigation policy (reimbursement versus insurance) and, for the insurance treatments, whether the premium is actuarially fair or subsidized.

Experimental procedures follow standard practices (Davis and Holt 1993) and relate to previous research (Menkhaus et al. 2007; Phillips et al. 2014; and others). Our experimental market consists of a private negotiation setting, where subjects participate as randomly selected buyers or sellers and trade a commodity referred to as a “unit.” Each unit represents a conservation credit traded in a conservation market setting.

We conducted 5 experimental sessions for each of the treatments in our design. Participants receive an average of approximately $40 in compensation for a two-hour time commitment, depending on their performance. Preliminary results show that seller earnings are higher with reimbursement than an actuarially fair insurance policy. This is true whether they bear the risk of credit failure or not. Of the reimbursement and actuarially fair insurance treatments, quantity traded, quantity produced, and seller earnings are all highest when buyers reimburse sellers for the production costs of failed units. Earnings are more evenly distributed between buyers and sellers, and prices are lower, when buyers bear the risk of credit failure, regardless of whether a reimbursement or insurance policy is implemented. Ongoing data analysis includes regressions using convergence analysis (see for example Noussair et al. 1995), allowing us to test the significance of market outcome differences across treatments.

Without mechanisms in place to mitigate credit failure risk, habitat exchanges and other market-based environmental programs could result in much less conservation than hoped for. In the extreme, habitat exchanges could fail to attract sufficient landowners to supply credits, ultimately dooming them to fail. We will discuss the implications of our results regarding the relative merits of reimbursement insurance in the real-world conditions likely to prevail in habitat exchanges across the western U.S.

 

Title: Congestion Pricing for Outdoor Recreation: An Application to Shoreline Recreation in the Gulf Coast

Authors: Roger H. von Haefen and Frank Lupi

W4133 task: 1-3, 3-1

Presenter: Frank Lupi

Presenter email: lupi@msu.edu

Abstract:

 

Coastal beaches are generally maintained in public trust around the world.  As such, recreational access is typically free to all, and overuse and congestion often result.  This paper estimates efficient congestion prices for coastal beaches in the U.S. Gulf Coast region.  Following Timmins and Murdock (JEEM, 2007), we model congestion as the outcome of a Nash bargaining game in which individuals make choices given expectations about the decisions that others make.  We employ a novel panel data, instrumental variable estimator that leverages the properties of the equilibrium sorting process and one of the largest and most detailed recreational data sets ever assembled.  After simulating the optimal congestion prices for the Gulf region that are either uniform throughout the year and Gulf Coast or varying by quarter and year, we evaluate their efficiency and distributional properties as well as their revenue-raising potential. 

 

Title: Estimating the value of threatened species abundance dynamics: a structural econometric approach using choice experiment data

Authors: David M. Kling, David J. Lewis, Steven J. Dundas, and Daniel K. Lew

W4133 task: 2-1, 2-2

Presenter: Steven J. Dundas

Presenter email: steven.dundas@oregonstate.edu

Abstract:

 

Natural capital valuation is a rapidly-growing area of economics. For extracted resources, like ground water, recent methodological advances account for the influence of stock dynamics on value (e.g., Fenichel and Abbot 2016). Bringing the same dynamic perspective to value forms of natural capital with primarily non-consumptive benefits remains a significant gap in the literature. Threatened species are one economically-significant example. Most research apply non-market valuation methods, typically based on stated preference data, to value outcomes for threatened species abundance at some future date (Lew 2015). These outcomes are typically either a non-marginal population change , or the attainment of official recovery status (e.g., de-listing under the U.S. Endangered Species Act) (Lew et al. 2010). One recent study investigates whether the public values differences in the path taken by threatened species abundance along the way to a final outcome, for example a quick versus slow rebuilding trajectory (Lewis et al. 2019). None of these approaches provide information on the flow of non-consumptive value provided by threatened species at the level of detail needed to be included alongside market values in benefit-cost and capital valuation studies.

We introduce a method for estimating parameters of an intertemporal non-consumptive benefit function from choice experiment data. To illustrate our approach, we draw on a recently-completed choice experiment survey of household preferences for recovering Oregon Coast Coho (OCC) salmon, a species listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (Lewis et al. 2019). A key feature of the experimental design is that households were shown the time path of expected OCC salmon abundance under different alternative management scenarios in each choice card. These paths were generated using a known functional form. As a result, we observe preferences for management options that vary in salmon abundance over time (i.e., annually) instead of only the end result. Other attributes of the experiment include the official recovery status of OCC salmon, recreational fishing limits, and management program cost. Importantly, Lewis et al. (2019) find that respondents to the general population survey did not value changes in recreational limits, suggesting that non-consumptive values were a primary driver of the social benefits derived from increases in salmon abundance.

We fit a non-linear random utility model that includes the present value of utility accumulated at the individual-level from dynamic changes in abundance, along with other OCC salmon outcome attributes. To address household-level discounting, we compare results from estimating the average discount rate jointly with other indirect utility parameters with specifications where we fix the rate at a level elicited separately for each household in the original survey. We then scale up our preferred specification for households to a social non-consumptive benefit function by adjusting for survey non-response and then applying a conservative bound on the extent of the market (the U.S. Pacific Northwest and parts of Northern California). The result is a money-metric social non-consumptive benefit function over OCC salmon abundance, recovery status, and other attributes, which we view as being suitable for inclusion in natural capital valuation and policy analysis. We find evidence that survey respondents have strong time preferences for achieving gains in salmon abundance gains quicker.

Our method for integrating non-market valuation and capital theory provides a roadmap for bringing non-consumptive value into the contemporary economics of natural capital (e.g. such as Fenichel et al. 2016). An important feature of our approach is the addition of credible counterfactual paths of expected stock abundance to widely-used choice experiment designs for threatened species valuation. Applications to other ecosystem service flows are possible.

 

Title: Variable uncertainty in free-form environmental valuation models

Authors: Rob Johnston, Klaus Moeltner, Zhenyu Yao

W4133 task: 1-1, 2-1, 3-2

Presenter: Klaus Moeltner

Presenter email: moeltner@vt.edu

Abstract:

 

In this EPA-funded work on water quality in New England we introduce a novel valuation

methodology that allows survey respondent to examine water quality across a large watershed via an interactive map, in addition to receiving summary statistics on cleanup outcomes for a given policy scenario. Respondents then answer a standard referendum-style question if they would be willing to pay a specified bid to achieve the water quality outcomes shown on the map.

Concurrently, we developed a Bayesian econometric model search approach that determines

which of the many possible choice heuristics (e.g. conditions at a specific location or overall for a variety of quality indicators) is the main driver of respondents' choices. We show the significant improvements in the accuracy and efficiency of predicted WTP the model search algorithm brings over a \kitchen sink" approach that estimates a single model with all possible variables included.

We believe that this econometric framework will be useful for many modern, GIS-intensive

stated preference applications, where respondents are given considerable freedom and flexibility to apply spatially informed choice heuristics.

 

Title: The Value of Ecosystems: Bat Population Crashes and Agriculture in the US

Authors: Dale T. Manning and Amy Ando

W4133 task: 2-1

Presenter: Dale T. Manning

Presenter email: dale.manning@colostate.edu

Abstract:

 Ecosystems, or ecological capital, supply valuable natural inputs to many sectors of production. Despite creating economic value, ecosystems often lack a market price while providing public goods and services. As a result, private decision-makers underinvest in their maintenance. In this paper, we estimate the ow value of an underappreciated service provided by a non-market ecological capital. Specifically, bat populations supply agricultural producers with unpriced pest control. Using the sudden arrival and spread of White-nose Syndrome (WNS), which nearly extinguishes infected bat populations, we quantify the impact of bat population collapse on agricultural land rents in US counties and find that rents after a WNS outbreak fall by nearly 4%. We also find that corn yields fall while agricultural input expenses increase. This suggests that producers can imperfectly substitute for the loss of unpriced capital by investing in costly alternatives. We use the reduced form estimate to calculate a welfare cost as producers lose the unpriced natural input. Allowing total acres to be endogenous, we find that economic surplus falls in WNS-infected counties by nearly $600,000 per county-year. This implies that if WNS arrives to all counties in the analysis (n = 2,328), annual costs to the agricultural sector could reach $1.4 billion.

Results are robust across specifications and have important policy and economic implications. First, many bat populations roost on public lands and measures exist to control the spread of WNS. Therefore, public land managers can play a role in preventing or slowing the spread of WNS. More generally, the economically significant value suggests that economists should continue to explore how market economic value depends on unpriced natural inputs. Further, spatially linking ecosystem and economic data provides a fruitful avenue for estimating the importance of ecosystems to the market economy.

This work contributes to w4133 Task 2-1 because it provides an example of combining agricultural data with ecosystem data to estimate a non-market value. It also has implications for Task 1-2 (Economic Analysis of Natural Hazards (_re, invasive species, climate change)) because ecosystem management on public lands will become increasingly challenging in the face of climate change.

 

Title: Wildfire Threatens Outdoor Recreation in the Western US

Authors: Jacob Gellman, Margaret Walls, Matthew Wibbenmeyer

W4133 task: 1-3, 2-2

Presenter: Matthew Wibbenmeyer

Presenter email: wibbenmeyer@rff.org

Abstract:

 

Outdoor recreation provides considerable economic surplus to participants, and contributes substantially to overall US GDP. In the western US, outdoor recreation on public lands has increased in recent years. However, this growth in outdoor recreation has coincided with increasing prevalence of wildfires and wildfire smoke within western states. In many areas, wildfire season overlaps with peak outdoor recreation season, potentially disrupting recreation activity and hurting communities dependent on recreation-related tourism.

In this paper, we combine administrative data on outdoor recreation on federal lands in the western US with spatial data on wildfires and wildfire smoke to study how wildfires are affecting outdoor recreation in the region. Our recreation data are daily campground reservation data collected from Recreation.gov, a website through which campers can make reservations to approximately 3,700 federally-managed facilities across the US. The data include nearly 25 million transactions from 3.1 million unique users of 1,000 facilities within the western US from 2008 to 2016. We merged the camping data with daily spatial data from NOAA describing the extent of wildfire smoke, and daily data from NASA describing areas with actively burning wildfires.

Wildfires and wildfire smoke negatively affect the welfare of outdoor recreationists in two ways. First, campers may be directly harmed by exposure to smoke. Second, campers may decide to cancel or change their plans in response to fire and smoke, or be forced to cancel due to closures. Our paper provides results that address both channels. First, we document the extent to which wildfires and smoke affected campers on public lands in the western US between 2008-2016. Second, we identify effects of wildfire and wildfire smoke on avoidance behavior. We aggregate daily camping reservation records by facility (i.e., individual campground) and estimate panel fixed effects regressions of measures of campground use as a function of measures of nearby wildfire and smoke conditions.

We find that within the western U.S., an average of approximately 400,000 campground visitor-days—approximately 5% of all visitor-days—were affected by moderate to high density smoke over the course of our study period, while 1.5 percent of visitor-days during our study period were within 20 km of an actively burning fire. Both smoke and fire lead to averting behavior. For example, presence of a wildfire burning within 20 km of a campground increased cancellations by 22%, while Smoky conditions increase cancellations by 4.4 percent. Some of the decrease in campground use may be due to campground closures, especially in the case of nearby fires. Regardless, campers displaced by fire—whether through closures or by choice—are likely to incur welfare losses.

Climate change is expected to increase the frequency and severity of wildfires in the western US. Much attention is being paid to potential property damages from wildfires and problems associated with continued development in the wildland-urban interface. Our results suggest that there may also be negative impacts to outdoor recreation. This research contributes to a growing body of literature using “big data” to examine how climate and climate-related outcomes affect outdoor recreation.

04/15/2021

Publications (85 total)

Objective 1: Resource Management (43)

Ansah, E., M. Kaplowitz, F. Lupi and J. Kerr, 2020. Smallholder participation and compliance with sustainable cocoa certification, Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems. 44(1), 54-87.

Bayham, J., & Yoder, J. K. (2020). Resource allocation under fire. Land Economics, 96(1), 92-110.

        Bayham, Jude, and Eli P Fenichel. 2020. “Impact of School Closures for COVID-19 on the US Health-Care Workforce and Net Mortality: A Modelling Study.” The Lancet Public Health, April. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(20)30082-7.

       Bayham, Jude and Alexandra Hill.  2020. Ensuring the Continued Functionality of Essential Critical Infrastructure Industries by Estimating the Workforce Impacts of COVID-19. Colorado State University, Agricultural and Resource Economics.

Beasley, W. J. and S. J. Dundas. 2021. Hold the Line:  Modeling Private Coastal Adaptation through Shoreline Armoring Decisions.  Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 105: 102397. doi: 10.1016/j.jeem.2020.102397

Bocci, C., B. Sohngen, F. Lupi and B. Milian, 2020. Timber or Carbon? Evaluating forest conservation strategies through a discrete choice experiment, Ecological Economics. 171, 106601.

            Bowling LC, K Cherkauer, C Lee, J Beckerman, S Brouder, J Buzan, O Doering, J Dukes, P Ebner, J Frankenberger, BM Gramig, E Kladivko, J Volenec. "Agricultural Impacts of Climate Change in Indiana and Potential Adaptations." Climatic Change 163(4): 2005-2027, 2020.

Brent, Daniel A., Corey Lott, Michael Taylor, Joseph Cook, Kimberly Rollins, Shawn Stoddard, D. A. Brent, C. Lott, M. Taylor, and J. Cook. "What causes heterogeneous responses to social comparison messages for water conservation?" Environmental and Resource Economics, forthcoming.

      Brown, Jason, Peter Maniloff, and Dale Manning (2020). Spatially variable taxation and resource extraction: The impact of state oil taxes on drilling in the US. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.

Chahal, A., Ciolkosz, D., Puri, V., Liu, J. & Jacobson, M. (2020) Factors affecting wood-bark adhesion for debarking of shrub willow. Biosystems Engineering, 196: 202-209. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biosystemseng.2020.05.019

Cho, S. Y. Lee, B.P. Sharma, and D.J. Hayes. 2021. “Do ecological-economic tradeoffs triggered by budget allocations for forest carbon sequestration change under different market conditions?” Sustainability Science, 16: 69-84.

      Dobson, A.P., S. Pimm, L. Hannah, L. Kaufman, J.A. Ahumada, A.W. Ando, A Bernstein, J. Busch, P. Daszak, J. Engelmann, M. Kinnaird, B. Li, T. Loch-Temzelides, T. Lovejoy, K. Nowak, P. Roehrdanz, M.M. Vale. 2020. “Ecology and economics for pandemic prevention.” Science 369(6502): 397-381. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abc3189.

            Drugova, Tatiana, Man-Keun Kim, and Paul M. Jakus. 2020. “Marketing, Congestion, and Demarketing in Utah’s National Parks.” Tourism Economics. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354816620939722

Dundas, S. J. and D. J. Lewis. 2020. Estimating Option Values and Spillover Damages for

Coastal Protection: Evidence from Oregon’s Planning Goal 18.  Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists 7(3): 519-554. doi: 10.1086/708092

Foster, T., Mieno, T., & Brozović, N. “Synthesizing evidence about the opportunities and chal- lenges for satellite-based monitoring of groundwater irrigation abstractions” Water Resources Research, 56(11)

Frimpong, E., D.R. Petrolia, A. Harri, and J.H. Cartwright.  2020. “Flood Insurance and Claims:  The Impact of the Community Rating System.”  Applied Economic Perspectives & Policy 42(2): 245-62.

            Hestetune, Adam, Paul M. Jakus, Chris Monz, and Jordan W. Smith. 2020. “Climate Change and Angling Behavior on the North Shore of Lake Superior (USA)” Fisheries Research, 231(105717). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fishres.2020.105717

            Howlader A. and A. Ando. 2020. “Consequences of Protected Areas for Household Forest Extraction, Time Use, and Consumption: Evidence from Nepal.” Environmental and Resource Economics 75:769–808. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-020-00407-2

      Hrozencik, Aaron, Dale T. Manning, Jordan F. Suter, Christopher Goemans (conditionally accepted). Impacts of Block-Rate Energy Pricing on Groundwater Demand in Irrigated Agriculture. American Journal of Agricultural Economics.

Jacobson, M., Ciolkosz, D. 2020. Plantation Forestry and Pellet Production in Kenya. Biomass and Bioenergy. Vol 135. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biombioe.2020.105519

Jones, J. A., and X. Bi. 2020. "Environmental Giving to Complex Regional Issues: Public Perceptions of Funding for an Initiative in Florida." International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing e1699.

Laird, H., C. Landry, S. Shonkwiler, and D.R. Petrolia.  "Riders on the Storm: Hurricane Risk and Coastal Insurance and Mitigation Decisions."  Forthcoming, Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics.

