Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Objective 1: Evaluate Natural Resource Management Decisions and the Effects of Climate Change to Understand Associated Welfare Impacts

Colorado State University

• Jesse Burkhardt worked with the US National Park Service employing one graduate student and one undergraduate student to assess visitor spending at national parks and to write a manuscript evaluating travel cost surveys for 50 national parks and sites to estimate the value of a fraction of the national park system. He also worked with the US Forest Service and the EPA on estimating the impact of wildfires on drinking water quality and assessing exposure to wildfire.
  
• Jesse Burkhardt is also working with a graduate student and researchers at NOAA and NASA on using machine learning to train a computer to detect wildfire smoke in the atmosphere. This project will be useful for researchers and policymakers concerned with the distribution of wildfire smoke across the globe because currently, we do not know where wildfire smoke is.

Kansas State University

• We have developed a dataset estimating agricultural losses due to wildfire that examine crop loss across different crops and losses to potential forage for grazing across the Southern Great Plains at a county level from 2008 to 2022. This data product is available for researchers and organizations and we are in the process of developing a publication about wildfire impacts on agricultural lands in the Southern Great Plains.

Mississippi State University

• Presentation: Jungers, B. "Evaluation of an invasive species management initiative (recreational harvest incentive program)." Presented to Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Group, January 2024.
• Presentation: Petrolia, D. “What is the Value of Ecosystem Services Provided by Recent Restoration Efforts on the Northern Gulf Coast.” Presented to Mississippi Environmental NGO Focus Group, Virtual, February 21, 2025.
  
  

North Carolina State University

• Roger von Haefen supervised Yiqing Liu's NC State Dissertation, "Three Essays on the Nonmarket Valuation of Air Pollution and Extreme Weather: Implications for Outdoor Recreation, who successfully defended in October 2024. The research measures how air pollution and weather influence outdoor recreation behavior and quantifies welfare measures for several policy-relevant scenarios.  She is now a tenure-track Assistant Professor at Meredith College in Raleigh, NC.
• Spencer Banzhaf Helped develop a model for how including offsets for activities on natural and working lands can reduce the cost of pollution abatement.

North Dakota State University

• David Roberts developed a panel dataset tracking the shares of crop areas and non-agricultural land uses at 11,691 gridded locations throughout North Dakota from 1997 to 2024 based on the USDA's cropland data layer. The dataset also tracks monthly weather variables at each gridded location during the time period. The aim of the developing study is to create interlinked models of biophysical linkages between economic drivers of crop selection decisions and the impacts of those crop selection decisions on weather and climate outcomes.

Ohio State University

• Ohio State University worked on Task 1-5: Develop and Evaluate Strategies for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation. One area where research was conducted was impacts of climate change and sea level rise on coastal communities. The research specifically addressed how market forces and policies could slow the negative effects of climate change on coastal housing prices. This research also developed novel insights into modeling of coupled human-natural systems. Ohio State University researchers also focused on Task 1-1: Quantify the Direct and Indirect Impacts of Management Decisions Affecting Agricultural Land, Forests, and Land Use Change. For instance, researchers studied how maintenance of forest cover, especially in tropical forests, could reduce mortality from malaria. Other research explored how different types of leasing arrangements could affect forest losses. Ohio State University researchers also addressed Task 1-2: Assess How Public and Private Actions Impact Water Quality and Scarcity by examining how farmer perspectives influenced their decisions about entering water quality programs.

