Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

W-3133 Annual Member’s Meeting Minutes from 26 February, 2015 Hilton Pensacola Beach, Pensacola, Florida Meeting commenced at 4:15pm Facilitator: President Dan Petrolia Members in attendance (17): Dan Petrolia (president), Amy Ando (vice-president), Julie Mueller (secretary), Kathleen Bell, John Bergstrom, Ben Gramig, LeRoy Hansen, Bob Hearne, Fen Hunt, Matt Interis, Craig Landry, Dale Manning, Don McLeod, Klaus Moeltner, Kim Rollins, Scott Shonkweiler, Roger von Haefen • The meeting commenced with a discussion of election of the next officer. Ben Gramig of Purdue University was elected. • Discussion continued regarding the proceedings with Fen Hunt. It was decided that the incoming chair collects accomplishments of members. Members send the incoming chair publications and abstracts and she organizes according to: o the past year’s accomplishments (impacts), o opportunities, o target audience, o and any changes in the projects goals or procedures • The next item of business was next year’s location. The following locations were suggested: o Austin, TX o Tucson, AZ o Portland, OR o Tempe, AZ Members emphasized that the incoming chair has the final decision on the venue. • Fan Hunt wanted to increase member’s awareness of new pre-doc and post-doc funding awards, as well as undergraduate funding opportunities. Discussion continued on the state of USDA and NIFA funding. Funding is increasing as well as competitiveness. Fen encouraged members to incorporate inter-disciplinary work and bring in geographers, hydrologists, and others. Congratulations were in order for those receiving funding this year. Fen also encouraged members to investigate the grants available in the areas of the value of food safety and livestock production (AFRI). She also emphasized that those researchers from land grant institutions should recognize the land grant aspect in acknowledging funding. Finally, if any members have a chance to come to DC to present, she would welcome the opportunity. • Ben solicited assistance with AAEA nominations • Meeting adjourned at 5pm.

ACTIVITIES, OUTPUTS, AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS Under Objective 1 (Land and Water Resource Management in a Changing Environment), the following activities, outputs, and accomplishments can be reported. Researchers at Illinois, Wyoming, Michigan, and UC Santa Barbara completed a paper that estimates the value to agriculture of improved biocontrol of pests in row crop agriculture and applies that model to generate dollar values for two crops (cucumbers and squash); that paper has been submitted to a journal. Economists at Illinois worked with ecologists in Australia to publish a paper that studies the results of conservation policy; the paper couples household decisions regarding how much time to spend foraging in local forests with a model of optimal spatial foraging patterns and biodiversity conservation to simulates how much leakage occurs in response to protected areas placed in different parts of a hypothetical forest landscape and how leakage affects biodiversity and human welfare. A collaboration between Illinois and Minnesota has completed new spatial conservation-outcome forecasts for the Prairie Pothole Region and construct spatial data sets suitable for spatial portfolio analysis for two other previously studied conservation problems (Eastern birds, Appalachian salamanders). Those researchers are now using those data sets in work to improve portfolio analysis tools for environmental management under climate change uncertainty. They have also published a paper that demonstrates the dangers of taking shortcuts in using portfolio analysis for spatial conservation planning under climate change uncertainty. Colorado State University (CSU) in cooperation with the USDA Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest and Southern Research Stations have two coordinated efforts underway. One is a comparative data and analysis of California and Florida household’s willingness to pay for private homeowner (e.g., FIREWISE) versus community fire risk reduction activities. The paper has been accepted for presentation at the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists meeting this summer. The second project is to estimate the costs of fuel reduction treatments (mechanical thinning and prescribed burning) in California. The data collection was performed by the USDA Forest Service and CSU is performing the analysis and development of a field fire specialists cost estimating user interface. The USDA Forest Service will test this and then offer training in the tool developed at CSU. CSU and Northern Arizona University (NAU) completed and published (see Mueller and Loomis, 2014) an analysis of how house prices are affected by wildfires. This research applied quantile regression to determine if there were differential effects of wildfire on house prices depending on the price of the home and hence, the income levels of homeowners. We found such a differential impact, and this information has been provided to the USDA Forest Service. CSU began collaboration with UN-R to model the economy-wide impacts of rural to urban water transfers under different population growth scenarios in the west. CSU has constructed a dynamic programming model to measure the value of stored water under different institutional settings, including the existence of trading, lease markets, and restricted trade. The model is calibrated to the Colorado-Big Thompson project. A collaboration between researchers at Mississippi State University (Miss. State) and the University of Georgia (UGA) completed an analysis of factors that determine households’ decision to