      Manning, Dale T., Mani Rouhi Rad, Jordan Suter, Chris Goemans, Zaichen Xiang, and Ryan Baily (2020).  Non-Market Valuation in Integrated Assessment Modeling: The Benefits of Water Right Retirement. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.

Mieno, T., Rouhi Rad, M., Suter, J., & Hrozensick, A. “The Importance of Well Yield in Groundwater Demand Specification” Land Economics, forthcoming

Miller, Z. D., H. Wu, K. Zipp, C. L. Dems, E. Smithwick, M. Kaye, P. Newman, A. Zhao, and A. Taylor. (2020) "Hunter and Non-Hunter Perceptions of Costs, Benefits, and Likelihood of Outcomes of Prescribed Fire in the Mid-Atlantic Region." Society & Natural Resources https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2020.1780359.

Minegishi, K. & Mieno, T. 2020 “Gold in Them Tha-R Hills: A Review of R Packages for Exploratory Data Analysis” Applied Economics Teaching Resources, 2(3):303913

Moffette, Fanny, Jennifer Alix-Garcia, Katherine Shea, and Amy Hudson Pickens. “The Impact of Near Real-Time Deforestation Alerts Across the Tropics.” Nature Climate Change (2021) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-00956-w.

Parton, L C. and S. J. Dundas. 2020. Fall in the Sea, Eventually? A Green Paradox in Climate Adaptation for Coastal Housing Markets. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 104: 102381. doi: 10.1016/j.jeem.2020.102381

Rice, W. L., Taff, B. D., Miller, Z. D., Newman, P., Zipp, K. Y., Pan, B., Newton, J. N., & D’Antonio, A. (2020) "Connecting motivations to outcomes: A study of park visitors’ outcome attainment." Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism 29: xxxx https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jort.2019.100272

Rice, W.L, P.B. Newman, B.D. Taff, Z.D. Miller, and K.Y. Zipp. (2020) "Beyond benefits: Toward a recreational ecosystem services management framework." Landscape Research 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1080/01426397.2020.1777956

Rimsaite, R., K. Fisher-Vanden, S. Olmstead, D. Grogan, 2020, “How well do U.S. western water markets convey economic information?" Forthcoming, Land Economics.

Rimsaite, R., K.A. Fisher-Vanden, S. Olmstead, 2020, “Learning from Historical Water Transfer in the United States: Are Gains from Trade Higher or Lower Under Water Stress?” Submitted, Environmental and Resource Economics

      Rouhi Rad, Mani, Dale T. Manning, Jordan F. Suter, Christopher Goemans (forthcoming).  Policy Leakage or Policy Benefit? Spatial Spillovers from Conservation Policies in Common Property Resources.  Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.

Rouhi-Rad, M., Foster, T., Brozović, N., & Mieno, T. 2020 “Effects of instantaneous groundwater availability on irrigated agriculture and implications for aquifer management” Resource and Energy Economics, 59, 101129

Srivastava, L., et al., 2020. How will climate change affect provision and value of water from public lands in Southern California through the 21^st century? Agricultural and Resource Economics Review. 19, 117-149.

Suter, Jordan, Mani Rouhi Rad, Dale Manning, Chris Goemans, and Matthew Sanderson (forthcoming). Groundwater Depletion, Climate, and the Incremental Value of Groundwater.  Resource and Energy Economics.

        Thompson, Matthew P., Jude Bayham, and Erin Belval. 2020. “Potential COVID-19 Outbreak in Fire Camp: Modeling Scenarios and Interventions.” Fire 3 (3): 38. https://doi.org/10.3390/fire3030038.

von Haefen, Roger H. “New Study Explores Climate Change Impacts on North Carolina Coastal Angling,” NC State Economist, Winter 2020.

            Wang Y, MS Delgado, JP Sesmero, BM Gramig. "Market Structure and the Effect of Ethanol Expansion on Land Allocation: A Spatially Explicit Analysis." American Journal of Agricultural Economics 102(5): 1598-1622, 2020.

      Yang, H., F. Lupi, J. Zhang and J. Liu, 2020. Hidden cost of conservation: A demonstration using losses from human-wildlife conflicts under a payment for ecosystem services program. Ecological Economics. 169, 106462.

Yehouenou, L., K. Grogan, X. Bi, and T. Borisova. 2020. "Improving BMP Cost-Share Enrollment Rates: Insights from a Survey of Florida Farmers". Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, 1-33.

Young, R., Foster, T., Mieno, T., Valocchi, A., & Brozović, N. “Hydrologic-economic Trade-offs in Groundwater Allocation Policy Design” Water Resources Research, doi: https://doi.org/10.1029/2020WR027941 

Zaveri, E., D.H. Wrenn, and K.A. Fisher-Vanden, 2020, “The Impact of Water Access on Short-Term Migration in Rural India.” Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 64(2):505-532. doi: 10.1111/1467-8489.12364

 

Objective 2: Economic Valuation (16)

Alix-Garcia, Jennifer, Katharine R.E. Sims, and Laura Costica. “Better to be direct? Testing the accuracy and cost-savings of community leader surveys for poverty targeting,” World Development (2021).

Burkhardt, J., Chan, N., Bollinger, B., Gillingham, K. (2021). Conformity and Conservation: Evidence from home landscaping and water conservation. Accepted: American Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

Dundas, S. J., and R. H. von Haefen. 2021. The Importance of Data Structure and Non-

linearities in Estimating Climate Impacts on Outdoor Recreation. Natural Hazards. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-020-04484-w

Dundas, S. J. and R. H. von Haefen. 2020. The Effects of Weather on Recreational Fishing

Demand and Adaptation:  Implications for a Changing Climate.  Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists 7(2): 209-242. doi: 10.1086/706343

Goeb, J., A. Dillon, F. Lupi and D. Tschirley. 2020. Pesticides: What you don’t know can hurt you. Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. 7(5), 801-836.

Gong, Y., X. Bi, and Wu, J. 2020. "Willingness to Pay for the Conservation of the Endangered Red-Crowned Crane in China: Roles of Conservation Attitudes and Income." Forest Policy and Economics (120) 102296.

Howard, G., B. Roe, M. Interis, and J. Martin. 2020. “Addressing Attribute Value Substitution in Discrete Choice Experiments to Avoid Unintended Consequences.” Environmental and Resource Economics, 77(4): 813-838.

Hwang, J. , X. Bi, N. Morales, and E. Camp. 2020. "The Economic Value of Freshwater Fisheries in Florida: An Application of the Travel Cost Method for Black Crappie Fishing Trips." Fisheries Research (223) 105752.

Lupi, F., D. Phanuef and R. von Haefen. 2020. Best practice in recreation demand analysis, Review of Environmental Economics and Policy. 14(2): 282-301.

Mihiar, C., and D.J. Lewis. 2021. "Climate, adaptation, and the value of forestland: A national Ricardian analysis of the United States." Land Economics (Forthcoming).

      Parthum, B. and A.W. Ando. 2020. “Overlooked benefits of nutrient reductions in the Mississippi River Basin.” Land Economics.

Penn J and W Hu. 2021. The Extent of Hypothetical Bias in Willingness to Accept. American Journal of Agricultural Economics. 103(1):126-141.

Penn J and W Hu. 2020. Mitigating hypothetical bias by defaulting to opt-out in an online choice experiment. Applied Economics. 53(3):315-328.

Petrolia, D.R., D. Guignet, J.C. Whitehead, C. Kent, K. Amon, and C. Caulder.  "Nonmarket Valuation in the Environmental Protection Agency's Regulatory Process."  Forthcoming, Applied Economic Perspectives & Policy, https://doi.org/10.1002/aepp.13106.

Petrolia, D.R. and J. Hwang.  2020.  "Accounting for Attribute Non-Attendance in Three Previously Published Choice Studies of Coastal Resources."  Marine Resource Economics 35(3, July): 219-40.

Reeling, C., V. Verdier and F. Lupi. 2020. Valuing Goods Allocated via Dynamic Lottery. Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. 7(4), 721-749.

 

Objective 3: Integrated Policy and Decision-Making (26)

 

Amin, M.M., Veith, T.L., Shortle, J.S., Karsten, H.D. and Kleinman, P.J., 2020. Addressing the spatial disconnect between national‐scale total maximum daily loads and localized land management decisions. Journal of Environmental Quality, 49(3), pp.613-627.

Bauchet, Jonathan, Nigel Asquith, Zhao Ma, Claudia Radel, Ricardo Godoy, Laura Zanotti, Diana Steele, Benjamin M. Gramig, and Andrea Estrella Chong. "The practice of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) in the Tropical Andes: Evidence from program administrators." Ecosystem Services 45 (2020): 101175.

Bayham, J., Belval, E. J., Thompson, M. P., Dunn, C., Stonesifer, C. S., & Calkin, D. E. (2020). Weather, risk, and resource orders on large wildland fires in the western us. Forests, 11(2), 169.

Berman, J. D., Bayham, J., & Burkhardt, J. (2020). Hot under the collar: A 14-year association between temperature and violent behavior across 436 US counties. Environmental Research, 191, 110181.

Brent, Daniel, and Louis-Philippe Beland. "Traffic congestion, transportation policies, and the performance of first responders." Journal of Environmental Economics and Management (2020): 102339

Burkhardt, J., Bayham, J., Wilson, A., Berman, J. D., O'Dell, K., Ford, B., ... & Pierce, J. R. (2020). The relationship between monthly air pollution and violent crime across the United States. Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy, 9(2), 188-205.

Chen, Y., Lewis, D.J., and B. Weber. 2021. “Amenities and skill sorting: A case study of land conservation policy.” The Annals of Regional Science (Forthcoming).

Colby, S. and K.Y. Zipp. (2020) "Excess Vulnerability from Subsidized Flood Insurance: Housing Market Adaptation When Premiums Equal Expected Flood Damage" Climate Change Economics https://doi.org/10.1142/S2010007820500128.

Cook, A. and Shortle, J., 2021. Pollution Trading with Transport Time Lags.  R&R for publication in Environment and Resource Economics.

Dundas, S. J., A. S. Levine, R .L. Lewison, A. N. Doerr , C. White , A. W. E. Galloway, C.

Garza, E. L. Hazen, J. Padilla-Gamino, J. F. Samhouri, A. Spalding, A. Stier and J. W. White. 2020. Integrating Oceans into Climate Policy: Any Green New Deal Needs a Splash of Blue.  Conservation Letters 13(5): e12716. doi: 10.1111/conl.12716

Fisher-Vanden, K., J. Weyant, 2020, “The Evolution of Integrated Assessment: developing the next generation of use-inspired IA tools.” Annual Review of Resource Economics, 12:20.1-20.17, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-resource-110119-030314

Griffin, Robert, Adrian Vogl, Stacie Wolny, Stefanie Covino, Eivy Monroy, Heidi Ricci, Richard Sharp, Courtney Schmidt, Emi Uchida. (2020) When to include additional pollutants into an integrated assessment model for estimating non-market benefits from water quality? Land Economics 96(4): 457-477

Hashida, Y., Withey, J., Lewis, D.J., Newman, T., and J. Kline. 2020. “Anticipating changes in wildlife habitat induced by private forest owners’ adaptation to climate change and carbon policy.” PLOS ONE, 15(4): e0230525.

Horan, R., and Shortle, J., 2021. The Song Remains Not the Same: Correlated Intercept and Slope Uncertainties Matter to Prices vs Quantities. Forthcoming (July). Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists

Li, S. X Cai, SA Emaminejad, A Juneja, S Niroula, SJ Oh, K Wallington, RD Cusick, BM Gramig, S John, G McIsaac, V Singh. “Developing an Integrated Technology-Environment-Economics Model to Simulate Food-Energy-Water Systems in Corn Belt Watersheds.” Manuscript under review.

Lupi, F., B. Basso, C. Garnache, J. Herriges, D. Hyndman, and R. Stevenson. 2020 Linking agricultural nutrient pollution to the value of freshwater ecosystem services, Land Economics. 96(4): 493–509.

Petrolia, D.R., F. Nyanzu, J. Cebrian, A. Harri, J. Amato, and W.C. Walton.  2020.  "Eliciting Expert Judgment to Inform Management of Diverse Oyster Resources for Multiple Ecosystem Services."  Journal of Environmental Management 268 (August):  110676.

Preisendanz, H.E., Veith, T.L., Zhang, Q. and Shortle, J., 2020. Temporal inequality of nutrient and sediment transport: a decision-making framework for temporal targeting of load reduction goals. Environmental Research Letters, 16(1), p.014005.

Reeling, C., Horan, R., Shortle, J., 2021. Permit markets benefit from cost-based trade ratios when emission targets are exogenous. R&R for publication in Environment and Resource Economics.

Royer, M.B., Brooks, R.P., Shortle, J.S. and Yetter, S., 2020. Shared discovery: A process to coproduce knowledge among scientists, policy makers, and stakeholders for solving nutrient pollution problems. Journal of Environmental Quality. 49(3), pp. 603-612.

Sanchirico, James N., Julie C. Blackwood, Ben Fitzpatrick, David M. Kling, Suzanne Lenhart, Michael G. Neubert, Katriona Shea, Charles B. Sims, and Michael R. Springborn. 2020. "Political economy of renewable resource federalism." Ecological Applications: e2276.

Shortle, J.S., Mihelcic, J.R., Zhang, Q. and Arabi, M., 2020. Nutrient control in water bodies: A systems approach. Journal of Environmental Quality, 49(3), pp.517-533.

Shortle, J., Ollikainen, M., Iho, A., 2021. Water Quality and Agriculture: Economics and Policy for Nonpoint Source Water Pollution. Palgrave. Forthcoming

Sloggy, M. R., Kling, D. M., Plantinga, A. J. (2020). Measure twice, cut once: Optimal inventory and harvest under volume uncertainty and stochastic price dynamics. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 103: 102357.

Stephenson, K., Easton, Z., Shabman, L., Shortle, J., 2020. Ag payments to control nutrients should be based on results. Bay Journal.  https://www.bayjournal.com/opinion/forum/ag-payments-to-control-nutrients-should-be-based-on-results/article_28e9075a-3556-11eb-97e5-539334c28802.html

Sutherland, Sara, von Haefen, Roger H. Eggleston, David, and Jie Cao. “Economic Valuation of Submerged Aquatic Vegetation within the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuary,” Final Report submitted to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership, Raleigh, NC, February, 2021, 61 pages.

 

2021 Meeting Abstracts

 

SESSION 1: HABs, Tsunamis, & Invasive Species

 

Title:               Harmful algal blooms and toxic air: The economic value of improved forecasts

Authors:         Klaus Moeltner, Tracy Fanara, Hosein Foroutan, Regina Hanlon, Vince Lovko,                             Shane Ross, David Schmale III

W4133 obj.:   1, 2

Presenter:      Klaus Moeltner

Email:             moeltner@vt.edu

 

Abstract:        The adverse economic impacts of harmful algal blooms can be mitigated via                                  tailored forecasting methods. Adequate provision of these services requires                                    knowledge of the losses avoided, or, in other words, the economic benefits they                             generate. The latter can be difficult to measure for broader population segments,                          especially if forecasting services or features do not yet exist. We illustrate how                              Stated Preference tools and Choice Experiments, commonly used for the                                        economic valuation of health and ecosystem services, are well-suited for this case.                        Using as example forecasts of respiratory irritation levels associated with airborne                        toxins caused by Florida red tide, we show that short-term predictions of spatially                         and temporally refined air quality conditions are valued highly by the underlying                                 population. This reflects the numerous channels and magnitude of red tide                                            impacts on locals' life and activities, which are also highlighted by our study. Our                               value estimates constitute an important input to determine the societal net benefits                   of implementing an improved forecasting system along the lines suggested in our                                 experiment. Our approach is broadly applicable to any type of air quality                                                 impediment with risk of human exposure.

 

Title:               Estimating economic damages of HAB and bacterial warnings in the Great Lakes

Authors:         Greg Boudreaux, Frank Lupi, Brent Sohngen

W4133 obj.:   1 (task 1-2), 2 (Task 2-1), 3 (Tasks 3-2, 3-3)

Presenter:      Greg Boudreaux

Email:             Gregory.l.boudreaux@usace.army.mil

 

Abstract:        This paper estimates economic damages caused by harmful algal blooms (HABs) and bacteria warnings at all public sandy beaches spanning 300 miles of shoreline along Lake Erie and Lake St Clair using a combination of revealed preference data from site intercepts and stated preference data from online surveys. Following an on-site sampling schedule that randomized times and locations, interview teams went to all 28 sandy beaches from the Ohio-Pennsylvania border to Northern Lake St Clair. At each site, teams counted visitors and interviewed a random subset of them. The short intercept interviews provided data such as demographic information and travel distances for economic demand models for over 4,200 visitors. In a follow up survey, we collected stated preference data that indicates people’s reactions to the threat of HAB and bacterial warnings.  Combining the sampling design weights and site counts allows us to estimate the number of visits a site receives from each origin zip code. With the visitation data, we estimate a multi-site demand model for beaches. This model provides estimates of visitation to each site under unchanged conditions, which are then calibrated via contraction mapping to estimates of the percentage of visitors who would have still visited their intercept site under alternate HAB and bacteria scenarios. Our estimation procedure combines the survey data with visitor’s actual trip data to allow us to value both site closures and the impacts of HAB and bacterial threats. Results contribute to beach management when facing impacts on beaches, both through the values for preventing site closures by providing insight into potential impacts of HAB and bacterial threats.