Oregon State University

• Under Tasks 1-2 and 1-5, Steven Dundas collaborated with hydrologists to investigate the effect of future weather and climate on municipal water demand in coastal communities with tourist-centric economies (Rupp et al. 2024). The research uses an econometric model of monthly water demand that allowed for non-linear responses to weather variables to estimate temperature-response functions for demand from a sample of communities in the Oregon Mid-Coast. A main result is that local temperature was not a significant driver of variability in monthly water demand but that temperature in the Willamette Valley—the source of most tourists to the Oregon coast—was. Applying the temperature response functions to scenarios of future climate to the year 2070 led to projected increases in water demand independent of other factors.
• Under Task 1-3, Dundas and a W5133 collaborator at the University of Hawaii examine the relationship between increases in people using public lands with activity on a popular social media app (Lowe Mackenzie et al. 2024). They explore this issue in the Oregon State Park system by combining visitation data with park-specific georeferenced content and engagement indicators from Instagram. Using several empirical specifications, they show suggestive evidence that Instagram is not likely correlated to increased visitation everywhere, but only in a few locations generating high user participation within the app. They find no contemporary effect and a positive association with cumulative Instagram engagement indicators on visits at this subset of parks.
• Under Tasks 1-4 and 1-5, Dundas and W5133 collaborator at the University of Georgia investigated barriers to implementation of managed retreat programs intended to reduce the economic impact of natural hazards and adapt to climate change. The research develops a conceptual framework and a set of empirical models with data from a buyout program in a coastal state to develop descriptive evidence on potential barriers to successful managed-retreat policies in high-risk coastal areas. Key factors influencing buyout success can be associated with municipal budgets, including revenues, expenditures, debt, and government transfers. Importantly, revenue impacts related to property taxes appear to contribute to fewer buyouts, suggesting a potential principal-agent problem related to climate resilience in high-value coastal housing markets. Recognition of the combination of factors that may represent barriers to adoption may help the design and implementation of future programs and improve coastal climate adaptation strategies.
• Recent increases in the rate and size of large western U.S. wildfires can alter landowners’ expectations of the arrival of stand-destroying wildfires, which can reduce the value of forestland. The research by Lewis and a co-author uses a large pooled cross-section of individual private timberland transactions across the three Pacific states to estimate the effects of large local wildfire events on timberland prices. Results indicate that the recent increase in wildfires and drought stress have reduced the economic value of forests by approximately 10% ($11 billion). Outputs include one journal article.
• There has been expanded suitability for planting yellow pine plantations in regions north of their current range in the southeastern U.S. The research by Lewis and a co-author uses plot-level forest management panel data from the USDA Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) data to estimate the role of climate on private forestland owners’ decisions i) of whether to harvest their forest, and ii) whether to plant yellow pines or regenerate hardwoods. The estimated model emphasizes the role of cold weather variability as a constraint on northward expansion of pine plantations, and a simulation shows how the long-term adaptation path varies with a range of projected changes in climate suitability. The main output is a journal article.
• Christian Langpap Activities and Outputs: The project uses nation-wide data on water quality measurements and expenditures by environmental nonprofit organizations and contributions to these organizations during the period 2009 – 2017. These data are used to empirically measure the impact of contributions to and expenditures by these organizations on local water quality both near and far away from border areas where streams leave states.
  

South Dakota State University

• Rachel Short: Task 1-5: Develop and Evaluate Strategies for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation. In the project, "Assessing Conservation Planning in South Dakota: Challenges and Opportunities in Collaboration, Public Participation, and Climate Information," we used an inductive, qualitative research approach, including interviews with 35 experts and content analysis of 53 conservation plans. In the project about measuring the impacts of shocks on food security for vulnerable people in India, Rachel Short analyzed data from 1200 households across 13 months using a doubly robust difference-in-difference (BACI) framework. The first project is a contribution to a larger project funded by a competitive Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities grant awarded by USDA NRCS. My project is studying the impacts of agricultural practices on wildlife and vegetation. I worked with a vendor, Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI), to conduct thorough surveys on six intensively monitored ranches during the summer of 2024. The ranches span a large precipitation gradient from eastern Wyoming to eastern South Dakota. BRI surveyed the mammals (large and small), birds, amphibians, insects (dung beetles and grasshoppers, primarily), and vegetation. BRI is currently processing all of the data and will repeat the surveys in 2027 to determine impacts. The second project investigates the morphology and population ecology of feral cats on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. The feral cats are known to predate multiple species of threatened seabirds that nest and breed on the island. A MS student (Sarah Gheida) is studying how the skulls, bite force, age, and sex of the cats predict which cats are more likely to predate threatened seabirds. We collected additional data in Hawaii during summer 2024 and analyses are ongoing. The third project investigates the role that agricultural and invasive species have on our models of trait-environment relationships in communities of herbivorous mammals. I used four modern community compositions to determine how the modern trait-environment relationship shifts. I compared those modern communities to fossil communities in the same locations and to projections of future climate. Communities with agricultural species included align with the fossil communities whereas communities with the invasive species included align with the future expectations.
  