purchase wind hazard insurance when the primary homeowner’s policy excludes it in coastal areas, and the extent of wind-hazard mitigation. A paper summarizing this work is forthcoming in Land Economics. A collaboration between researchers at Miss. State and Louisiana State University (LSU) completed an analysis of alternative land-reclamation methods for coastal restoration in Louisiana. This analysis focused on cost and benefit trajectories over time, accounting for both time (discounting) and risk. A paper reporting the results of this work has been published in Ecological Economics. Researchers at University of Wyoming have investigated the feasibility of trans-basin water transfers to meet growth in the southwest U.S. Under certain energy costs and distance of conveyance under-allocated sources may be sold to areas where demand is exceeding local supply. This pilot effort has implications for trans-basin deliveries in the arid intermountain west as well. Researchers at Wyoming and CSU have used survey instruments to determine landowner preferences for potential land conservation arrangements. Sub samples of landowners hold preferences for conservation that are more likely to outweigh financial inducements. This work has implications for a broad array of public and private conservation programs on private lands. Economists at Oregon State, Minnesota, UC Santa Barbara, and Bowdoin published a paper that shows how to optimally implement the provision of ecosystem services using an incentive-based mechanism under the common problems of spatial dependent environmental benefits and asymmetric information regarding landowner opportunity costs. The auction mechanism derived in this paper can be used with payments-for-ecosystem services programs, or with programs where the government owns the property rights to land, such as forest concessions. Researchers at Oregon State, Washington, Minnesota, Florida International, Wisconsin, Bowdoin, and UC Santa Barbara published a paper that projects land-use change impacts on terrestrial ecosystem services for the lower 48 states. The paper examines food and timber production, carbon sequestration, and wildlife habitat responses to land-use change as a function of various policy and commodity price scenarios. A team at Oregon State, Wisconsin, and UC Santa Barbara combined an economic land use model with ecological models to examine threats to aquatic systems derived from land-use change across the lower 48 states. Researchers at Oregon State, Idaho, and Wisconsin examined the effects of decentralized governance on timber extraction in European Russia using multiple periods of satellite imagery and econometric methods. Researchers at Virginia Tech estimated econometric models on the effect of length of residency on urban residential water demand. Our results indicate that water use increases with residency due to a shift in landscaping preferences. We shared these findings with the local water agency in Reno/Sparks, Nevada, and with peers and practitioners at an urban water workshop at Arizona State University. Researchers at Iowa State University have made progress on several working papers this past year, focused on advancing stated and revealed preference methods used to value environmental amenities. A first working paper draws on unique data from the Iowa Lakes Project and the Iowa Rivers Project, also funded jointly by the USEPA and Iowa Department of Natural Resources. The paper proposes a modeling technique that incorporates omitted sites in a recreational demand model even when one only has partial information about these sites. The paper demonstrates that the aggregation model with partial trip information can recover underlying preferences consistently in a variety of settings, which is an improvement upon conventional models that may lead to biased estimates. A second working paper by researchers at Iowa State investigates the consistency of consumer preferences over time and revealed versus stated preference data. The study draws on data from the Iowa Lakes Project, which provides information on recreational usage patterns over several years and for approximately 130 lakes, along with detailed information on the water quality for each lake. This study investigates the consistency of consumer preferences over time and between actual versus anticipated visitation patterns from the unique panel data. Researchers at the University of Delaware worked with people at various institutions to complete eight papers related land and water resource management in a changing environment that were either published in 2014 or are forthcoming. Several of these papers looked at improving the cost-effectiveness in agri-environmental programs either through the use of reverse auctions, using optimal conservation targeting, or combining the reverse auctions and optimal targeting. Other papers used experimental economics techniques to improve the sustainability of groundwater use. Researchers at the University of Rhode Island (URI) conducted a field experiment with 97 residents in the Scituate Reservoir Watershed in which the "suppliers" of improved water quality and its beneficiaries of those services make decisions through a market-like process on both sides of the market. In this market process, consumers reveal their marginal willingness to contribute payment for improvements in water quality, which is then used to construct an average revenue curve to serve as a demand curve. They also conducted a reverse auction on the supply side, in which livestock owners bid for payments to adopt best management practices for manure management. They used the spatially-explicit Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model to