 

Title:               Tsunami risk and information shocks: Evidence from the Oregon housing market

Author:          Amila Hadziomerspahic

W4133 obj.:   1 (task 1-2)

Presenter:      Amila Hadziomerspahic

Email:             amila.hadziomerspahic@oregonstate.edu

 

Abstract:        Estimating risk perceptions related to natural disasters is critical to understanding behavioral responses of individuals and adaptive capacity of communities. Developed coastlines experience hazard risk from sources with different frequency and intensity, such as flooding, storm surges, and sea-level rise. In the Pacific Northwest, there is an additional high severity but very low frequency risk: the Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake and tsunami. This paper investigates the impact of tsunami risk information on coastal residents’ risk perceptions, as capitalized into coastal property prices, using difference-in-differences and triple differences hedonic frameworks. I study the coastal Oregon housing market response to three sets of risk signals: two exogenous events - the March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami and the July 20, 2015 New Yorker article “The Really Big One”; a hazard planning change – the 2013 release of new official tsunami evacuation maps; and visual cues of tsunami risk – blue lines indicating the spatial extent of the hazard zone installed by Oregon’s Tsunami Blue Line project. For the first analysis, I find preliminary evidence that the Tohoku earthquake was capitalized into house prices. Results suggest that a property inside the primary tsunami inundation zone sells for 6-8% less than a property outside of the zone after the Tohoku event. Thus, exogenous tsunami risk signals may shift homebuyers’ subjective risk perceptions to better match the objective risks of the Cascadia event. This suggests a salient risk signal may be able to successfully communicate the risk of a Cascadia event and induce individuals to take preparedness actions. Given Oregon’s current and chronic under-preparedness for a Cascadia event, additional policies are needed to mitigate hazard risk. This motivates my second and third analyses of state policies designed to convey risk signals. Here I will describe my identification strategies as the analyses are still in process.

 

Title:               A Sentiment Analysis Approach to Identifying Biased Responses to a Single-Shot                           Contingent Valuation Question

Author:          Brian Vander Naald, Sonja Kolstoe

W4133 obj.:   2 (task 2-1)

Presenter:      Brian Vander Naald

Email:             brian.vandernaald@drake.edu

 

Abstract:        The protection of at-risk species (listed and non-listed), prevention and mitigation of invasive species and climate change, are all topics that have the potential to trigger strong responses from respondents in stated choice surveys. Some strong responses may actually be biased (e.g. protest or warm glow) or suggest scenario rejection, traditionally all reasons for excluding responses from analysis. The current standard is to use purposeful questions to identify these responses. However, this strategy may be overlooking information from open-ended responses. We use a form of text analysis called sentiment analysis to identify and categorize the open-ended responses to our comments question at the end of our stated preference as positive, negative or neutral. The contingent valuation (CV) question is a single-shot donation. In it, respondents are asked whether they would donate a fixed amount to the help The Nature Conservancy develop an Invasive Species Rapid Response Fund to protect The Nature Conservancy's Waikamoi Preserve, which is the single-largest privately held nature preserve in the state of Hawai'i. Waikamoi Preserve's vast `Ōhi'a-dominant forest is the last stronghold for 63 species of rare plants and 10 species of birds, five of them endangered. These species are threatened by the introduction of invasive species and climate change. Respondents were told that the fund would be used to detect and quickly mitigate incipient invasive species, including Rapid `Ōhi'a Death, a potential threat to threat the conservation easement managed by The Nature Conservancy. ROD is already an immediate threat to Hawaiian forests and has already killed large quantities of Ōhi'a trees since it was first found on the Big Island of Hawai’i in 2014. We compare the WTP results based on using standard debriefing questions vs. sentiment analysis as well as the combination of the two to identify and exclude biased responses.

 

SESSION 2: Birds & Fish

 

Title:               Valuing the Service of Birds with Meta-Analysis

Authors:         Matthew G. Interis, Seong Yun, Jessica Browne

W4133 obj.:   1 (task 1-1), 2 (task 2-3)

Presenter:      Matthew G. Interis

Email:             m.interis@msstate.edu

 

Abstract:        Since the Renewable Fuel Standard was initiated in 2007, increased bioenergy crop production has become one of the main drivers of land-use changes (LUC) in the Mississippi River Basin (MRB). Despite relatively abundant literature on LUC and ecosystem services changes, less attention has been given to how ecosystem service values are affected by bioenergy crop production, i.e., by changes in the crop mix in working agricultural land. In this study we partially fill this gap by estimating the value of changes in bird populations, one of the critical ecosystem services directly affected by LUC resulting from bioenergy crop production. We use meta-regression to estimate a benefits transfer function. The literature on valuation of bird services is relatively small, however, and the variety of measures of the relevant ecosystem change within this small literature creates a challenge in creating a data set for meta-regression. After summarizing these measures in the literature, we ultimately tabulate a data set of 91 observations from five different studies in which the value of a change in the number of birds is estimated. Explanatory variables include the guild of the bird under consideration and whether the species is endangered or threatened. With the estimated benefits transfer function, we use ecologist-generated estimates of bird population changes from biofuels-related LUC to estimate the value of changes in bird populations resulting from historical and predicted future LUC in the MRB. This work is part of a larger project on future LUC resulting from climate change and biofuels policy might affect the value of ecosystem services in the MRB.

 

Title:               Position-dependent attribute order effects in the presence of charismatic and non-                         charismatic birds

Authors:         Sonja Kolstoe, Brian Vander Naald, Alison Cohan

W4133 obj.:   2 (task 2-1), 3 (task 3-1)

Presenter:      Sonja Kolstoe

Email:             sonja.kolstoe@usda.gov        

 

Abstract:        Position-dependent attribute order effects are a concern to stated preference researchers because if they are present, they may result it in systematic differences in willingness to pay (WTP) for attributes. We test for the presence of position-dependent attribute ordering effects of endangered and threatened bird species embedded in a discrete choice experiment looking to value a birding-focused hike option into a conservation easement managed by The Nature Conservancy (TNC). The four main bird species in the conservation easement that attract visitors to the site were included as attributes in the birding hike choice task and were randomized. We include two forms of randomizations of the four featured bird species in the choice task: (1) we randomize the order of two yellow endemic bird species of different endangered status to be first or last, the kiwikiu or Maui Parrotbill (critically endangered) and the endemic `alauahio or Maui creeper (not currently listed as threatened) and (2) we randomize the order of the two most charismatic bird species in the second and third position the `ākohekohe or Crested Honeycreeper (endangered) and i`iwi or Scarlet Honeycreeper (threatened). In addition, we randomize the position of the attribute the chance of introducing invasive species, to include Rapid `Ōhi'a Death (ROD), to be either above or below the attributes with images. We only find evidence of attribute order effects for the Scarlet Honeycreeper and find lower WTP values for when it is featured in the third position relative to the second. Of the four species presented in the choice card, the Scarlet Honeycreeper is likely the most widely known due to: (1) being selected by the American Bird Association to be its “Bird of the Year” in 2018 and (2) being listed as “Threatened” under the federal Endangered Species Act as of 2017.

Title:               Real Choice Experiments Generate Consistent Results Regardless of the Number                          of Choice Sets

Authors:         Jerrod Penn, Wuyang Hu

W4133 obj.:   2 (task 2-1)

Presenter:      Jerrod Penn

Email:             JPenn@agcenter.lsu.edu

 

Abstract:        Real Discrete Choice Experiments (DCEs) have been touted as a way of eliminating Hypothetical Bias (HB), asserting that by allowing one of the randomly determined choice sets binding or with real payment consequences, the choices made throughout the choice sets all represent real preferences. While a binding choice set exists over the entire DCE is certain, the probability per DCE choice set being binding is 1/n, where n is the total number of choice sets. The assertion that the existence of one binding choice set induces choices in all n choice sets to be real suggests preferences are equivalent regardless of the probability of a choice set being real. In reality, the chance of selection for a choice set being real in a 4-set DCE is four times greater than a 16-set DCE. One may question whether the number of choice sets may potentially affect responses. The question stems from observed behavior in payment consequentiality studies, with willingness to pay (WTP) decreasing as the probability of payment (e.g. payment consequentiality) increases. This study investigates whether there is a behavioral response to the number of choice sets in a real DCE. We show that the number of choice sets presented in the real DCE does not affect outcomes, meaning that the probability of any choice set being binding does not alter preferences.

 

 SESSION 3: Where We Live

 

Title:               Valuation of Urban Greenspace and Incorporating Question Time  to Improve                               Choice Experiment Analysis

Authors:         Jake Kennedy, Sahan Dissanayake, Randall Bluffstone, Jeff Kline

W4133 obj.:   1 (task 1-1), 2 (task 2-1)

Presenter:      Jake Kennedy and Sahan Dissanayake

Email:             jakekennedy@pdx.edu ; sdissan2@gmail.com   

 

Abstract:      Accounting for attention and attribute non-attendance in choice experiment studies becomes more important with the increased use of online surveys to conduct stated preference research. In this presentation we share results from a choice experiment that uses a novel but easily implementable approach of tracking time spent on each choice question to improve the results. We use an application on understanding the values and preferences for urban forests and greenspaces to highlight the value of incorporating questioning timing into the analysis. Urban forests and green spaces are known to offer a variety of important use and non-use ecosystem service benefits for residents and each dollar spent on enhancing urban tree cover generates $1.37 - $3.09 per year in benefits. At the same time there are growing concerns about environmental justice issues surrounding how benefits from urban green space are distributed across socio-economic groups. Our application explores the use, barriers to use, and preferences and values for urban green space and how they vary across socio-demographic factors. We conduct the study in Portland, Oregon, an ideal location to explore these issues given the over 17,000 acres of park and urban natural areas that exist within the city boundaries. The data collection was conducted July through September 2020. Initial results highlight that while residents in the greater Portland area value and access urban green space, there are significant barriers and that these barriers vary across demographic groups. In analyzing the detailed timing information, we find evidence of learning, with the first choice question answered by the respondents taking more than twice as long as the last (7th) choice question. We also find that across all the choice questions, the estimation results are insignificant for the fastest 25% of the respondents and then excluding these respondents improves the efficiency of the overall estimates.

           

Title:               Text v. Images: Why Survey Design Matters for Choice Experiments

Authors:         Noelwah R. Netusil, Sahan Dissanayake, Lauren Rabe, Amy Ando

W4133 obj.:   2 (task 2-1)

Presenter:      Noelwah R. Netusil

Email:             netusil@reed.edu

 

Abstract:        The use of images in choice experiments has grown: our recent survey of studies published in top-tier journals found that about 66% of studies used images in their choice cards in 2020, up from only 15% in 2011. While several best practices articles have focused on the importance of how a survey is worded, structured, and implemented, the literature on how attribute information is presented to respondents is quite limited. Shr et al. (2019) investigated the use of images or text in choice cards, while other studies have explored the effect of images and verbal explanations (Eppink et al. 2019), images and videos (Rid et al. 2018) and text and virtual reality displays (Patterson et al. 2017; Bateman et al. 2009). Results are mixed with some studies finding that results improve with visual information (Bateman et al. 2009; Shr et al. 2019) while others find that more complex displays of information result in decreased choice consistency (Eppink et al. 2019; Rid et al. 2018). We contribute to this literature by investigating the effect of using high-quality images or text in a choice experiment to estimate values and preferences for green roof attributes in Portland, Oregon. Preliminary results using conditional logit and mixed multinomial logit models show statistically significant differences for some attributes based on whether respondents saw images or only text. We also find evidence of heterogeneity for certain attributes when respondents saw an image, while for other attributes we find heterogeneity when respondents saw only text. Overall, we find that survey design (images versus text) has an effect on the significance, magnitude and dispersion of some estimated coefficients, which highlights the importance of integrating how attributes are represented into the survey design process.           

 

Title:               Valuing Impacts of Proximity to Saguaro National Park on House Prices

Authors:         Julie Mueller, John Loomis, Leslie Richardson, Ryan A. Fitch

W4133 obj.:   1 (task 1-1), 3 (task 3-2)

Presenter:      Julie Mueller

Email:             Julie.Mueller@nau.edu          

 

Abstract:        Saguaro National Park is adjacent to the Tucson Metropolitan Area, with a population of around one million. Previous research elsewhere has found positive house price premiums for homeowners living proximate to open space and federal public lands such as National Wildlife Refuges. However, this effect has not been studied for homeowners living proximate to National Parks. To the authors’ knowledge, we present the first estimate of the impact of National Parks on nearby property values. We compare the standard constant house price premium with two models that introduce nonlinearity in the implicit price of proximity to Saguaro National Park and demonstrate the varying effect of distance on the implicit price.  

                        We use a hedonic property model to estimate the value of proximity to Saguaro National Park on housing prices in Tucson, Arizona. Our dataset contains single family home sales from 2015 to 2019 (n=20,877). Preliminary results show a statistically significant and positive influence of proximity to Saguaro National Park. In addition to a rich set of structural, neighborhood and demographic attributes, we also include distance measures to other public lands without National Park designation. We investigate three ways of modeling proximity of a house to Saguaro National Park: (1) standard distance the home is to the Park; (2) distance and distance squared; (3) grouping houses by distance bands. Results using the standard distance indicate a 2.9% drop in house price per 1 km increase in distance to Saguaro. The model incorporating distance squared demonstrates a price premium of 4.3% for houses closest to the Park and diminishes to zero at approximately 11 km from the Park. The distance band model price premium ranges from 12.74% for the nearest houses to 2% for houses 2-3km away. Our results provide insight for policymakers regarding community benefits of National Parks and National Park designation.

 

 SESSION 4: Measurement and Data

 

Title:               Multi-state financial data for use with the Agricultural Conservation Planning                              Framework (ACPF)

Authors:         Emma Bravard, Dave James, Emily Zimmerman, John Tyndall

W4133 obj.:   1 (task 1-1), 3 (task 3-1)

Presenter:      Emma Bravard

Email:             ebravard@iastate.edu

 

Abstract:        The Agricultural Conservation Planning Framework (ACPF) is a GIS-based conservation planning tool that uses high-resolution elevation and water flow data to spatially identify critical source areas for nitrogen loss within agricultural watersheds. The ACPF allows users to explore different Best Management Practice opportunities and analyze potential nutrient loss reduction outcomes. We’ve developed 1) a multi-state financial data set; and 2) a field-scale nitrogen reduction tool for use when analyzing different conservation scenarios. This financial and expected field scale nitrogen loss data is used to calculate total long term cost and cost effectiveness of various conservation plans.  To create financial data we calculated direct long-term annualized costs for BMP installation and management in the following states - Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana. Financial assessments were done with enterprise budgets and discounted cash flow techniques. The tool quantifies the nitrogen requirements for each field, based on 6-year land-use data, and evaluates the proportion of that nitrogen that is likely to be lost from the field via leaching as N load. Practices accounted for are drainage management, grassed waterways, cover crops, contour buffer strips/ prairie strips, water and sediment control basins, bioreactors, saturated buffers, nutrient removal wetlands, and multi-species and grassed riparian buffers. Land use opportunity costs of BMPs that require removing cropped/pastured land from production (e.g., grassed waterways, vegetative filter strips, buffer strips, wetlands), are spatially determined according to state-relevant weighted-average crop productivity indices and land rent relationships. The combination of this data will assist water quality stakeholders and technical service providers determine where conservation practices should be placed on the landscape to yield the most effective and lowest cost Nitrate-N reduction at a watershed scale.  We illustrate how these financial analyses can be accomplished with the ACPF using case study watersheds in Iowa and Illinois.

 

Title:               Monitoring Recreation Visitation in the National Forest System

Authors:         Don English, Eric White, Luanne Lohr

W4133 obj.:   1 (task 1-3)

Presenter:      Don English

Email:             Donald.English@usda.gov    

 

Abstract:        The USDA Forest Service (FS) measures the volume and character of recreation visitation through its national visitor monitoring program.  That same program provides data needed to estimate the market effects and nonmarket benefits of recreational use of NFS lands.  The comprehensive sampling approach it employs allows expansion from the onsite sample to the entire population of forest visitation.  By October 2019, three national iterations of data had been collected.  The Covid-19 pandemic imposed several limitations to the data collection process starting in March 2020.  Concerns about safety of visitors and field personnel, stay-at-home orders, and site closures all played a role.  Many of the same limits are in play for 2021.  As social media data becomes more ubiquitous, ongoing research is examining how those data might be used to augment and improve the estimates of visitation that this program generates.