Texas A&M University

• Liqing Li collaborated with Dilek Uz (University of Nevada), Mani Rouhi Rad (Texas A&M university), and R. Aaron Hrozencik (ERS) to examine the short-run and long-run impact of increasing temperature on agricultural electricity demand for irrigation. We also examined how depopulation and climate change would affect the operations of rural electric cooperatives.
• Liqing Li and José J. Sánchez (US Forest Service) initiated a project on estimating the cost of wildfire evacuations through both stated preference and revealed preference approach.
• Richard Woodward, using mobility data, placed value on offshore infrastructures to recreational fishing in the Gulf of Mexico. This work has been shared with stakeholders in the region.
  Demonstrated how racial aversion affects location choice by marine recreational anglers.

University of California Berkeley

• Meredith Fowlie’s project focuses on building datasets, developing analytical frameworks, conducting empirical analysis of climate change adaptation/wildfire risk mitigation in the utility and insurance sectors. I am particularly interested in understanding how state-of-the-art wildfire catastrophe modeling/wildfire risk analytics are being used to inform high stakes decision making in these sectors (e.g. power sector investments in risk mitigation, insurance pricing and underwriting). I finished two working papers this year that generated lots of attention from key stakeholders (e.g. utility decisionmakers, regulators, legislators). I have testified in legislative proceedings, convened a legislative briefing, and met with multiple groups (ratepayer advocates, wildland fire modelers, utility risk modeling teams) who want to understand and engage with our work.

University of Georgia

• Two of Yukiko Hashida’s Ph.D. students presented at the AERE summer meetings 2024, one about the storm damage reduction benefits of mangroves in Florida, and another on the effects of tidal wetlands on birdwatching activities. NOAA ESLR project aiming to quantify the ecosystem benefits values of tidal marshes has progressed with interdisciplinary researchers, including a quarterly meeting with stakeholders.
• Yukiko Hashida concluded a project funded by the Sea Grant in collaboration with the Nature Conservancy, which examined the storm damage reduction benefits of salt marshes in Georgia. This project connected various stakeholders, and we presented at a number of conferences and workshops targeted for local and regional resource planners and land managers. We also published a technical report, GIS Storymap, and infographics on TNC's website.
  I am also working with another Ph.D. student on research funded by the Forest Service, looking at the carbon sequestration benefits of prescribed fires.
• Task 1-1: Lusi Xie, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Tennessee, Albany State University, and USDA Economic Research Service, designed an online stated preference survey with farmers in Georgia to elicit preferences and required compensation to reduce irrigation water use for endangered for protecting endangered aquatic species during droughts. The findings will provide important insights into designing contracts in agricultural water conservation programs.
• Task 1-1: Lusi Xie is designing a randomized controlled trial in partnership with researchers from Texas A&M University and the University of Delaware to evaluate the relative effectiveness of small financial assistance incentives and lottery-style financial incentives in encouraging Conservation Reserve Program participants to engage in performing prescribed burns for CRP land management.
• Task 1-4: Lusi Xie is examining groundwater pumping behavior under conditions of varying risks of saltwater intrusion through laboratory experiments. This research aims to shed light on how individuals respond to heterogeneous risks, offering perspectives on water resource management strategies in areas prone to such challenges.