quantify the effect of on-farm management practices to the resultant changes in water quality. The information from the bids and the resulting changes in water quality from SWAT allow construction of the supply curve for water quality improvements. The average revenue and supply curves combine to determine a market clearing price. Under Objective 2 (Economic Valuation Methods), the following activities, outputs, and accomplishments can be reported. A methodological investigation of strategies to overcome hypothetical bias in stated preference contingent valuation surveys was undertaken and published in 2014 (See Loomis, 2014). A contingent behavior analysis was used to quantify the consumer surplus and predicted electricity bills for rural villages in Rwanda (paper under review). A joint estimation framework was developed to estimate contingent behavior and valuation questions answered by the same individuals. The technique was applied to survey data from rural Rwanda. A collaboration between researchers at Miss. State and LSU is focused on ecosystem service valuation in two Gulf Coastal locations, focused on three habitat types and four ecosystem services provided by those habitats. This work also focuses on differences in elicitation methods. One paper has been submitted to a journal and another is in prep for submission. Researchers at Miss. State examined whether people reveal their unconditionally most-preferred alternative in choice experiments. Results were presented at a departmental seminar at the University of Alabama, Department of Economics, Finance and Legal Studies and the manuscript based on this research is forthcoming in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy. Researchers at Virginia Tech estimated econometric models to assess the importance of accuracy in geo-coding and tree damage assessment on accurately relating home values to MPB damage. Our finding that both matter in a substantial fashion was shared with the U.S. Forest Service, and presented at Clark University (MA). Under Objective 3 (Integrated Ecosystem Services Valuation and Management), the following activities, outputs, and accomplishments can be reported. Researchers at Illinois and Oregon have refined the statistical analyses of the results of choice experiment surveys conducted to estimate the values people place on reduced flooding, improved water quality, and improved aquatic habitat in and in the Chicago and Portland OR metropolitan areas. They are developing a theoretical model of optimal stormwater management policy. Researchers in North Dakota finalized the assessment of the benefits and costs of a system of wastewater recycling in the Bakken oil production region and revised a paper for publication. Working with CSU Extension Service, members of W3133 collected and analyzed data on agrotourism in Colorado (see publication by Hill, et al, 2015). This analysis provided information to farmers and ranchers about the types of activities sought by agrotourists, how far they would travel, number of trips, and their spending. CSU conducted an analysis of recreational whitewater boating in Colorado. This information estimated not only the economic value of this activity but how the value of that activity changed with instream flows. The paper was presented at the Western Agricultural Economics Association in summer of 2014. CSU, Utah State University (USU), and University of Wyoming undertook a study of the economic value of improving water quality in Utah’s lakes and streams. This analysis collected data on household values as well as recreation visitors’ values for improving water quality. A manuscript has been prepared that received a revise and resubmit from Ecological Economics. Researchers at Iowa State have initiated a new effort to add another year to the Iowa Lakes Project. This continues a panel data set of recreational lake visits for approximately 130 primary lakes in the state of Iowa for the years 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2009, and now 2014. The new data set will reinforce the advantages of panel data in recreational demand modeling and trace Iowan behavior over time along with water quality changes. The data also provides an opportunity to examine how social media data may be leveraged as a new source of recreational visitation data in environmental valuation models. Researchers at the University of Delaware evaluated consumer’s willing to pay for ecosystem services, such as pollination provided by honey bees and water filtration provided by oyster aquaculture. In addition to the real-money field experiment which only measured values for water quality improvement, researchers at URI also conducted a hypothetical choice experiment with the same subjects to understand the tradeoffs and values associated with water quality, restoration or preservation, and risk in the delivery of the ecosystem services. To analyze the spatial relationship of the demand for ecosystem services, the choice experiment data were georeferenced with the location of the subjects' residence. A number of spatial statistics were employed to test the extent of spatial correlation. They found that there was a very weak spatial pattern in the preferences for ecosystem services. To measure the supply of ecosystem services, researchers at URI calibrated the InVEST model for the Scituate Reservoir Watershed. InVEST is a decision support tool for ecosystem services developed by The Nature Conservancy, Stanford University, and other institutions. A few scenarios for future land use change were constructed and the predicted changes in ecosystem services were simulated in InVEST for the watershed. The results were shared with NRICD, NRCS, and Providence Water.