                        This presentation reviews the sampling process that underlies the FS data and highlights the benefit measures for which it has been used thus far.  We also discuss the adjustments made in response the pandemic and give indications of how visitation changed during the summer of 2020.  Finally, we discuss likely future development of and additions to the program and applications that can be made of the data. 

 

Title:               An Analysis of Agricultural Intensification and Crop Diversity: Contemporary                              Crop Diversity and Predicted Changes by Bioenergy Consumption Scenarios

Authors:         Seong Yun, Matthew Interis

W4133 obj.:   1 (task 1-1)

Presenter:      Seong Yun

Email:             seong.yun@msstate.edu        

 

Abstract:        It is a well-studied fact that changing landscape affects ecosystem services. Particularly, agricultural expansion and intensification are considered major drivers of biodiversity loss, soil and freshwater degradation, and greenhouse gas emission. In the literature, agricultural lands are generally categorized into one landscape (e.g., “agriculture”) and supposed to provide homogenous (dis)ecosystem services. Recent studies, however, demonstrate that crop mixture or crop diversity could provide heterogeneous ecosystem benefits and reduce monocultural pressure on the ecosystem. Besides, precision agriculture is designed and targeted to maximize these ecosystem benefits from crop diversity. Cover crops and conservation agriculture are representative examples of increased heterogeneity in agricultural fields and enhanced ecosystem services. To study the impact of crop diversity on ecosystem services, measuring how diverse crop plantations in agricultural lands are, is crucial. The areal size or percentage of each crop is a reasonable initial approach. However, while these measures measure the scale of each crop, they do not present the diversity or the level of heterogeneity. This study suggests modifying the biodiversity index (e.g., Shannon index, Renyi entropy index, or Gini-Simpson index) to apply it to crop acreage. To measure the changes of crop diversity in contemporary periods, we build land-use acreage data (20 for agricultural categories and 7 for others) using the Cropland Data Layer (CDL), calculate the various diversity indices, and discuss the results. We also analyze the changes of these indices with the POLYSYS simulation models (a partial equilibrium model of crop production responses to consumption scenarios) under various renewable fuel crop production and energy consumption scenarios.

 

Title:               Public access, ecological integrity, and the value of grassland restoration

Authors:         Amy Ando, Sarah Cline, Sahan Dissanayake, Rich Iovanna, Kaylee Wells

W4133 obj.:   1 (tasks 1-1, 1-3)

Presenter:      Amy Ando

Email:             amyando@illinois.edu

 

Abstract:        Grassland, or prairie, ecosystems provide many benefits to society including species habitat, carbon sequestration, soil erosion control, and recreational opportunities. At the same time, grassland ecosystems in North America are disappearing, with grassland loss in most areas exceeding 80% since the mid-1800’s; in Illinois the loss is 99.9%.  The USDA protects and restores grasslands through the Conservation Reserve Program. However, it is more costly for farmers to plant high quality grassland habitat on CRP acres, and much remains unknown about public willingness to pay (WTP) for grassland restoration projects and how that varies with grassland quality and public access to restored grasslands. This study quantifies the relationship between the value of grassland restoration and its ecological quality and public access. We use a choice experiment survey of residents in the Tallgrass Prairie region that includes area restored, ecological quality, public access with and without hunting, and annual cost to households as attributes. This study will directly inform the enrollment and payment practices of USDA conservation programs by identifying how much more value people place on diverse, ecologically functional grasslands compared to grassy monocultures. The study also provides information on how important it could be to provide public access and permits for recreation activities like hunting on privately-owned CRP grasslands. Full data analysis will not be complete for this presentation. However, we will present the choice experiment survey and preliminary results from pilot data.

 

SESSION 5: Water Quality

 

Title:               Getting off the Ladder: Disentangling Water Quality Indices to Enhance the                                  Valuation of Divergent Ecosystem Services

Authors:         Frank Lupi, Joseph Herriges, R. Jan Stevenson, Hyunjung Kim

W4133 obj.:   1 (task 1-1), 2 (task 2-1), 3 (task 3-2)

Presenter:      Frank Lupi

Email:             lupi@msu.edu  

 

Abstract:        The capacity to estimate total value benefits from water quality improvements has important consequences for US federal regulatory analyses. While there have been advances in total value benefit estimation over the past four decades, knowledge gaps remain that prevent total value benefits (both use and non-use) from being included in many benefit-cost analyses. In 2015, US EPA issued request for proposals for projects that “advance knowledge of how changes in water quality […] can be valued at appropriate spatial scales using advanced non-use valuation methods for the Nation’s inland fresh water small streams, lakes and rivers, estuaries, coastal waters, and the Great Lakes.” The resulting interdisciplinary projects are directly relevant to the W4133’s core objectives, highlight important collaborations across multiple institutions, and demonstrate new ways to estimate water quality benefits. This session presents preliminary results from these groundbreaking studies, focusing on methodological advances, empirical findings and policy relevance.

 

Title:               Measuring the Benefits of Water Quality Improvements in Urban Streams: An                               Ecological Production Function Approach

Authors:         Roger von Haefen, George Van Houtven, Sasha Naumenko

W4133 obj.:   1 (task 1-1), 2 (tasks 2-1, 2-2), 3 (tasks 3-1 3-2)

Presenter:      Roger von Haefen

Email:             roger_von_haefen@ncsu.edu

 

Abstract:        The capacity to estimate total value benefits from water quality improvements has important consequences for US federal regulatory analyses. While there have been advances in total value benefit estimation over the past four decades, knowledge gaps remain that prevent total value benefits (both use and non-use) from being included in many benefit-cost analyses. In 2015, US EPA issued request for proposals for projects that “advance knowledge of how changes in water quality […] can be valued at appropriate spatial scales using advanced non-use valuation methods for the Nation’s inland fresh water small streams, lakes and rivers, estuaries, coastal waters, and the Great Lakes.” The resulting interdisciplinary projects are directly relevant to the W4133’s core objectives, highlight important collaborations across multiple institutions, and demonstrate new ways to estimate water quality benefits. This session presents preliminary results from these groundbreaking studies, focusing on methodological advances, empirical findings and policy relevance.

 

Title:               Modeling Spatial Dimensions of Water Quality Value in New England River                                  Networks

Authors:         Robert Johnston, Elena Besedin, Stefano Crema, Klaus Moeltner, Tom Ndebele,                           Seth Peery, Robert Stewart, Wilfred M. Wollheim, Zhenyu Yao

W4133 obj.:   1 (task 1-1), 2 (task 2-2), 3 (task 3-2)

Presenter:      Robert Johnston

Email:             rjohnston@clarku.edu

 

Abstract:        The capacity to estimate total value benefits from water quality improvements has important consequences for US federal regulatory analyses. While there have been advances in total value benefit estimation over the past four decades, knowledge gaps remain that prevent total value benefits (both use and non-use) from being included in many benefit-cost analyses. In 2015, US EPA issued request for proposals for projects that “advance knowledge of how changes in water quality […] can be valued at appropriate spatial scales using advanced non-use valuation methods for the Nation’s inland fresh water small streams, lakes and rivers, estuaries, coastal waters, and the Great Lakes.” The resulting interdisciplinary projects are directly relevant to the W4133’s core objectives, highlight important collaborations across multiple institutions, and demonstrate new ways to estimate water quality benefits. This session presents preliminary results from these groundbreaking studies, focusing on methodological advances, empirical findings and policy relevance.

 

Title:               The Effect of the Conservation Stewardship Program on Nitrogen Concentrations                                     in the Illinois River Basin

Authors:         Hsin-Chieh Hsieh, Ben Gramig

W4133 obj.:   1 (task 1-1), 3 (task 3-1)

Presenter:      Hsin-Chieh Hsieh

Email:             hhsieh11@illinois.edu

 

Abstract:        The hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico is largely the result of intensive agriculture in the Midwest. Excess nutrients from farming activities are the primary source of water quality degradation. The impact of agricultural conservation practices on ambient water quality has been studied using hydrological simulation models and the empirical literature has explored the slippage and additionality effects of conservation-driven land retirement through the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). Empirical evidence of the effect of working-land conservation programs on observed ambient water quality remains scant. This study quantifies the impact of the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) on riverine nitrogen concentrations. We exploit the National Hydrography Dataset to account for streamflow direction, and aggregate contiguous HUC 12 watersheds to form monitoring basins between upstream and downstream monitoring stations that are the unit of analysis. We control for active conservation contracts, land use land cover, and weather over space and time. The spatial connectivity of monitoring basins allows us to control for upstream pollutant measurements at downstream locations. Using a panel two-way fixed effects (TWFE) approach, we find that a 10% increase in the percentage of land enrolled in CSP reduces ambient nitrogen concentration by 0.5-1 mg/l in basins with and without inflow from upstream. Because the CSP is deployed everywhere starting in the same year there are very few observed counterfactuals with no treatment after CSP began. Machine learning (ML) is well-suited to constructing unobserved counterfactuals because the goal is to generate a good overall prediction not isolate the effect of any particular variable. We use ML to predict the unobserved counterfactual and estimate the average treatment effect as a robustness check on TWFE. We find that a 10% increase in CSP treatment results in a 0.5 mg/l reduction in ambient N concentration equivalent to about 15% of the average level.

 

 SESSION 6: Land

 

Title:               Who benefits from local food, nature conservation, and farmland preservation?

Authors:         Frederick Nyanzu, Amy Ando, Bryan Parthum

W4133 obj.:   2 (task 2-1)

Presenter:      Frederick Nyanzu

Email:             fnyanzu2@illinois.edu

 

Abstract:        Land conservation can provide ecosystem services to society, especially in developing peri-urban areas, and a growing movement is pushing to expand urban local food supplies. However, little is known about what groups of people benefit most from such conservation and local food. Evidence shows inequity in who has access to open space in the U.S., but much more is known about inequity in exposure to environmental bads than in benefits from environmental goods. Historic structures have excluded many groups of marginalized people from protected nature and from farm ownership, so such conservation may well be valued most highly by white residents of metropolitan areas. Food insecurity is also borne unequally by different racial groups, so food available for foraging might be appreciated more by marginalized groups. The research will conduct a choice experiment survey of residents of four metropolitan areas in New England and the Midwest to explore how race and food security are related to an individual’s willingness to pay for protecting nature and farmland and for increasing local food supply. We answer the following questions: (1) Does willingness to pay (WTP) for protecting nature and protecting farmland vary among racial and ethnic groups? (2) Do race and food insecurity affect WTP for food available for local foraging, and is marketed local food valued most highly by white residents? (3) Valuation research finds WTP for conservation often declines with distance from a respondent’s home; does the choice experiment method more accurately capture such distance decay in a community with diverse access to individual car transport if distance in the survey is measured in travel time for the respondent rather than miles? (We will present the survey and experimental design and preliminary results from pilot data; the full set of responses may not yet be ready for analysis.)

  

Title:               The recreational value of grassland restoration in the time of COVID-19

Authors:         Kaylee Wells

W4133 obj.:   1 (tasks 1-1, 1-3), 2 (tasks 2-1, 2-2)

Presenter:      Kaylee Wells

Email:             kkwells2@illinois.edu  

 

Abstract:        Grassland, or prairie, ecosystems provide many benefits to society including species habitat, carbon sequestration, soil erosion control, and recreational opportunities. Previous research estimated willingness to pay (WTP) for grassland restoration (Dissanayake and Ando 2014; Li and Ando 2020) but that work was based on choice experiment data. Although Li and Ando (2020) investigate some parts of the relationship between the value of grassland restoration, recreational opportunities at the restored grassland, and ecological quality, much remains unknown. This study explores the relationship between the recreational value of grasslands and their ecological quality using a travel cost survey of Tallgrass Prairie region residents. I contribute to travel cost methodology with a novel approach to defining the consumer choice set; using a machine learning model and geolocated images from Flickr to identify grasslands near survey respondents’ home zip codes. I build upon this initial machine learning model and photo dataset to pioneer a method for classifying the quality of grasslands. Finally, I use spatial variance in the severity of COVID-19 prevalence and formal lockdown regulations to advance understanding of the impacts of COVID-19 restrictions on the values people place on nature conservation and outdoor recreation. Full data analysis will not be complete for this presentation. However, I will provide the results of a ground truth test of the machine learning model for grassland identification and discuss plans for building the grassland quality identification and travel cost models.

 

Title:               Preferences for Utility-scale Solar Energy Siting: The Importance of Prior Land                           Use

Authors:         Corey Lang, Vasundhara Gaur, Greg Howard, Ruth Quainoo

W4133 obj.:   1 (task 1-1), 2 (task 2-1)

Presenter:      Corey Lang

Email:             clang@uri.edu              

 

Abstract:        Despite growth in the production of solar energy, one factor that has the potential of curtailing this rapid progress is citizen opposition to the siting utility-scale projects. Large-scale solar PV electricity production requires a large amount of land relative to other fuel types. In southern New England, solar developers often target farmland and forest land because these are the cheapest places to build. However, many citizens decry these outcomes due to the loss of ecosystem services, scarce farmland, and rural character. Alternative sites include covered landfills and brownfields, which are better environmentally, but are more expensive and would increase the cost of electricity. The purpose of this research is to estimate preferences for the siting of utility-scale solar installations so that non-market values for various siting attributes can be incorporated into decision making. We develop a choice experiment survey where respondents are presented with hypothetical development plans of solar energy installations. Among other attributes, these development plans highlighted the current land use for the development site in question (forest, farmland, commercial land, or brownfield) as well as the financial impact on households of the plan, measured as changes to their monthly electric bill. We distributed the survey to a random sample of Rhode Island residents and the survey used a mixed-mode approach of both mail and online responses. Our results suggest that preferences for solar development varies greatly based on current land use, with respondents having strong preference in favor of development on commercial and brownfield land and moderate to strong opposition to development on farmland and forest land.

 

Title:               Valuing Soil Organic Carbon on US Agricultural Land

Authors:         Dale Manning, Mani Rouhi Rad, Stephen Ogle

W4133 obj.:   1 (tasks 1-1, 1-4)

Presenter:      Dale Manning

Email:             dale.manning@colostate.edu

 

Abstract:        As carbon accumulates in the atmosphere, interest in storing carbon in agricultural soils has surged. Despite increased efforts to incentivize adoption of practices and technologies that build soil organic carbon (SOC), little is known about the private value of SOC stocks. We use a Ricardian approach to examine the on-farm value of SOC. We leverage novel data produced for the EPA Greenhouse Gas Inventory that provide annual estimates of the average SOC stock level for all Major Land Resource Areas in the US. SOC stocks in agricultural soils have increased due to the use of modern agricultural practices and inputs. While producer production practices affected SOC stocks, farmers did not historically target SOC stocks explicitly. Further, SOC stocks change at a slow rate and are exogenous at the time of most on-farm decisions. This slow evolution of SOC allows identification of the impact of SOC on land values. We compare the private value to the external value and draw lessons for carbon policy moving forward. We find that one additional metric tonne of SOC per acre (4.8% of 2015 average stock per acre) is worth $91 per acre or 3 percent of average land values in 2015. Exploration of heterogeneous impacts suggest that the benefits of increased SOC cover most US regions. Our results imply that the additional SOC in US agricultural soils since 1950 produces a social stock value of $168.6 billion, with 31% coming from the external benefits valued at a carbon price of $40 per tonne. Our results suggest that increased SOC stocks produced economically significant value during the last half-century and that the external value is a significant share of the total. Future work should examine the drivers of historic SOC increases to reveal policy mechanisms that can align private and socially optimal investment in soils.

06/25/2022

Publications (60 total)

Objective 1: Resource Management (35)

1. Adhikari, R.K., R.K. Grala, D.R. Petrolia, S.C. Grado, D.L. Grebner.   "Landowner concerns related to availability of ecosystem services and environmental issues in the southern United States."  Ecosystem Services 49(June): 101283.


2. Adhikari, R., R. Grala, S. Grado, D. Grebner, D.R. Petrolia. “Landowner Satisfaction with Conservation Programs in the Southern United States.”  Sustainability 14(9): 5513.


3. Adhikari, R., R. Grala, D.R. Petrolia, S. Grado, D. Grebner, and A. Shrestha.   "Landowner Willingness to Accept Monetary Compensation for Managing Forests for Ecosystem Services in the Southern United States."  Forest Science 68(2): 128-44.