University of Hawaii at Manoa

• Kirsten Oleson’s & Ashley Lowe Mackenzie’s key outreach milestone was the presentation of GoWebinar at the NOAA OAP Virtual Workshop: Regional Resiliency & Vulnerability Assessments, where findings were shared our findings on ecological modeling and economic valuation of changes to the marine environment with policymakers, scientists, and resource managers to support resilience planning efforts. Our lab presented at 6 conferences on natural capital, recreational modeling and fisheries valuation.

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

• Becca Taylor completed a working paper for Task 1-2. This working paper is part of a project that examines how international plastic waste trade policies impact single-use plastic coastal litter (see title and abstract below). This working paper will be presented at conferences and workshops in the upcoming year to refine and enhance the working paper for journal publication.
  Title: Plastic Waste Trade & Coastal Litter: Evidence from Citizen Science Data
  Abstract: Plastic waste is an internationally traded commodity, where importing countries recycle plastic waste into usable materials. However, there are concerns that the importation process creates plastic litter—a negative externality—in importing countries. While this concern has received much media and policy attention, quantifying the magnitude of this externality has been hindered by a lack of data on plastic litter across countries and over time. To this end, we use unconventional citizen science data on litter from Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup, together with the United Nations Comtrade Database, to estimate the correlation between traded plastic waste and coastal litter from 2003 to 2022. We find that a 10% increase in the amount of plastic waste a country imports is associated with a 0.6% increase in the amount of littered plastic collected. Heterogeneity analyses show this correlation is driven by countries with higher rates of waste mismanagement. Our results suggest that the country- and international-level regulatory policies implemented in the waste trade industry since 2018 may have contributed to mitigating plastic pollution.
• Shadi Atallah published a paper on the optimal management of invasive shrubs in white pine forests, where the shrub affects one timber type and one recreation type of landowner.
• Shadi Atallah and PhD student Khashi Ghorbani developed a model that separately simulated the direct (temperature) vs indirect (disease-related) climatic impacts in an agroforestry system.

University of Maine

• Task 1-3: During the reporting period, Kathleen Bell continued to collaborate with Maine state agencies (e.g., Maine Office of Outdoor Recreation, Maine Department of Marine Resources, Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands), recreation industry groups, and non-profit organizations as well as other UMaine colleagues to improve understanding of the economic contribution of outdoor recreation in Maine, inform future natural resource management and economic development decisions related to outdoor recreation, and understand how public and private actions impact outdoor recreation. We assessed the economic contribution of outdoor recreation in Maine and other US states from 2017 to 2022. As part of this analysis, we examined how the contribution changed during the COVID-19 pandemic and explored Maine's specialization in terms of recreational activities and industry sectors. We also completed a detailed analysis of recent trends in recreation participation and recreation infrastructure to inform an economic analysis of future opportunities and challenges for Maine's outdoor recreation sectors. Working with UMaine and University of Southern Maine colleagues, we conducted a detailed study of outdoor recreation and coastal boat launch facilities in Maine. Coastal boat launches provide the public with access to Maine's coastal and marine waters and serve an important role in providing outdoor recreation opportunities to residents and visitors. Working with various state coastal and land management agencies and non-profit organizations, including the Maine Department of Marine Resources, we updated information about the condition and site characteristics of these facilities, collected information about recent trends in use and management challenges, and documented the impacts of recent extreme storms on boat launch facilities. Together, these efforts set the foundation for future recreation demand modeling and analyses. Task 1-4: Working with colleagues from UMaine, the University of Southern Maine, and Bowdoin College, we continued to assess recent municipal actions to enhance resiliency to changing economic and environmental conditions. We collected extensive data documenting municipal digital and grant capacities in Maine and continue to analyze these data to inform decisions related to maintaining and strengthening community infrastructure in rural areas. Our work to date suggests information infrastructure, including digital approaches, appear critical to local government responses to natural hazards such as extreme storms. Our work also suggests municipal grant capacity, including managerial and financial, is associated with grant awards.