PUBLICATIONS Bastian, C. T., K. T. Coatney, R. Mealor, D. T. Taylor, and P. Meiman. “Priority Weighting of Nature Versus Finances in Land Management Attitudes of Rural Exurban Landowners.” Landscape and Urban Planning: 127(July 2014): 65-74. Bode, M., Tulloch, A. I. T., Mills, M., Venter, O. and W. Ando, A. 2014. “A Conservation Planning Approach to Mitigate the Impacts of Leakage from Protected Area Networks.” Conservation Biology. doi: 10.1111/cobi.12434. Caffey, R.H., H. Wang, and D.R. Petrolia. 2014. “Trajectory Economics: Assessing the Flow of Ecosystem Services from Coastal Restoration.” Ecological Economics 100: 74-84. Castledine, A., K. Moeltner, M.K. Price, and S. Stoddard. 2014. "Free to Choose: Promoting Conservation by Relaxing Outdoor Watering Restrictions." Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 107(A): 324-343. Dissanayake, S.T.M. and A.W. Ando. 2014. “Valuing Grassland Restoration: Proximity to Substitutes and Tradeoffs Among Conservation Attributes.” Land Economics 90: 237-259. Duke J.D., S.J. Dundas, R.J. Johnston, and K.D. Messer. 2014. “Prioritizing Payment for Environmental Services: Using Nonmarket Benefits for Optimal Selection.” Ecological Economics. 105: 319-329. Fooks, J., N. Higgins, K.D. Messer, J. Duke, D. Hellerstein, and L. Lynch. Forthcoming. “Conserving Spatially Explicit Benefits in Ecosystem Service Markets: Experimental Tests of Network Bonuses and Spatial Targeting” American Journal of Agricultural Economics. Fooks, J., K.D. Messer, and J. Duke. 2015. “Dynamic Entry, Reverse Auctions, and the Purchase of Environmental Services.” Land Economics. 91(1): 57-75. Hearne, R., S. Shakya and Q. Yin. 2014. “The Value of Fracking Wastewater Treatment and Recycling Technologies in North Dakota. Journal of Water Reuse and Desalination.” In Press, Uncorrected Proof, Available online 5 November, 2014. doi:10.2166/wrd.2014.153. Hill, R., J. Loomis. D. Thilmany, M. Sullins. 2015. Economic Values of Agritourism to Visitors: A Multi-destination Hurdle Travel Cost Model of Demand. Tourism Economics 20(5): 10471065. Hodges, A., K. Hansen and D. McLeod. 2014. “The Economics of Bulk Water Transport in Southern California.” Resources 3(4): 703-720. http://www.mdpi.com/2079-9276/3/4/703 Hwang, J., D.R. Petrolia, and M.G. Interis. 2014. “Valuation, Consequentiality, and Opt-Out Responses to Stated Preference Surveys.” Agricultural & Resource Economics Review 43(3): 471-88. Interis, M.G., C., Xu, D. Petrolia, and K. Coatney. “Examining Unconditional Preference Revelation in Choice Experiments: A Voting Game Approach.” Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy (forthcoming). Interis, M.G. and D.R. Petrolia. 2014. “Consequentiality Effects in Binary- and MultinomialChoice Settings.” Journal of Agricultural & Resource Economics 39(2): 1-16. Jeon, Hocheol. 2014. “Three Essays on Environmental Economics.” PhD dissertation, Iowa State University. Johnston, R. and K. Moeltner. 2014. "Meta-Modeling and Benefit Transfer: The Empirical Relevance of Source-Consistency in Welfare Measures." Environmental and Resource Economics 59: 337-361. Lawler, J., Lewis, D.J., Nelson, E., Plantinga, A.J., Polasky, S., Withey, J., Helmers, D., Martinuzzi, S., and V. Radeloff. 2014. “Projected Land-Use Change Impacts on U.S. Ecosystem Services.