4. Ando, A.S. and C. Reeser. 2021. “Homeowner willingness to pay for a pre-flood buyout agreement.” Land Economics uwpress.org/content/early/2022/01/20/le.98.4.052721-0056.full.pdf


5. Bernstein, A., T. Loch-Temzelides, A. Ando, P. Daszak, M. Vale, B. Li, C. Chapman, M. Kinnaird, K. Nowak, H. Li, J. Busch, M. Castro, C. Zambrana-Torrelio, L. Xiao, L. Kaufman, S. Pimm, L. Hannah, A. P. Dobson. “The scale of justified investments in primary pandemic prevention.” Science Advances.


6. Bigelow, D.P., D.J. Lewis, and C. Mihiar. 2022. "A major shift in U.S. land development avoids significant losses in forest and agricultural land." Environmental Research Letters, 17 (2).


7. Caffey, R.H., D.R. Petrolia, I. Georgiou, M. Miner, H. Wang, and B. Kime. "The economics of sediment quality on barrier shoreline restoration."  Revise & resubmit.


8. Canales E., J.S. Bergtold and A. Featherstone. 2021. Farm efficiency and productivity growth: The effect of commodity prices. Journal of Applied Farm Economics 4(1): DOI: 10.7771/2331-9151.1053


9. Chen, Y., Lewis, D.J., and B. Weber. 2021. “Amenities and skill sorting: A case study of land conservation policy.” The Annals of Regional Science, 67: 649-669. org/10.1007/s00168-021-01060-3.


10. Goeb, J., and F. Lupi, 2021, Showing pesticides’ true colors: The effects of a farmer-to-farmer training on pesticide knowledge, Journal of Environmental Management. 279: 111821.


11. Gutierrez A, Penn J, Tanger S, and M Blazier. 2022. “Conservation Easement Landowners’ Willingness to Accept for Forest Thinning.” Forest Policy & Economics. 135: 102627.


12. Hanson, E., A. Nagler, J. Ritten, B.S. Rashford.   Farm-level Economics of Bioenergy in the Upper Missouri River Basin. Journal of the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers 2022: 16-30.


13. 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. org/10.1016/j.reseneeco.2022.101295


14. Hrozencik, Aaron, Dale T. Manning, Jordan F. Suter, Christopher Goemans (2021). Impacts of Block-Rate Energy Pricing on Groundwater Demand in Irrigated Agriculture. American Journal of Agricultural Economics.


15. 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: 1016/j.fishres.2022.106235


16. Jones Ritten, C., A. Nagler, K.M. Hansen, D.E. Bennett, and B.S. Rashford.   Incorporating Landowner Preferences into Successful Migratory Species Conservation Policy.  Western Economics Forum 21(1): 83-94.


17. Kaminski, A., Bauer, D.M., Bell, K.P. et al. Using landscape metrics to characterize towns along an urban-rural gradient. Landscape Ecology 36, 2937–2956 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-021-01287-7


18. Laird, H., C. Landry, S. Shonkwiler, and D.R. Petrolia.   "Riders on the Storm: Hurricane Risk and Coastal Insurance and Mitigation Decisions."  Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics 8(1): Article 3.


19. Landry, C.E., D. Turner, and D.R. Petrolia.   "Flood Insurance Market Penetration and Expectations of Disaster Assistance."  Environmental & Resource Economics 79: 357-86.


20. LandryE., S. Anderson, E. Krasovskaia, and D. Turner. 2021. “Willingness to Pay for Multi-Peril Hazard Insurance” Land Economics (Nov) 97(4). doi:10.3368/le.97.4.072820-0115R1


21. Logan, L.H., R.S. Gupta, A.W. Ando, C. Suski, A.S. Stillwell. 2021. “Quantifying tradeoffs between electricity generation and fish populations via population habitat duration curves.” Ecological Modelling 440: 109373. org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2020.109373


22. Lupi, F., R. von Haefen and L. Cheng. 2021. “Distributional effects of entry fees and taxation for financing public beaches in Michigan.” Land Economics.


23. Mihiar, C., and D.J. Lewis. 2021. "Climate, adaptation, and the value of forestland: A national Ricardian analysis of the United States." Land Economics, 91(4): 911-932. org/10.3368/le.97.4.011620-0004R1.


24. Moffette, F, J. Alix-Garcia, K. Shea, A.H. Pickens. 2021. Freely available deforestation alerts can reduce emissions from land-use change. Nature Climate Change 11(11): 913-14.


25. McCollum, C.J., S.M. Ramsey, J.S. Bergtold and G. Andrango. 2021. Estimating the supply of oilseed acreage for sustainable aviation fuel production: taking account of farmers' willingness to adopt. Energy, Sustainability and Society 11:33.


26. Nagler, A., J. Bannon, and B.S. Rashford.   Landowner and Economic Benefits from Migration Corridor Designation in Wyoming.  UW Extension Bulletin, B-1374.2, August 2021.


27. Petrolia, D. R., S. G. Ishee, S. D. Yun, J. R. Cummings, and J. Maples, 2022, “Do Wind Hazard Mitigation Programs Affect Home Sales Values?” Journal of Real Estate Research, forthcoming.


28. Reem H., P. Newton, M. Ihalainen, A. Agrawal, J. Alix-Garcia, S. E. Castle, J. T. Erbaugh, M. Gabay, K. Hughes, S. Mawutor, P. Pacheco, G. Schoneveld, J.A. Timko. 2021. Levers for alleviating poverty in forest. Forest Policy and Economics 132: 102589


29. Rouhi Rad, M., D.T. Manning, J.F. Suter, C. Goemans (2021). Policy Leakage or Policy Benefit? Spatial Spillovers from Conservation Policies in Common Property Resources.  Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.


30. Sheng, G., J.S. Bergtold and E. Yeager. 2021. Assessing the joint adoption and complementarity between in-field conservation practices of Kansas farmers. Agricultural and Food Economics 9: org/10.1186/s40100-021-00201-8 .


31. Sampson G.S., A. Al-Sudani and J.S. Bergtold. 2021. Local irrigation response to ethanol expansion in the High Plains Aquifer. Resource and Energy Economics 66: org/10.1016/j.reseneeco.2021.101249.


32. Sloggy, M., J. Suter, M. Rouhi Rad, D.T. Manning, and C. Goemans (2021). Changing climate, changing minds? The effects of natural disasters on public perceptions of climate change.  Climatic Change.


33. Smith D., Caffey R., S. Midway, and J. Penn. 2022. “Economic values of potential regulation changes for the declining Southern Flounder fishery in Louisiana.” Marine and Coastal Fisheries. 14(2): e10195.


34. Suter, J., M. Rouhi Rad, D. Manning, C. Goemans, and M. Sanderson (2021). Groundwater Depletion, Climate, and the Incremental Value of Groundwater. Resource and Energy Economics.


35. von Haefen, R., and F. Lupi, 2021, How does congestion affect the evaluation of recreational gate fees? An application to Gulf Coast Beaches. Land Economics.

 

Objective 2: Economic Valuation (15)

1. Alix-Garcia, K. RE Sims, and L. Costica. 2021. Better to be indirect? Testing the accuracy and cost-savings of indirect surveys. World Development 142: 105419


2. Barrett, L.T., S.J. Theuerkauf, J.M. Rose, H.K. Alleway, S.B. Bricker, M. Parker, D.R. Petrolia, and R.C. Jones.   "Sustainable growth of non-fed aquaculture will generate valuable ecosystem benefits."  Ecosystem Services 53(February):  101396.


3. Blanchette, A., Lang, C., & VanCeylon, J. (2021). Variation in Valuation: Open Space and Geography. Land Economics, 011720-0005R.


4. Burkhardt, J., N. W. Chan, B. Bollinger, and K. Gillingham. "What is the value of conformity? Evidence from home landscaping and water conservation."  J. Agric. Econ(2021).


5. Landry C.E., Turner, D., and T. Allen. 2021. “Hedonic Property Prices and Coastal Beach Width” Applied Economic Policy & Perspectives. org/10.1002/aepp.13197


6. Lang, C., & Pearson-Merkowitz, S. (2022). Aggregate data yield biased estimates of voter preferences. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 111, 102604.


7. Lang, C., Weir, M., & Pearson-Merkowitz, S. (2021). Status quo bias and public policy: evidence in the context of carbon mitigation. Environmental Research Letters, 16(5), 054076.


8. Manning, D. and A. Ando. Ecosystem Services and Agricultural Land Rental Markets: The Producer Cost of Bat Population Crashes. Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (forthcoming).


9. Nguyen, T., D. M. Kling, S. J. Dundas, D. Hacker, D. K. Lew, P. Ruggiero, and K. Roy. Forthcoming. Quality over Quantity: Non-market Values of Restoring Coastal Dunes in the US Pacific Northwest. Land Economics. doi: 10.3368/le.040721-0036R


10. Penn J. and W Hu. 2021. “Videos Improve Attention and Cheap Talk in Online Surveys.” Frontiers in Economics in China. 16(2): 347-376.


11. Penn, J., D.R. Petrolia, J.M. Fannin. "Comparing Representative and Convenience Samples for Values of Beach Condition Information."  Working paper.


12. Petrolia, D.R., D. Guignet, J.C. Whitehead, C. Kent, K. Amon, and C. Caulder.   "Nonmarket Valuation in the Environmental Protection Agency's Regulatory Process."  Applied Economic Perspectives & Policy 43(3): 952-69.


13. Dahal, R.P., R.K. Grala, S. Gordon, I.A. Munn, and D.R. Petrolia. 2021.  "Geospatial Heterogeneity in Monetary Value of Proximity to Waterfront Ecosystem Services in the Gulf of Mexico."  Water 13(17): 2401.


14. Yun, S. D. and B. M. Gramig, 2022, “Spatial Panel Models of Crop Yield Response to Weather: Econometric Specification Strategies and Prediction Performance,” Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, 54(1): 53-71.


15. Yun, S. D. and A. Kim, 2021, “Economic Impact of Natural Disasters: A Myth or Mismeasurement?” Applied Economics Letters, 29(10): 861-866.

 

Objective 3: Integrated Policy and Decision-Making (10)

1. Blachly B, Ferreira S, Herman B, Grace Ingham A, Landry C.E. and A.J. Perry. 2021. Developing an Inventory of US Army Corps of Engineers’ Nature-based Infrastructure Projects. DOER Technical Notes Collection (DOER-EWN-XX), U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, Vicksburg, MS. doer.el.erdc.dren.mil.


2. Berenter, J., Morrison, I., and Mueller, J.M. (2021). “Valuing user preferences for geospatial fire monitoring in Guatemala.” 13:12077.


3. Jennings, K.S., A.N. Wlostowski, R.E. Bash, J. Burkhardt, C.W. Wobus, and G. Aggett. "Data availability and sector‐specific frameworks restrict drought impact quantification in the Intermountain West." Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water(2022): e1586.


4. Kang, N., C. Sims, and S. Cho. 2022. “Spatial and taxonomic diversification for conservation investment under uncertainty.” Environmental Conservation, 1-8. doi:10.1017/S0376892922000194.


5. Levesque, V.R., Johnson, E.S., and K.P. Bell. 2021. Municipal Capacity to Respond to COVID-19: Implications for Improving Community Resilience in Maine. Maine Policy Review2 (2021): 62 -71, digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/vol30/iss2/8.


6. Lewis, D. J., D. M. Kling, S. J. Dundas, and D. K. Lew. 2022. Estimating the Value of Threatened Species Abundance Dynamics. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 113: 102639. doi: 1016/j.jeem.2022.102639


7. Mueller, J.M., Loomis, J.B., Richardson, L., and Fitch, R.A. (2021) “Valuing impacts of proximity to Saguaro National Park on house prices.” Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy. org/10.1002/aepp.13196


8. Petrolia, D.R., W.C. Walton, and J. Cebrian.   "Oyster Economics:  Simulated Costs, Market Returns, and Nonmarket Ecosystem Benefits of Harvested and Non-Harvested Reefs, Off-Bottom Aquaculture, and Living Shorelines." Marine Resource Economics 37(3).


9. Shaw, G. R., and S. J. Dundas. 2021. Socio-Economic Impacts of the Southern Flow Corridor Restoration Project: Tillamook Bay, Oregon. Garibaldi, OR: Tillamook Estuaries Partnership. 47 pp. doi: 25923/w8c8-v180


10. Wlostowski, A.N., Jennings, K.S., Bash, R.E., Burkhardt, J., Wobus, C.W. and Aggett, G., (2021). Dry landscapes and parched economies: A review of how drought impacts nonagricultural socioeconomic sectors in the US Intermountain West. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews (WIRES): Water, p.e1571.

 

2022 Meeting Abstracts

 

SESSION 1: Stated Preference Methods

 

Title:               Controlling for attribute non-attendance using self-reported attribute non-attendance and response time information

Authors:         Jake Kennedy, Sahan Dissanayake, Randy Bluffstone

W4133 obj.:   2 (task 2.1)

Presenter:      Jake Kennedy

Email:             jakekennedy@pdx.edu

Abstract:       

The use of choice experiment surveys to elicit preferences and values for non-market goods and policies has increased significantly in the last decade. At the same time there is growing concern of the presence of attribute non-attendance (ANA), the occurrence where a respondent ignores one or more attributes. Previous studies have cast doubt on the trustworthiness of self-reported attendance information and shown improved model fit using inferred attribute non-attendance methodologies. However, existing literature has also shown a correlation between response time and cognitive effort as well as response time and self-reported attendance. We further contribute to this literature first by looking at the connection between response time and self-reported attendance information and second by exploring how that information can be jointly used to improve estimation in choice experiments. Our application is from an online survey conducted in the summer of 2020 concerning park management strategies for Forest Park, a public park located in Portland, Oregon. The data set consists of 822 responses from a choice experiment consisting of six attributes including the cost attribute and thirty-six unique choice tasks that were divided into six unique surveys. From our exploration of the literature, this study also contributes the first evidence of the impact of attribute non-attendance from the context of recreational preferences for urban greenspace. Initial exploration of the data shows pervasive ANA ranging from 35.9-50.7% of responses ‘at least sometimes’ not attending to an attribute with a particularly concerning 32.2% of responses ignoring the cost attribute. Finally, preliminary results show statistically significant but mixed directional effects on response time from self-reported attendance information per attribute prompting further exploration.

 

Title:               Assessing Hypothetical Bias in Nudging: Willingness to Pay for Consultation towards Improved Forest Management

Authors:         Sapana Bastola, Jerrod Penn, Michael Blazier

W4133 obj.:   1 (task 1-1), 2 (Task 2-1)

Presenter:      Jerrod Penn

Email:             jpenn@agcenter.lsu.edu

Abstract:           

Researchers have applied the principles from behavioral economics and psychology to nudge people towards a desired outcome. Stated Preference studies have also begun to adopt nudges, commonly framed as informational treatments, significantly altering willingness to pay in a wide array of settings. However, the observed effect of information treatments in SP studies may be subject to hypothetical bias such that the real impact is potentially smaller. To explore this issue, we examine to what extent the effect of nudge information treatments in Stated Preference studies is overstated due to hypothetical bias by eliciting both hypothetical and real WTP.

We examine the presence of HB for “Social Norm” and “Financial Incentives” information. These represent two different, but commonly implemented information nudges. This occurs in the context of understanding family forest landowners’ maximum WTP to receive a consultation with a private forest consultant, an important step towards obtaining a forest management plan and forest certification. While family forest landowners own more than 275 million acres of forestland in the US, adoption of among these de facto forest managers of sustainable forest management practices remains extremely low.

Each participant was randomly assigned to one of three treatments: 1) Social Norm 2) Financial Incentive, and 3) Control. In Social Norm, landowners received information about the number of certified farms and certified acres of forestland specific to their county as well as the same information in the three leading counties in their state. In Financial Incentive, landowners are told about three financial incentives of working with a private industry forester. Landowners in Control did not receive either of the information nudges. We used a payment card approach to elicit landowners’ WTP to receive consultation in both elicitation settings and utilized a Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) auction mechanism in the real setting.

The survey was distributed via mail in Spring 2021 to 4507 family forest landowners with property in four Louisiana parishes and four Arkansas counties with 10-600 acres of land. We received 578 responses from landowners, yielding a response rate of 14.1% and roughly equal participation in the three treatments.

Our preliminary results show that hypothetical WTP is higher than real WTP indicating the presence of hypothetical bias. Compared to control, Social Norm significantly increases WTP for consultation. However, the effect of Social Norm information is significantly higher in real elicitation than in hypothetical elicitation. Financial Incentive has no significant effect on WTP and there is no significant difference in the effect of Financial Incentive on hypothetical and real WTP.