University of Rhode Island

• Corey Lang collaborated with URI Professor of Sociology Julie Keller and URI student Blake Harrison to assess how land trusts meet the needs of farmers and gardeners from marginalized backgrounds. Land trusts in the U.S. play an important role in preventing the loss of farmland to development. Farmers seeking affordable land may benefit from these conservation efforts. Yet the distribution of these benefits across farmer groups is unclear. Interviews with land trust staff and focus groups with marginalized farmers and gardeners in New England, USA reveal discrepancies in how diversity and land access are discussed. Access to adequate, affordable land was a serious concern among farmers and gardeners, yet few land trusts had programs to increase access for diverse populations. Land trusts approached diversity, equity, and inclusion work by making limited commitments, pivoting to social class, and avoidance due to perceptions of mission drift. These findings have significant implications for who benefits and who is excluded from private farmland conservation. This paper was published in Society & Natural Resources.

University of Tennessee

• Dale Manning and collaborators completed an analysis of interactions between crop insurance policies (subsidies) and groundwater use in the Ogallala region. this is output from a USDA grant that was facilitated by w5133.
• Dale Manning and collaborators quantified the impact of weather shocks on the use of risky inputs in developing countries, distinguishing between direct/behavioral mechanisms and income channels.

University of Wyoming

• Task 1-4 People in Teton County Wyoming are concerned about the potential impacts associated with climate change. Focus groups indicate that stakeholders are concerned about the impacts on recreational angling in the area.
  
  Christopher Bastian and collaborators conducted a survey of anglers using a discrete choice experiment, asking anglers' trip choice given five angling trip attributes including: smoke from wildfires, change in trout populations and probability of catching a native cutthroat trout, crowding, access to angling locations, and trip cost. Preliminary results indicate increased incidence of wildfire smoke during an angling trip, and reduced probability of catching a native cutthroat trout had the largest negative impact on taking a trip in the Snake River headwaters area. We are currently working on publications from this research.
• Task 1-1
  Stakeholders in the upper green river, which feeds into the Colorado River Basin, are concerned about continued alternative water demands impacting potential agricultural operations in the area.
  Christopher Bastion and collaboratore conducted an economic analysis of various land use impacts affecting irrigation in the area and their related economic values.
  We find that while adding opportunities to gain rents from ecological services from return flows to support minimum stream flows to fisheries impacts values, agricultural landowners still have an economic incentive to sell land and related water rights for housing development.
  We published a journal article with our findings and have communicated our findings to the state engineer's office as well as stakeholders in the area.
• Don McLeod worked on research relating to the provision of public goods and services. Exurban sprawl and landscape fragmentation continue to be critical issues with respect to resource management, local governance and rural community development. There are implications for the costs of infrastructure development and public service provision as per the arrangement of people on the landscape and the conversion of extensive agricultural lands into large lot exurban parcels.
  The bulk of the work I am involved in sheds some light onto the outcomes of parcelization and fragmentation of rural lands. If jurisdictions differ in their provision of local public goods, then the citizen's choice of location reflects their preferences. The chosen location offers the suite of local public goods closest to the citizen's ideal. This includes wildlife habitat, law enforcement and fire prevention among others. The framework integrates characterization of the landscape, social and political decision factors into economic decision-making. This is thought to occur by extending prior public services modeling approaches that identify measurable target service metrics to focus on a public service cost function. We incorporate social/political incentives facing public decision-makers while managing consumer preferences of development and resource management that fit resident preferences.
  

Virginia Tech

• Accomplishments under this objective overlap to some extent with Objective 2 below due to application to the management of water quality in New England rivers and streams, and the state of Virginia, respectively.

West Virginia University

• Julian Hwang analyzed survey data that collected information about forest landowners’ perceptions and preferences for carbon offset programs in West Virginia.