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111(20): 7492-7497. Li, J., J. Michael, J. Duke, K.D. Messer, and J. Suter. 2014. “Behavioral Response to Contamination Risk Information in a Spatially Explicit Groundwater Environment: Experimental Evidence.” Water Resources Research. 50: 6390-6405. Liu, Z., J. Suter, K.D. Messer, J. Duke, and H. Michael. 2014. “Strategic Entry and Externalities in Groundwater Resources: Evidence from the Lab.” Resource and Energy Economics. 38: 181197. Loomis, J. 2014. “Strategies for Overcoming Hypothetical Bias in Stated Preference Surveys.” Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics 39(1): 34-46. Loomis, J. and J. McTernan. 2014. “Economic Value of Instream Flow for Non-Commercial Whitewater Boating Using Recreation Demand and Contingent Valuation Methods.” Environmental Management 53(3): 510-519. Mallory, M.L. and A.W. Ando. 2014. “Implementing Efficient Conservation Portfolio Design.” Resource and Energy Economics 38: 1-18. Martinuzzi, S., Januchowski-Hartley, S.R., Pracheil, B.M., McIntyre, P.R., Plantinga, A.J., Lewis, D.J., and V.C. Radeloff. 2014. “Threats and Opportunities for Freshwater Conservation under Future Land Use Change Scenarios in the United States.” Global Change Biology 20: 113124. Messer, K.D., M. Kecinski, R. Hirsch, and X. Tang. Forthcoming. “Applying Multiple Knapsack Optimization to Improve the Cost Effectiveness of Land Conservation” Land Economics. Messer, K.D., J. Duke, and L. Lynch. 2014. “Applying Experimental Economics to Land Economics: Public Information and Auction Efficiency in Land Preservation Markets.” in the Oxford Handbook of Land Economics. J. Duke and J. Wu editors. Oxford Press. Moeltner, K and R.S. Rosenberger. 2014. "Cross-Context Benefit Transfer: A Bayesian Search for Information Pools." American Journal of Agricultural Economics 96: 469-488. Mueller, J. and J. Loomis. 2014. “Does the Estimated Impacts of Wildfires Vary with Housing Price Distribution? A Quantile Regression Approach.” Land Use Policy 41: 121-127. Petrolia, D.R. J. Hwang, C.E. Landry, and K.H. Coble. 2015. “Wind Insurance and Mitigation in the Coastal Zone.” Land Economics 91(2): 272-95. Petrolia, D.R., M.G. Interis, J. Hwang. 2014. “America’s Wetland? A National Survey of Willingness to Pay for Restoration of Louisiana’s Coastal Wetlands.” Marine Resource Economics 29(1): 17-37. Polasky, S., Lewis, D.J., Plantinga, A.J., and E. Nelson. 2014. “Implementing the Optimal Provision of Ecosystem Services.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(17): 6248-6253. Wendland, K., Lewis, D.J., and J. Alix-Garcia. 2014. “The Effect of Decentralized Governance on Timber Extraction in European Russia.” Environmental and Resource Economics 57: 19-40. Wu, S., J. Fooks, K.D. Messer, and D. Delaney. Forthcoming. “Consumer Demand for Local Honey” Applied Economics. Yi, Donggyu. 2014. “Three Studies on Environmental Valuation.” PhD dissertation, Iowa State University. PRESENTATIONS Ando, A.W. “Linking Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services: From Expert Opinion to Prediction & Application.” Energy and Environment Forum at Howard H. Baker Jr Center for Public Policy, University of Tennessee. November 2014. Ando, A.W. “How Should We Make Environmental Investments When the Future Climate is Uncertain?” 