 

Title:   Comparing Water Quality Valuation Across Probability and Non-Probability Samples     

Authors: Frank Lupi 

W4133 obj.:   Task 1-1 & Task 2-1

Presenter: Frank Lupi                      

Email: lupi@msu.edu             

Abstract:

Choosing a sample is a critical step in valuation survey design. While probability-based sampling is traditionally preferred for representing the general population, non-probability online samples offer faster implementation and lower costs. Non-probability online samples are criticized for potential biases that may not be mitigated by balancing samples to “represent” population demographics (Baker et al. 2013). For stated preference (SP) valuation, a superb review of best practices recommends probability-based sampling but also notes several SP studies with mixed findings (Johnston et al. 2017). More recently, some popular non-probability sample sources have undergone a “crisis” in response quality (Chmielewski and Kucker 2020).

This paper compares SP results between an addressed-based probability sample and two non-probability samples (Qualtrics and MTurk). Our SP survey was developed according to suggestions by Johnston et al. (2017). The probability sample is an address-based sample (ABS) of the general population from the USPS postal delivery file that was implemented in a push-to-web mail-invitation design. The survey received a 23% response rate yielding ~2,200 observations. The two non-probability online opt-in samples include 1,237 respondents from MTurk and 3,095 from Qualtrics. Amazon’s. Topically, the research compares values for freshwater ecosystem services in Michigan using referendum choice questions. We find that while the samples differ in some demographics, such as the relative youth of the MTurk respondents, across 95% of attitudinal variables the samples were substantively very similar. Most importantly though, the samples consistently differed in terms of key economic outcomes like total and marginal WTP for attribute changes.

 

Title: Text Analysis as a complementary approach to identifying protest responses

Authors: Brian Vander Naald, S. Kolstoe    

W4133 obj.: Task 2-1

Presenter: Brian Vander Naald        

Email: brian.vandernaald@drake.edu          

Abstract:

The protection of at-risk species, prevention and mitigation of invasive species, and climate change are all topics that have the potential to trigger strong responses from respondents in stated choice surveys. Some strong responses may actually be biased (e.g., protest or warm glow) or suggest scenario rejection, traditionally all reasons for excluding responses from analysis. The current standard is to use purposeful questions to identify these responses. However, this strategy may be overlooking information from open-ended responses. Open-ended responses have traditionally been examined on a case-by-case basis, and it is unclear whether subjective researcher classification of such responses can be replicated consistently. We contribute to the conversation around classifying open-ended responses by using a machine learning algorithm and exploring how it performs.  

Our data consists of 1030 observations from a 2020 binary choice DCE that elicits preferences for attributes of a hike (including cost, hike availability, invasive species risk, and types of birds encountered) in a unique intact tropical ecosystem. Under assumptions of the RUM, respondents from this representative sample choose the hike with attributes that maximize their utility. From these data, we calculate WTP estimates for the probabilities of encountering different birds, getting on the hike, and introducing an invasive species.

We use a form of text analysis called sentiment analysis to identify and categorize the open-ended responses to the open-ended comments question at the end of the survey as positive, negative or neutral. Using latent class analysis, we explore whether classifying sentiments mechanically using sentiment analysis may be used as a complementary approach to identifying protest votes in a discrete choice experiment. To the extent it helps refine WTP estimates, this approach has the potential to be useful to policymakers.

 

SESSION 2: Water Quality

 

Title:   Spatial dimensions of water quality value in New England River networks 

Authors: Robert J. Johnston, K. Moeltner, S. Peery, T. Ndebele, Z. Yao, S. Crema, W. M. Wollheim, E. Besedin

W4133 obj.: Task 2-2           

Presenter: Robert J. Johnston           

Email: rjohnston@clarku.edu           

Abstract:

To provide insight into how spatial dimensions of water quality changes influence WTP, we integrated a water quality model with a novel map-based, interactive choice experiment architecture to estimate households’ WTP for water quality improvements over a river system. Among our hypotheses is that allowing people to interact with dynamic GIS maps in a choice experiment can provide detailed spatial information that improves the accuracy of WTP prediction, by identifying individualized areas where improvements might have high value to each respondent. We developed the approach to estimate values linked to realistic, predicted scenarios of water quality change flowing from a set of policy actions throughout a large river system. We estimated values for changes over a study domain covering approximately 95,800 miles of rivers and streams in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

Each choice-experiment question paired a possible environmental policy scenario with a hypothetically binding household cost, compared to a “business as usual” (BAU) status-quo with no change in household cost. Scenarios illustrated both current conditions and prospective changes in three different water quality measures, representing: (a) safety for human use, (b) support for aquatic life and (c) a multi-metric indicator of overall water pollution. To represent these measures under (1) contemporary conditions, (2) the BAU, and (3) the policy scenario, the survey included nine individual water-quality maps. All maps had dynamic GIS zoom capability, enabling respondents to click a URL to voluntarily view conditions at any desired magnification and area. We developed a novel survey architecture to capture data on how respondents maneuvered through each of these maps prior to answering choice questions. The resulting map-interaction database provided information on all map extents viewed by each respondent, for each water quality map, and the length of time that each frame was viewed. We applied the map-interaction tracking data to infer locations where water quality might be salient to each respondent, based on the time spent viewing each map extent.

The survey was implemented in May 2021 using a mixed-mode, address-based, push-to-web sample. The analysis draws from 1,292 respondents who engaged with maps. A discrete-choice, random-utility model was estimated in WTP-space using Bayesian model search and averaging. Results provide robust evidence that map interactions convey information related to choices and WTP estimates. WTP estimates are influenced by regionwide quality improvements and improvements surrounding each respondent’s home, as anticipated, but also in additional, individualized locations identifiable solely via each respondent’s dynamic map interactions. These spatial effects are pertinent solely for improvements to rivers at low baseline quality and vary over different water quality measures.

These results show that the presented architecture for choice experiments—which captures data on how people interact with maps of water quality change—can reveal individualized areas wherein some types of change have high value, beyond effects related to distance-decay. The model allows these areas, and associated welfare effects, to be identified even if the reasons why these areas are highly valued by each household are not suspected in advance by researchers. Results suggest that spatial dimensions of WTP are more complex than is typically acknowledged in the literature and include components that cannot be identified via standard methods.          

 

Title:   Empirical evaluation of non-point source pollution abatement – Is an improvement detectable?   

Authors: Max Pohlman, K. Zipp      

W4133 obj.:   Task 1-1 & Task 3-2

Presenter: Max Pohlman      

Email: maxpohlman@psu.edu          

Abstract:

Nonpoint source pollution in waterbodies has been a longstanding issue in the United States. These pollutants are defined as detectable, but unable to be traced back to their source. One of the biggest causes of nonpoint source pollution is runoff from agriculture; rainwater flows over the land, picking up excess nutrients as it flows, before winding up in an adjacent body of water. While each source of pollution is likely small, the pollution flows through water networks and coalesces in larger bodies of water.

In recent years, the most common policies to address nonpoint source water pollution subsidize the use of best management practices (BMPS): actions farmers can take to reduce nutrient runoff from their land. However, the evaluation of these policies has relied on predictive modeling, with no empirical studies, to our knowledge, estimating the effectiveness of BMPs on reducing nutrient runoff.

This paper seeks to evaluate whether we can empirically detect the impact of BMPs on water quality. If we can, this could be a tremendous boon towards future policy. If there is no empirical relationship, we must wonder if investing into these kinds of policies is worth it. Can policies be classified as a success even if there’s no detectable change in water quality? If so, how does one define success?

To our knowledge, we are the first to use spatially explicit riparian buffer location data to empirically estimate the impact of a BMP on water pollution at a large scale. We use geospatial techniques to calculate relative watersheds for each monitoring station, defined as the land area that feeds into each station. Over 25 years, we observe the installation of 7,106 buffers in Pennsylvania and connect them with 32,725 nitrogen readings from 1,685 water quality monitoring stations from the USGS and EPA.

We construct a two-way fixed-effects (TWFE) model evaluating the changes in percent feasible buffer area on nitrogen levels. We use month x year and watershed as our temporal and spatial fixed effects, along with various climate, land use, and biological covariates.

Recent research has shown that TWFE estimates often cannot be interpreted as causal due to treatment effect dynamics (de Chaisemartin and D’Haultfoeuille 2020, Goodman-Bacon 2021, Callaway and Sant’Anna 2021). Thus, we also used group-time average treatment effects (GTATE) (Callaway and Sant’Anna 2021) to overcome the shortcomings of the TWFE model.

Our primary result from the TWFE model shows that Pennsylvania’s goal of having 95,000 acres of buffers planted by 2025 (a 50% increase in buffer acreage) would be associated with a 2% further decrease in detected nitrogen. Additionally, our GTATE estimator finds that the addition of buffers caused watersheds that received them to have 11% less nitrogen than watersheds that did not receive buffers. We discuss two major issues with interpreting these results – (1) the potential endogeneity of buffer location and (2) the correlation between buffers and other unobserved conservation practices.  

 

Title: Locally-weighted meta-regression and benefit transfer

Authors: Klaus Moeltner, R. Puri, R. J. Johnston, E. Besedin, J. A. Balukas, A. Le, I. Morin       

W4133 obj.: Task 1-1, Task 2-3 & Task 3-1

Presenter: Klaus Moeltner   

Email: moeltner@vt.edu       

Abstract:

We propose a locally-weighted regression approach to analyze meta-data and generate benefit transfer predictions in an environmental valuation context. We introduce the concept of locally-weighted meta-regression, provide econometric underpinnings, and discuss the construction of weight functions. We illustrate the use of cross-validation to decide between weight functions and show how this framework can be applied in a benefit transfer setting. For our application on willingness-to-pay for water quality improvements we find that the proposed approach brings substantial gains in predictive accuracy in a leave-one-out setting, and vast improvements in predictive efficiency for benefit transfer. These gains are relatively robust to the choice of weight function, suggesting strong potential of this method to generalize to other meta-regression contexts.        

 

Title: Climate benefits of nutrient management                   

Authors: Bryan Parthum, C. Moore, E. Kopits, J. Beaulieu

W4133 obj.: Task 1-1 & Task 1-4

Presenter: Bryan Parthum    

Email: Parthum.Bryan@epa.gov                                          

Abstract:  N/A     

 

SESSION 3: Valuation of Grasslands & Wilderness

 

Title: The use value of grasslands in the Tallgrass Prairie Region of the United States                 

Authors: Kaylee Wells         

W4133 obj.: Task 1-1, Task 1-3 & Task 2-1

Presenter: Kaylee Wells       

Email: kkwells2@illinois.edu           

Abstract:

Much is known about how grasslands (i.e., prairies) provide benefits to society through ecosystem services like carbon sequestration, erosion control, and recreational opportunities (Zhao, Liu and Wu 2020; Chang et al. 2021). Much less is known about the value of these benefits to society because they are largely non-market in nature (Gascoigne et al. 2011). This research is the first to apply the travel cost method to the problem of estimating the value of and demand for grassland recreation. Using data on year-round trips made by Iowa, Illinois, and Minnesota residents to grasslands in the Tallgrass Prairie Region of the United States I estimate trip count models and the use (or recreational) value of these sites. I estimate zero-inflated negative binomial and Poisson hurdle models, which also provide insight into the demographics most likely to visit a grassland for recreation. Grasslands in Iowa, Illinois, and Minnesota are of particular interest because it is estimated that nearly all the native tallgrass prairie in these three states has been converted by agriculture or development (Samson and Knopf 1994). As such, this research could inform the administration of many national public and private programs concerned with preserving, protecting, and restoring grasslands like the USDA’s Conservation Reserve Program and the work of the Nature Conservancy. It could also provide useful information for state-run programs like Minnesota’s Walk-In Access hunting program, which offers additional monetary incentives to landowners with land enrolled in conservation programs who allow public hunting on that land.    

 

Title: Long run evolution of wilderness value: A combined cross-section time series analysis of backcountry hiking             

Authors: Jeffrey Englin, T. Holmes 

W4133 obj.: Task 1-3           

Presenter: Jeffrey Englin      

Email: jeffrey.englin@asu.edu         

Abstract: N/A – presentation canceled         

Title: Public access, ecological integrity, and people’s heterogeneous values of grassland restoration                

Authors: Amy Ando, S. Dissanayake, R. Iovanna, K. Wells           

W4133 obj.: Task 1-1, Task 1-3 & Task 2-1            

Presenter: Amy Ando          

Email: amyando@illinois.edu           

Abstract:

Grassland, or prairie, ecosystems provide many benefits to society including species habitat, carbon sequestration, soil erosion control, and recreational opportunities. At the same time, grassland ecosystems in North America are disappearing, with grassland loss in most areas exceeding 80% since the mid-1800’s; in Illinois the loss is 99.9%.  The USDA protects and restores grasslands through the Conservation Reserve Program. However, it is more costly for farmers to plant high quality grassland habitat on CRP acres, and much remains unknown about public willingness to pay (WTP) for grassland restoration projects and how that varies with grassland quality and public access to restored grasslands. This study quantifies the relationship between the value of grassland restoration and its ecological quality and public access. We use a choice experiment survey of residents in the Tallgrass Prairie region that includes area restored, ecological quality, public access with and without hunting, and annual cost to households as attributes. There were two experimental treatments in survey administration: with and without video (to see if video of the thing being valued changes respondents’ expressed preferences) and with the cost attribute expressed in terms of sales tax or income tax (to see if this affected responses from low-income people who do not pay income tax.) We find that people have large MWTP for acres of grassland restored, and that the premium people are willing to pay for diverse grassland habitat is high. We also find that people have large MWTP to have walking and biking, while the average MWTP to have hunting also available is negative. Findings yield interesting insights into how preferences for open space and recreation vary among different groups of people.     

            

SESSION 4: Land Conservation

 

Title: Does temporary land retirement promote organic adoption? Evidence from expiring Conservation Reserve Program contracts                

Authors: Daniel Bigelow, H. Wing, K. Fuller          

W4133 obj.: Task 1-1           

Presenter: Daniel Bigelow   

Email: daniel.bigelow@montana.edu           

Abstract:

The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) was established in 1985 in an effort to reduce agricultural production on highly erodible and otherwise environmentally-sensitive farmland. Through the CRP, producers can voluntarily retire land from production for a contract period of 10-15 years in exchange for a yearly rental payment. At its 2007 peak, CRP enrollment exceeded 35 million acres but has since been steadily declining. Over the same period, organic agriculture has seen tremendous revenue growth and is increasingly promoted as a potential solution to various environmental problems associated with conventional agricultural production.

Despite its appeal, there remain important barriers that may dissuade conventional producers from adopting organic practices. Chief among these is the three-year transition period that prospective organic producers must get through before their products can be marketed under the USDA organic certification label. During this three-year transition period, producers incur the lower yields associated with organic production without receiving the price premium typically associated with organic products. The CRP provides a unique opportunity for producers to forgo this transition process. CRP land is, by definition, not being used for production and therefore incidentally complies with organic transition standards, allowing it to be certified in the year that it exits the program.

In this paper, we study the extent to which CRP enrollment promotes uptake of organic production practices. Primary econometric results come from a set of finite distributed-lag models, which identify the effect of the number of expiring CRP contracts on the number of new certified organic operations, conditional on county fixed effects, time fixed effects, state-specific linear trends, and various county controls. Our analysis is based on a unique county-level panel dataset of organic certifications from USDA’s Organic Integrity database combined with contract-level CRP information from the USDA’s Conservation Contract Maintenance System. We exploit the 10-15-year gap between CRP enrollment and contract expiration as part of our identification strategy, which rests on the assumption that producers did not enroll in the CRP with the specific intention of converting their land to organic production upon expiration of the contract.

By examining the connection between the CRP and organic agriculture, our paper provides new evidence on the fate of land in expiring CRP contracts and furthers our understanding of the importance of the transition process in organic conversion decisions. Preliminary results indicate that CRP contract expiration leads to increases in organic adoption, an effect that is most prominent in the southern region of the US. These results suggest that easing the transition period constraints faced by landowners can promote greater uptake of organic production practices, highlighting an important potential co-benefit of the CRP.  

 

Title: The distributional impacts of land conservation         

Authors: Corey Lang, J. VanCeylon, A. Ando        

W4133 obj.: Task 2.1

Presenter: Corey Lang         

Email: clang@uri.edu           

Abstract:

Wealth inequality and environmental justice issues have become more prevalent in recent years and are important policy considerations. Evidence for inequitable environmental outcomes is well-documented in research where poorer and more diverse communities are more likely to be exposed to environmental hazards like poor air quality or superfund sites compared to wealthier and whiter neighborhoods (Kahn 2002, Currie et al. 2011, Lang and Cavanagh 2018, Banzhaf et al. 2019). While environmental justice priorities are currently more present in government decision-making processes, these policies and efforts do not always lead to socially equitable outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how the benefits accrued from land conservation are distributed among households. When land is conserved, this creates a place-based amenity that is capitalized into the housing market. Nearby homeowners benefit from this creation or transfer of wealth with little or no expense. Because neither home purchase location nor land conservation decisions are random, the wealth generated is unlikely to be benefit socioeconomic groups equally.  