Objective 2: Advance Economic Valuation Methods and Uses to Enhance Natural Resource Management, Policy, and Decision-Making

Colorado State University

• Jesse Burkhardt worked with the National Park Service to incorporate social costs in travel cost methods. We prepared a manuscript for publication, which is currently under review.

North Carolina State University

• Spencer Banzhaf developed a non-parameteric model for estimating the value of environmental improvements. Published model and estimates of values for ecosystem services in a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper.

Ohio State University

• Ohio State University researchers contributed to Task 2-1: Develop Innovative Stated and Revealed Preference Research Methods. In particular, the researchers developed new methods to integrate noise related externalities into hedonic analysis.

Oregon State University

• Christian Langpap’s project uses nation-wide data on water quality measurements and location of monitors, as well as census-tract level demographic characteristics. These data are used to empirically evaluate monitor coverage and water quality as they correlate with community characteristics.
• PI Kling presented preliminary findings from the forest natural capital survey development process to the State Forests Division Chief of the Oregon Department of Forestry, a key stakeholder for the project. He communicated to the Chief (Mike Wilson) what was learned from the first public focus group, and the ODF staff offered several suggestions for improving the survey instrument, in particular ways to make the results more useful to end-users of the forest natural capital pricing analysis.

South Dakota State University

• Rachel Short’s project is supported by a NSF Building Research Capacity of New Faculty in Biology grant awarded in summer 2024. With my co-PI at South Dakota School of Mines, we identified four fossil sites in Wind Cave National Park that span ~200,000 years. Specimens from these sites are housed at the South Dakota Mines Museum of Geology, and their student employees are curating the specimens. I have started a MS student (Ariel Berenyi-Tonesi) to work on changes in community compositions of these sites. A PhD student (Bruce) will work on the paleoenvironmental interpretations of these sites and will develop vectors of change to illustrate changes in trait-environment relationships through time and into the future.
• PI Short’s second project integrates three functional traits (heel bone, dental metrics, and body size) into one model for carnivorans. This project will be the first instance of a multi-trait single-order model of trait-environment relationships. I started a PhD student (Charles Bruce) to work on this project. He is in the process of assembling data and beginning to construct the models. This project will require first building the body size model independently. That analysis is almost complete so that the integrated model can begin.

Texas A&M University

• Liqing Li and collaborator Mitch Livy from California State University, Fullerton, published a study on how different types of urban green spaces are capitalized across various housing types and communities using housing transaction data. The results show that neighborhood parks and community gardens are valued more for properties lacking private or communal spaces. community gardens are highly valued in low-income, non-white neighborhoods.
• Liqing Li, José J. Sánchez (US Forest Service), and John Loomis (Colorado State University) conducted a choice experiment in Arizona to understand the relationship between perceived and objective fire risk and willingness to pay for fire mitigation programs. The results show that people’s perceived risks and the professional objective fire risks assessed by experts differ significantly, suggesting that managers may need to develop effective messaging and education programs for those communities where risk perceptions differ from expert assessments.
• Liqing and collaborator Dede Long from Harvey Mudd College published a paper on residents' willingness to contribute money and time to community gardens, an essential form of urban agriculture. Our findings indicate that while residents highly value the gardens' private benefits, they are not inclined to contribute to their public benefits. Additionally, residents' preferences for community gardens differ based on their socioeconomic status and accumulated gardening experience.
• Richard Woodward developed innovative methods using mobility data to track recreational the activity of marine recreational fishing. These methods have been shared with NOAA Fisheries, which has indicated continued interest in their use and development.
  

University of Georgia

• Task 2-1: Lusi Xie, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Delaware and the University of Alberta, is designing a field experiment that tests the impacts of strategic behavior and social desirability bias on stated preference willingness-to-pay for private goods.
  

University of Hawaii at Manoa

• Task 2-2: Ela Ural and collaborators derive economic value estimates for the nearshore fisheries of the Main Hawaiian Islands. Our definition of value follows that of Exchange Value (EV) under the United Nations System of Environmental Economic Accounting-Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA-EA) framework. This is accomplished using a resource rent approach for commercial fisheries (years 1997-present) and non-commercial fisheries (2005-present). Our estimates are spatially explicit, and further allocated by Ecosystem Type.
  