1960 Scholars Lecture. Williams College. October 2014. Ando, A.W. “A Conservation Planning Approach to Mitigating the Impacts of Leakage from Protected Area Networks.” UC Santa Barbara Land Use Workshop. May 2014. Economic Value of Instream Flow for Non-Commercial Whitewater Boating Using Travel Cost and Contingent Valuation Methods. Western Agricultural Economics Association, Colorado Springs, Colorado. June 2014. Interis, M.G. and D.R. Petrolia. “Coastal Ecosystem Services of the Gulf of Mexico: Does their Value Depend on the Providing Habitat?” Selected paper, 2015 SAEA Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA, January 31 - February 13 2014. Gill, CA and E Uchida. A Spatial Model of Willingness to Pay for Manure Management in the Scituate Reservoir System. Presented at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Northeast Agricultural and Resource Economics Association. Morganstown, WV. 2014. Interis, M.G., C., Xu, D. Petrolia, and K. Coatney. “Examining Unconditional Preference Revelation in Choice Experiments: A Voting Game Approach.” Departmental seminar, Department of Economics, Finance and Legal Studies, University of Alabama, October 2014. Kwabena K., D.R. Petrolia, K.H. Coble, A. Harri, and A. Williams. “Producer Preferences for Contracts on a Risky Bioenergy Crop.” Selected paper, 2015 SAEA Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA, January 31 - February 13. Lewis, D.J. “Does the Conservation of Land Provide a Net Habitat Gain in the Presence of Land Market Feedbacks?” Land Use and Ecosystem Services Workshop, UC Santa Barbara. May 2014. Lewis, D.J. “Projected Land-Use Change Impacts on U.S. Ecosystem Services” Oregon State University Department of Integrated Biology Seminar Series. March, 2014. Merrill, N and J Opaluch. Controlling Risks of Cyanobacteria Blooms. Presented at the 2013 Heartland Environmental and Natural Resource Economics Conference; 2014 Annual Meeting of the New England Water and Environment Association. 2014. Messer, K.D. and P. Ferraro. “Vision for the Center for Behavioral and Experimental AgriEnvironmental Policy Research.” Economic Research Service, Washington, DC, October 2014. Messer, K.D. “Preserving More with Less.” American Farmland Trust Conference, Hersey, Pennsylvania, May 2014. Moeltner, K. "Length of Residency and Urban Water Use," 3rd Urban Water Roundtable, Global Institute of Sustainability, Arizona State University. February 2015. Moeltner, K. "Accuracy of Forest Damage Assessment and Geo-coding of Residences: Impact on Hedonic Estimation", Clark University, Worcester, MA. October 2014. Petrolia, D.R., J. Hwang, and M.G. Interis. “Single-Choice, Repeated-Choice, and Best-Worst Elicitation Formats: Do Results Differ and by How Much?” Selected paper, AERE-Session Selected paper, 2014 SEA Annual Conference, Atlanta, November 22-24. Suter, J., S. Collie, J. Duke, K. Messer, and H. Michael. “Experiments on Groundwater Policy at the Extensive and Intensive Margins.” University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE, October 2014. Yan, J., Zarghamee, H., K.D. Messer, H.M. Kaiser and W.D. Schulze. “Can The Voluntary Contribution Mechanism be Efficient? The Role of Social Norms and Automatic Donation in Charitable Giving” Economic Science Association, Fort Lauderdale, FL, October 2014.