 
Title: Observed and unobserved heterogeneity in conservation decisions: Implications for the voluntary supply of agricultural greenhouse gas abatement                 

Authors: Dale Manning, M. Rouhi Rad, D. Mansfield, S. Ogle      

W4133 obj.: Task 1-1, Task 2-1 & Task 3-1

Presenter: Dale Manning     

Email: Dale.Manning@colostate.edu           

Abstract:

Agriculture has the physical potential to contribute to global greenhouse gas mitigation efforts.  Current policy initiatives focus on voluntary efforts to influence agriculture’s impact on the climate.  Despite this, little is known about the economic viability of agricultural greenhouse gas abatement at a large scale.  Therefore, we leverage novel panel data on crop and practice choice, soil carbon, and emissions over time on more than 15,000 fields across the Cornbelt Region of the United States to estimate the quantity of agricultural greenhouse gas abatement as a function of the price paid for changes in net carbon emissions.  To do this, we develop a discrete choice modeling framework in which producers choose a crop (e.g., corn, soy, etc.) and practice (full-till, no-till, cover crop, etc.) from the set of available crops and practices observed in the region.  Importantly, we observe a rich set of farm and field characteristics that drive the relative profitability of alternative crops and practices.  After estimating the parameters of the choice model under alternative assumptions about producer heterogeneity in response to net profit, we use DayCent model simulations to estimate field-level changes in soil carbon and net emissions over a 15-year period under all feasible crop and practice choices.  Finally, we sample from predicted probabilities to estimate baseline crop and practice choices and compare those to choices under a range of carbon prices up to $100 per tonne.

Through this work, we make two contributions to the agricultural and resource economics literature.  First, given existing evidence on heterogeneity in producer conservation attitudes, we explore the importance of modeling assumptions regarding the heterogeneity in response to conservation incentives.  Specifically, we estimate choice models using conditional logit, mixed logit with random parameters describing the response to net revenue, latent class models, and a combination of latent class and random parameters.  Using a subset of the data, we estimate how modeling assumptions affect the estimated abatement supply curve.  After identifying the model specification that allows for sufficient heterogeneity while minimizing computational time, we apply the model to our study area.  This leads to our second contribution: we provide an empirically relevant estimate of the cost of incentivizing agricultural greenhouse gas abatement at scale.  This can inform current and future policy efforts to encourage greenhouse gas abatement on agricultural land in the US.

This work will benefit greatly from input from W4133 members.  We hope to learn from the group’s experience with choice models commonly used in valuation exercises.       

 

SESSION 5: Stated Preference Applications

 

Title: Households’ Willingness to Pay for Different Attributes of Alternative Sources of Residential Electricity: Evidence from a Large Discrete Choice Experiment     

Authors: Dilek Uz, J. Mamkhezri     

W4133 obj.: Task 1-4           

Presenter: Dilek Uz  

Email: dilekuz@unr.edu       

Abstract:

Consistent with the dramatic decreases in costs, economic incentives offered at various governmental levels, and rising social awareness of the environmental issues, the US residential

rooftop solar capacity grew rapidly in the past decade. As of December 2011, total installed

residential solar capacity was about 0.8 GW spread over 159 thousand customers while this

number reached 16.5 GW with more than 2.5 million customers in December 2020.

There are multiple avenues through which residential solar is supported within the US

energy and environment policy such as tax credits and rebates both at the federal and state

level. Perhaps the most important and debated mechanism is net energy metering (NEM)

which is an arrangement between a power utility company and its customers where the

customer buys or rents the equipment to generate electricity onsite for own consumption   and sell any unused portion to the grid. Generating electricity in such decentralized manner

with relatively small-scale equipment is referred to as distributed generation (DG). First net

metering law in US was enacted in Minnesota in 1983 (Wan and Green [1998]). More than

two decades of relatively slow uptake is followed by a rapid growth in net metering both in

terms of customers and capacity as a response to decreasing costs and financially attractive

net metering terms. However, as the capacity skyrocketed, economic feasibility and fairness

concerns (more details below) grew proportionately, leading to a reversal in the state policies

regarding the lucrativeness of the net metering agreements. This reversal is the main source

of ongoing controversy around rooftop solar in the US.

The support mechanisms for residential solar are promoted on the grounds that they provide public benefits such as avoided generation from fossil fuels and reduction in transmission losses via bringing together the point of generation and consumption. The proponents assert that these supports are needed to incentivize private investments in renewable energy and diversify the energy sources while helping the local economy and the environment.3

On the other hand, economists raise concerns that NEM causes unfair cost shifting unto

non-solar households who, on average, tend to be on the lower end of the income distribution

compared to solar households (Inzunza and Knittel [2020]). Furthermore, studies showed

that public benefits of residential solar are highly location specific and overall, not necessarily

high enough to justify the costs of supporting the NEM programs (Brown and Bunyan [2014];

Cohen and Callaway [2016]). Consistent with this, compensation scheme - how much the

NEM customer should be compensated for their exports to the grid, has been the subject of

ongoing policy debates in many states. As of October 2016, 44 states (plus the District of

Columbia) implemented mandatory NEM policies with varying rules whereas this number

has retracted to 37 states (plus District of Columbia) as of August 2021. In the third quarter of 2021 alone, 27 states took a total of 55 actions related to DG compensation rules

(Proudlove et al. [2021]). In December 2021, the public utilities commission of California– the

state with the largest installed residential solar capacity in the US, has issued a proposed

decision to cut back the compensation that the net metering customers receive for their

exports into the grid.

The usual scenario for a rooftop solar panel sale involves a customer soliciting information from one or more vendors. Afterwards, a member of the sales team meets with individual customers during which they deliver their sales pitch. It usually includes some information about financial advantages of owning solar panels which are derived using some strong underlying assumptions about future energy prices. Additionally, the sales representative often makes remarks about the importance of being independent from the utility company as well

as the environmental benefits associated with this investment.

As mentioned above, in addition to the public benefits, rooftop solar panels offer a

variety of private benefits to their owners. These include financial benefits such as potential

reduction in energy bills and appreciation for home value as well as subjective or psychological

benefits like “warm glow”7, the ability to signal environmental values, and the feeling of

being more self-dependent. Understanding how much US households value these private

benefits is vital for rooftop solar producers who need to be able to develop effective marketing

strategies to expand their customer base beyond the early adopters in a policy environment

where support for NEM has the potential to gradually weaken. The findings could also

inform the policy makers, who are tasked with formulating compensation schemes while

balancing fairness and meeting the demands of highly vocal residential solar proponents.

In an ideal setting to investigate how much consumers value different attributes of various home energy options, the researchers would observe the households making actual investment decisions while facing different alternatives with varying attributes. However, unfortunately, such a dataset does not exist. Furthermore, the existing records on past household meetings with solar customer representative and the choices of potential customers are proprietary to the rooftop solar vendors. The next best alternative is to simulate the choice settings with consumers. With this in mind, we develop and implement a large stated-preference

discrete choice experiment (N = 1033) in order to disentangle the willingness to pay (WTP)

for distinct private benefit sources of owning rooftop solar panels. Participants, who are

selected from the demographic groups that are more likely to purchase solar panels based

on existing demographic data on rooftop solar owners, are asked to choose from different

energy options with varying payment schedules and other attributes (explained in more

detail below). The study also features a randomized control trial (RCT) component where

a randomly selected subset of the participants (treatment group) are presented with the net

present value (NPV) of each of the options together with the payment schedule which is

composed of the down-payment and net monthly out-of-pocket costs. The control group, on

the other hand, is only presented with the payment schedule without the NPV information.

This study contributes to the current body of knowledge on WTP for renewable energy

and household investment decisions in various ways. To the best of our knowledge, this is

the first study that i) differentiates the WTP for distinct attributes of a renewable energy

source, ii) investigates the importance of information provision in investment decisions within

the renewable energy setting, and iii) incorporates decision makers’ political affiliations as

a control variable. Furthermore, we expand the current WTP methodology by presenting

individual-level WTPs coupled with their confidence intervals. In order to do this, we first estimate a random coefficients (mixed) logit model using the Hierarchical Bayes (HB) method.

We then construct and provide visualisations for the 95% confidence intervals of the WTP

for various attributes by taking the 2.5th and 97.5th percentiles of the set of estimates created

using the parameter draws that the HB method yields. For this exercise, we implement the

“individual parameters” approach explained in Revelt and Train [1998] in order to conduct

an individualized refining to the coefficient draws obtained from the parameter draws.

Our study leads to a number of important findings. First, we show that there is a

considerable amount of heterogeneity in consumer WTPs for different attributes where fixed

coefficients logit fails to capture. This is evident not only in the significant standard deviation

estimates inherent in the mixed logit estimations but also in the individual level confidence

intervals for the WTP estimates we construct. Second, when presented with the NPV

information for the options they are facing, the WTPs that the consumers demonstrate for

the attribute we are studying are up to an order of magnitude less than the case where this

information is suppressed. This finding has important implications for the future of rooftop

solar in the US where the current policy environment around supporting NEM is highly

controversial. In other words, without the financial advantages of NEM policies, rooftop

solar industry may face serious challenges expanding their customer base especially if their

marketing pitch solely depends on selling “energy independence” to households. Another

important insight to be gained here is that our results raise potential concerns regarding the

reliability of WTP figures estimated in investment related discrete choice settings where the

NPV information is not provided.

 

Title: Willingness to Pay for Green Energy, Green Jobs and Green Views: A Choice Experiment on Offshore Wind Energy              

Authors: Lee Parton, S. Lutzeyer, D. J. Phaneuf, L. O. Taylor        

W4133 obj.: Task 2-1           

Presenter: Lee Parton           

Email: leeparton@boisestate.edu       

Abstract:  

We conduct a choice-experiment estimating the changes in electricity prices which North Carolina residents would be willing to face to have wind energy augment the grid, and how willingness to pay for green energy varies depending on the visual, social and environmental impacts associated with offshore wind development. Respondents were presented with offshore wind farm scenarios at different distances from the coast and information regarding the emissions reductions and job creation that accompany different development scenarios. We explore the extent to which job creation and carbon reductions can offset visual disamenities and differences in prefences across coastal and inland residents. We find preference heterogeneity dependent on the siting location, i.e., whether the wind farm is visible from a hypothetical resort town or along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore. Using a latent class model, we find a class of respondents indicating positive willingness to pay (WTP) for wind farm development visible from a tourist town and negative WTP for wind farms visible from the Cape Hatteras National Seashore. Conversely, we find a class of respondents who prefer a hypothetical wind farm be constructed along the National Seashore as opposed to being visible from a hypothetical tourist town.  

Title: Comparing Money vs Labor Payments in Individual and Group Settings for Choice Experiments in Developing Country Settings             

Authors: Sahan Dissanayake, S. Vidanage  

W4133 obj.: Task 1-1 & Task 2-1    

Presenter: Sahan Dissanayake          

Email: sdissan2@gmail.com 

Abstract:

The use of stated preference methods in developing countries is growing with the increasing concern about the environment as economies develop. At the same time using monetary payment vehicles and estimating a Willingess to Pay (WTP) can be problematic in rural or low incomes areas in developing countries. Many respondents in these areas regularly engage in barter and paying with labor and do not use monetary paymetns for all transactions. This distinction from urban areas with a monetary economy and with most settings in developed countries can impact results from valuation studies as the WTP elicited from rural and low-income areas is likely to be low even though respondents may have a high value and be willing to pay through other means. In response to these concerns, a growing number of stated preference studies explore using both monetary and non-monetary payment options. We contribute to this literature by exploring how the use of monetary vs labor payment options can impact values eclitied from choice experiment studies coundcuted in rural developing country settings. Our application is a choice experiment survey to value restoring an ancient irrigation system known as cascading tank systems in Sri Lankan. The cascading tank systems are designed to complement the surrounding landscape and has parallels to the Japanese land use system of Satoyama. In Sri Lanka, these irrigations systems were created over 1500-2000 years ago but are still functioning today and provide irrigation for nearly 40% of the total irrigable area of the country. At the same time these ancient systems are degrading and there a large number of efforts to restore these systems which the FAO recently identified as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS). We conduct a choice experiment to understand the WTP/willingesss-to-contribute of rural households to restore these irrigiation systems. We also contribute to the literature on the applications of choice experiments in developing country settings by comparing data gathering methods, specifically individual surveys vs group information session. We find that in the individual survey settings respondents are more willing to contribute labor (compared to an equivalent monetary payment). Based on the early results we find that there is no difference between the group and individual survey settings when the survey is presented as a monetary payment but for the labor payment treatment, the group setting results in a positive payment coefficient for the labor payment attribute (i.e., respondents are willing to contribute labor when the survey is conducted in a group setting). We are currently exploring the heterogeneity of these results across respondents and plan to include these new results in the presentation as well.

 

Title: Household Preference for Impure Public Goods - an Application of Community Gardens  

Authors: Liqing Li, D. Long

W4133 obj.: Task 2-1

Presenter: Liqing Li 

Email: liqing@Fullerton.edu

Abstract:

Urban agriculture (UA) has grown as a planning priority in many cities in the U.S. As an essential form of UA, community gardens create a space for residents to grow plants. While they share similarities with other types of urban greenspace by providing ecosystem services as public goods. individuals who are often motivated to participate in garden management in hope of obtaining the private consumption benefits (i.e., harvested vegetables and fruits), which in turn contributes to the provision of the public goods such as biodiversity. Community gardens are thus impure public goods.

While many studies have examined the benefits of urban agriculture and other types of urban greenspace like parks, few have focused on community gardens. Even though community gardens are seen as a tool addressing social equity issues like food insecurity among low-income communities and unbalanced distributions of urban green spaces (Siegner et al., 2018), preferences for local and healthy food are typically associated with highly educated and wealthy communities (Bellemare and Dusoruth, 2020). It is therefore unclear whether there is a demand for such food among low-income households whom the gardens intend to benefit. More importantly, it is critical to evaluate whether public goods co-benefits encourage individual’s willingness to contribute to community gardens. We fill the gap in the literature by estimating individuals' preferences for community gardens with both private and public characteristics. Specifically, we explore the heterogeneity in their monetary willingness to pay (WTP) and non-monetary willingness to volunteer (WTV).

We will conduct a discrete choice experiment (DCE) to estimate households’ WTP and WTV for community garden in Los Angeles, California. The status quo scenario is a piece of vacant land with no community garden. The respondents are presented with a total of six discrete-choice questions. Each choice question includes five varying attributes with the corresponding attribute levels: monetary cost, time cost, ecosystem services, food allocation, and garden scale.

To quantify the individual level valuation for community gardens while accounting for unobserved heterogeneity, we estimate a mixed multinomial logit (MMNL) model. To explore heterogeneity in households’ preferences, we include interaction terms of factors such as neighborhood diversity with choice-specific attributes in the MMNL. Second, to illustrate how preferences vary across different neighborhoods, we recover the conditional individual-specific means of marginal WTP and WTV for every respondent and then calculate the zip code level valuation for each attribute.

Taken together, our analysis examines benefits offered by community gardens and factors affecting the provision of impure public goods with both public and private goods component. Our study contributes to several strands of literature. First, we offer insights on whether and how public co-benefits affect people’s valuation of impure environmental public goods (MacKerron, 2009). Second, we contribute to the urban agriculture and greenspace literature by investigating the heterogeneity in households’ preferences such as how diversity or social cohesion affects their evaluation (Printezis & Grebitus, 2020). Lastly, our study complements a recent yet rapidly developing literature on measuring valuations of environmental assets using non-pecuniary payment modes like time (Ando et al., 2020).            

 

SESSION 6: Valuation of Coastal Resources

 

Title: The Effect of Managed Retreat on Coastal Property Markets: Evidence from the NY Rising Buyout and Acquisition Program 

Authors: Steven Dundas, Y. Hashida           

W4133 obj.: Task 1-2 & Task 1-4    

Presenter: Steven Dundas    

Email: steven.dundas@oregonstate.edu      

Abstract:  

Understanding the economic impacts to a community of removing housing and infrastructure from hazard-prone locations is an open empirical question. Using data from a buyout and acquisition program in the U.S. state of New York and residential property transactions between 1995 and 2020, we recover hedonic estimates of the property value impacts of government-acquired properties in a coastal hazard area. Our identification strategy exploits the spatial proximities between sales and bought-out houses and the timing of different stages of the buyout process - closing, demolition (to be converted to open space), auction, and redevelopment. Our results suggest that buyouts have a large negative effect on housing prices for adjacent houses, with that effect becoming smaller at the block and neighborhood scale and then dissipating completely beyond 800 m. These findings are consistent between different difference-in-differences specifications, including two-way fixed effects, an event study, an event study that addresses concerns of treatment effect heterogeneity and variation in treatment timing, and a triple difference model. The event study specifications suggest housing market impacts likely dissipate after four to seven years. We also find heterogeneity in impacts across space and at different stages of the buyout process. Our findings are relevant for policy by demonstrating the housing market implications of different buyout methods, the role of information in the buyout process, and by highlighting potential avenues to minimize negative impacts of managed retreat. 

 

Title: Preferences for Buyouts and Rentbacks on the East Coast                

Authors: Anna Perry, C. Landry      

W4133 obj.: Task 1-2 Task 1-4 & Task 3-2 

Presenter: Anna Perry          

Email: anna.perry1@uga.edu

Abstract:

We use survey data to assess coastal residents’ willingness to accept (WTA) a property buyout and willingness to pay (WTP) to rentback their property from the state government after a buyout (obviating financial risk of property loss). Placing risk of property loss in the expected utility framework, we implicitly define WTA and WTP as a function of flood experience, risk perception, risk preference, affect (worry), income, wealth, and other factors. We utilize univariate and bivariate Tobit and Cragg models to analyze the data. We find WTA/sqft is increasing in income and a wealth proxy (likely reflecting housing quality), while risk perceptions have no significant effect (potentially due to endogeneity). WTP/sqft is increasing in expected hurricane damages and worry, but not influenced by income or wealth. We present a foundation for structural estimation and explore policy implications.         

Title: The Impact of Air Pollution on Outdoor Recreation: An Application to Shoreline Fishing Along the Atlantic and Gulf Coast         

Authors: Roger von Haefen, Y. Liu 

W4133 obj.: Task 1-1, Task 1-3 & Task 2-1

Presenter: Roger von Haefen           

Email: rhhaefen@ncsu.edu   

Abstract:

            A large travel cost literature investigates how improvements in water quality impact recreation demand, but relatively few studies investigate how improvements in air quality impact recreation demand. This paper aims to fill this gap by exploiting remotely sensed PM2.5 data for the entire East and Gulf Coast regions and 15 years of shoreline fishing data from the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP). Using a two-stage linked modeling framework (Parsons and Kealy, 1995), we first estimate random utility maximization (RUM) models of site choice separately by year and two-month wave, and then estimate a Poisson participation model with fixed effects by year, wave, and origin zip code. Our preliminary results suggest that air pollution has a negative and statistically significant impact on recreation demand, and in addition to refining our air pollution data, our next steps include constructing welfare measures for several policy scenarios.         

                     

SESSION 7: Recreation

 

Title: Using cell phone data in discrete choice recreation demand models: A case study of Rocky Mountain National Park            

Authors: Jude Bayham, R. Schmidt 

W4133 obj.: Task 2-1

Presenter: Jude Bayham       

Email: Jude.Bayham@colostate.edu

Abstract:

Nonmarket valuation has been a cornerstone of environmental economics for decades. Data collection generally requires the development and administration of surveys that cost both time and money. Over the past five years, technology has enabled the passive collection of

high-resolution mobile device geolocation data. Many studies have used mobile device location

data in research related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and some have used data to document

trends in recreation activity. However, none (to our knowledge) have used individual-level

device data to estimate discrete-choice recreation demand models.

We construct a dataset to estimate the welfare impacts of closing Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado for several months during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Spring of 2020. Specifically, we construct visitation diaries of over 2000 devices believed to reside in three counties near RMNP to 41 recreation sites in Northern Colorado. We use google maps to estimate travel time and distance from the devices common evening location (home) to all recreation sites. We estimate a Random Utility Model using data in the summer months following RMNP’s reopening. We use the model to simulate a closure of RMNP and quantify the redistribution of visits to substitute recreation sites and measure the welfare impacts of the closure. We compare the results of the RUM to a single site travel cost model to highlight the importance of capturing substitute sites in measuring the impacts of a site closure.

We find that people did substitute other recreation sites during RMNP closure. The results of the RUM support the intuition that accounting for substitution reduces the welfare cost of a site closure. While the results are interesting and have policy implications for large national park closures, the contribution of the research is to demonstrate how this emerging data source can be used to estimate welfare impacts for almost any recreation site in the US. The presentation will also cover the limitation of the data including the substantial data processing costs.        

 

Title: COVID-19 mandates and recreation in Idaho            

Authors: Sophie Croome      

W4133 obj.: Task 1-3           

Presenter: Sophie Croome   

Email: sophiecroome@boisestate.edu          

Abstract:

Significant survey data exists for national and state park visitation and several studies have measured consumer preferences and visitation patterns (Kupfer, 2021; Volenec, 2021; Wood, 2013; Yan, 2021). However, municipal park visitation remains largely understudied due to the difficulty and costliness associated with data collection and analysis. This study utilizes high frequency mobile device location data to measure changes in municipal and state park visitation caused by COVID-19 response policies. We exploit spatial and temporal variation in COVID-19 mandates at the county level in the U.S. state of Idaho and at the state level in the United States to identify the causal effect of mandates on park visitation. The research finds that people were more likely to recreate in, and come from, areas with less restrictions. Visitation rates were about seven percent lower in areas with a mask mandate than would be expected if no policies were in place. Estimates of visitation patterns based on visitors’ origin states indicate that of the people who recreate in Idaho, a state with limited COVID-19 response, the visitation rate was about 21 percent less for states with mask mandates than that of a state without a mask mandate. This research brings insight on behavioral response to restrictions and on recreational choice behavior.            

Title: Estimating changes in value flows for recreational resources: evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic                       

Authors: Matt Sloggy, D. Long, J. S nchez

W4133 obj.: Task 1-3

Presenter: Matt Sloggy        

Email: matthew.sloggy@usda.gov   

Abstract:

Several studies examining recreation patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic have found substantial drops in visitation to parks (e.g., Landry et al. 2021) but booms in visitation to

forests (Derks et al., 2020). However, few have examined other kinds of recreational activities,

namely visiting public wilderness areas where social distancing is much easier. Increases in

visitation to public lands may raise costs for agencies, and insufficient funding can degrade

ecosystem services due to overuse and deferred maintenance. It is thus important to examine if

current trends will continue following the pandemic, which provides critical information

needed to coordinate the proper amount of investment. Additionally, recreation is an important

economic activity, stimulating purchases in a variety of industries. This study fills the gap in the

literature by analyzing how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed visitation, group size, and

time spent recreating in two wilderness areas, Desolation Wilderness (DW) and the Inyo

National Forest (INF), located in California.

We create a unique dataset by combining visitation permit data with data on smoke conditions and weather. The final dataset contains a total of 49,843 permits across both wilderness areas. The average group size remains constant across the two years (2.9 persons per permit). The total visitation in our sample is 61,865 in 2019 and 81,621 in 2020. We also obtain weather precipitation and temperature data from the Parameter-elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model dataset, income and population data from the American Community Survey, and smoke cover data from NOAA.

We estimate a travel cost model in which the slope of the demand curve is a function of the pandemic. The estimation results show that pandemic has increased visitation on average, and this increase is primarily driven by increases in visitation to the INF. Furthermore, we find that the slope of the demand curve for recreation is a function of whether the pandemic is occurring or not (whether it is later than March 13th, 2020). This indicates that the pandemic limited the choice set of recreators, leading to an increase in the value of sites that are accessible. We also find the demand curve of visitation to the wilderness areas became less elastic. This further implies that the value of visitation increased during the pandemic.

Though past research has examined visitor permit data, this is the first that analyzes the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on recreation in wilderness areas. We make several contributions to the literature. We extend work that finds increases in visitation to forests by estimating the extent to which the pandemic changed the value of the resource. We nuance similar research demonstrating decreases in recreation by highlighting the importance of the variety of recreation. Additionally, we contribute to the recreation literature by further demonstrating how the use and value of recreational resources change during times of crisis, that is, a pandemic. Taken together, these results provide useful information that helps forest managers implement efficient strategies to maintain access to the public during unexpected events.      

 

Title: Seasonal variation in recreational value by activity in a state and national scenic river corridor – The case of the Little Miami                     

Authors: Brent Sohngen, A. Longstreth, C. Barnett, H. Taft, B. Schiemann          

W4133 obj.: Task 1-3

Presenter: Brent Sohngen    

Email: sohngen.1@osu.edu  

Abstract:

This study develops estimates of the value of recreational activities in the Little Miami River corridor, a state and national scenic river, in Southwestern Ohio.  The corridor includes a multi-use pathway that forms part of the Ohio river to Lake Erie recreational trail, as well as many local and state parks that provide access to the river and its largely intact riparian corridor. The river corridor flows to the east of the Cincinnati-Dayton Metropolitan area, a heavily populated and industrialized region in the state of Ohio. State parks and state nature preserves provide unique outdoor recreational activities, as do locally managed parks. Despite long-held policy interest in protecting the river and the corridor, little is known about the number of people who recreate there annually or the value they provide.  Working with a set of over 20 volunteers, we designed a stratified random sampling procedure to determine the number of visitors to 51 locations along a 50 mile stretch of the corridor. Sampling at the sites occurred form April 1, 2021 to October 31, 2021, and involved counting cars and leaving a flyer on each car requesting individuals to respond to a short survey.  The data suggest that there were over 750,000 visitors to the 51 locations over the 7-month survey period.  Using a zonal travel cost model, we estimate average consumer surplus of $12.03 per trip.  We explore variation in consumer surplus across the seasons and across various activities, including biking, hiking, paddling, and fishing.             

 

SESSION 8: Measurement Error and Environmental Exposure

 

Title: Remotely Incorrect? Accounting for Nonclassical Measurement Error in Satellite Data on Deforestation              

Authors: Jennifer Alix-Garcia, D. Millimet 

W4133 obj.: Task 1-1

Presenter: Jennifer Alix-Garcia        

Email: jennifer.alix-garcia@oregonstate.edu.           

Abstract:

Historically, data on land use have been obtained from ground surveys. However, this has changed over time. There are now over 2,000 satellites orbiting Earth. In combination with the growth in computer processing power, this has driven an explosion in the availability of data - on land use as well as other environmental attributes - derived from remote sensing methods. Remotely sensed data offers numerous advantages. First, satellite data can provide global coverage. Second, whereas survey data suffers from many sources of error (enumeration errors, response biases), these are necessarily eliminated through satellite collection. However, absence of familiar types of data error does not imply the absence of all error. Systematic mismeasurement in remotely sensed measurements is likely present. This paper details the nature of these errors, discusses the econometric implications, and identifies an estimator that could help ameliorate the problem.

To begin, we describe the process by which satellite data moves from sensors to usable data and review the econometric implications of misclassification of the dependent variable on several binary choice estimators common in the land use literature. We then discuss alternative estimators, representing extensions of the misclassification binary choice model proposed in Hausman et al. (1998). In particular, we consider two extensions. First, we allow for the misclassification rates to depend on covariates (Lewbel 2000). Here, the covariates capture environmental attributes affecting the accuracy of satellite classifications. Second, we use the scobit family of binary choice models, which nests the logit model as a special case (Nagler 1994). The scobit introduces an additional shape parameter into the link function. This additional flexibility has proven useful when the outcome is of the rare-events type (Golet, 2014), which is the case for deforestation.

We provide evidence of nonclassical measurement error in both binary and continuous measures of forest cover using two satellite-based measures of forest cover for Mexico near the same time period and based upon imagery from the same type of sensor. Correlations between the differences in two measures and environmental (slope, elevation, biome) and sensor attributes are statistically and economically significant, consistent with the data suffering from nonclassical measurement error.

To investigate the practical performance of the estimators considered we examine the impact of a program of payments for ecosystem services on deforestation in Mexico over the period 2003-2015. Prior to analyzing the data, we undertake a Monte Carlo study designed to mimic the panel data. The simulations lead to three primary conclusions. First, ignoring misclassification introduces significant bias. Second, current approaches in the literature designed to deal with misclassification do not eliminate bias. Third, our extensions of the Hausman et al. (1998) estimator perform quite well.

In our application, we also obtain three main findings. First, the satellite-based measure that we use under-reports the true extent of deforestation. Topography and the availability of images are important determinants of misclassification. Second, ignoring misclassification results in bias of the average marginal effects, although the bias need not always be toward zero. In our application the estimated treatment effect is reasonably estimated, but the average marginal effects are significantly attenuated for the other covariates in the model, especially those that are determinants of misclassification.         

 

Title: In Utero Environmental Exposures and Birth Outcomes: Evidence from Large-Scale Animal Feeding Operations                 

Authors: Laura O. Taylor, N. Abashidze, J. Hochard          

W4133 obj.: Task 1-1

Presenter: Laura O. Taylor   

Email: laura.taylor@gatech.edu       

Abstract:

We estimate the causal effects of hog farm facilities on birth outcomes in surrounding communities using rich, spatially explicit, individual-level data that links infant births to detailed geographic information on hog farm operations.  The contribution that in utero exposure to pollution has on birth outcomes is important for policy makers, medical professionals, and families to understand as they work to reduce the incidence of preterm births and other negative birth outcomes. A small number of recent papers have used observational data and credible research designs to find negative effects of in-utero exposure to pollution generated by industrial activities on birth outcomes.  Our research extends this work to an important source of community exposure in rural areas: large-scale animal feeding operations (AFOs).  With more than 450,000 AFOs in the U.S., the potential impact of AFOs on birth outcomes could be significant and more heavily borne by low-income or minority populations that can be correlated spatially with AFOs. 

Our research focuses on birth outcomes from mothers living near pork producing AFOs. Hog farming is a $22.5 billion industry in the U.S. with more than 60,000 farms raising over 72 million hogs in 2017.  Most hogs in the country are raised in AFOs, where large numbers of animals, their waste, and other byproducts are concentrated over a small land area.  AFOs have generated public concerns regarding odor and potential health effects due to airborne particulate matter and toxic gases present in hog waste storage lagoons (e.g., ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulfide, and carbon monoxide), especially when their contents are sprayed seasonally on neighboring fields as part of waste management plans.  The causal effects of hog AFOs on public health outcomes are not well understood despite the scale of the industry and conflict between AFO operators and neighboring communities.

We exploit exogenous variation in daily wind direction during a woman’s pregnancy relative to prevailing winds to identify the effects of hog farm exposure on birth outcomes. Evidence suggests that in-utero exposures to hog farm facilities reduce birth weight, shorten gestation periods and increase the likelihood of preterm birth. These airborne exposures are concentrated within three miles of these facilities and are driven by the season with greatest sprayfield activity. Taken together, these findings shape a landscape of birth outcomes that reveal “hotspots” of vulnerable populations where the social costs of environmental exposures are highest.              

 

Title: Addressing measurement error from movers in a travel cost analysis with revealed and stated preference data          

Authors: Sonja Kolstoe, K. Poisal    

W4133 obj.: Task 1-3 & Task 2-1

Presenter: Sonja Kolstoe      

Email: sonja.kolstoe@usda.gov        

Abstract:

To conduct a travel cost study, information is needed on the respondent’s origin and recreation destination. Travel cost models rely on travel cost being measured with minimal measurement error to avoid issues of internal validity of estimates of this parameter. To date, to the best of our knowledge, little attention has been paid to measurement error in the respondent’s origin if they moved during the study period. Moving potentially changes the overall distance to the recreation site, introducing the possibility of measurement error in the absence of data about when and where the respondent moved. To address this problem in count models, we propose using a weighted travel cost measure that accounts for when respondents moved, i.e., movers, as well as when they took trips. We incorporate this correction into a travel cost model combining revealed and stated preference data on coastal recreation use in Delaware and use it to value changes in sea-level rise accounting for respondents moving in our sample. We use responses from an online survey on zonal trip behavior for 2019 and 2020 as well as contingent behavior data on the hypothetical reduction in the size of coastal public lands because associated with sea-level rise. We use a zonal approach to model trip frequency using actual and stated data from 2019 and 2020 under three different area reduction scenarios of 25%, 50% and 75% due increasing sea-level rise. We estimate per-trip welfare estimates and well as calculate changes in welfare due to differences in behavior based on the contingent behavior scenarios. On average movers in our sample move closer to Delaware coastal public lands; non-Delaware residents moved about 64 miles closer on average and Delaware residents moved about 28 miles closer on average. We find evidence of a statistical difference in consumer surplus between the unweighted and weighted travel cost estimates for non-Delaware residents, but not for Delaware residents. These results suggest that it may be important to gather information on if and when respondents move within the study time and study area in order to have the data available to minimize measurement error in travel cost. Future studies may want to consider asking questions about moving and seasonal visitation behavior when asking for past year’s trips to adjust the travel cost for this change in origin.