University of Maryland

• Erik Lichtenberg and collaborators have conducted a stated preference study using data from a survey of owners of farmland with riparian frontage to investigate the levels of upfront and annual payments needed to induce farmland owners’ to enroll in a program like CREP (willingness to accept). Uptake of payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs is often less than desired, leading policymakers to experiment with alternative contract designs aimed at increasing participation. We use data from a discrete choice experiment within a farmland owner survey to explore how stated preference (SP) studies could inform those efforts. We examine program design attributes for long-term conservation practices such as riparian buffers using a standard discrete choice model and hurdle models, where the latter considers serial nonparticipation that occurs commonly in SP studies involving PES programs. All model specifications indicate that both the one-time bonus and annual recurring payments provide economically meaningful incentives for participation. The marginal rate of substitution between these two payments reveals a strong preference for receiving payments upfront, suggesting that landowners discount future payments at high rates. Controlling for serial nonparticipation makes little difference in estimates of predicted uptake rates or tradeoffs between upfront and recurring annual payments. Our policy simulations varying the one-time bonus and annual recurring payments, while holding total payments constant in present values, indicate that uptake can be increased by frontloading payments. Overall, our analysis indicates that SP methods can help design more effective PES contracts. An article reporting these findings is under journal review.

University of Rhode Island

• Corey Lang collaborated with URI graduate student Vasu Gaur, East Carolina University Greg Howard, and East Carolina University graduate student Ruth Quinoo to examine how econometric modeling of choice experiment data can affect loss aversion estimates. The experiment examined preferences for utility-scale solar energy siting based on a series of installation attributes and changes in household electric bill (the payment vehicle, which can increase or decrease relative to the status-quo). We employ multiple discrete choice modeling approaches and show that, across all models, the implications of accounting for loss aversion are qualitatively similar and match theoretical predictions. Despite this similarity, when comparing results across models we find that model choice has substantial impacts on estimated loss aversion. Specifically, different models estimate loss/gain ratios below two and in excess of six for the same data set. Thus, the consequences of framing decisions, which are an important aspect of nonmarket valuation, are not just the provenance of survey and choice experiment design but may also be heavily influenced by empirical model choice. This paper was published in Journal of Choice Modelling.
• Corey Lang collaborated with Casey Wichman (Georgia Tech), Michael Wier (WHOI), and Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz (Maryland) to understand voter perceptions of the private costs of providing public goods through referendums. Public good provision is often determined through referendums by voters, who weigh benefits against costs. We evaluate voter perceptions of the private costs of providing public goods by conducting three exit polls of New England voters and an online survey of California voters. By comparing cost perceptions to actual tax incidence, we find pervasive evidence that voters misperceive costs. Fewer than 20% of voters in our samples reported perceived costs within 25% of estimated actual costs. Further, our analysis suggests that actual costs have no statistical bearing on voter choice, but at least in the New England sample voter approval is affected by perceived costs. Thus, misperceptions of referendum costs can lead to voter choice errors, misallocation of public funds, and errors in valuation estimates derived from voting data. This paper was published in American Journal of Agricultural Economics.
• Corey Lang collaborated with URI graduate student Luran Dong URI professor of Natural Resource Science Jason Parent to assess homeowners’ willingness to pay to avoid having views of wind turbines from their property and to improve methods of assessing viewshed impacts. Onshore wind turbine capacity continues to grow and will only accelerate, though siting can be challenging given community opposition. We apply the hedonic valuation method with residential property sales data to assess nearby residents’ willingness to pay to avoid having views of turbines from their property. In doing so, we aim to improve methods of assessing viewshed impacts for turbines and other amenities and disamenities that have a visual component. Our recommended viewshed approach uses a digital surface model (DSM), which accounts for trees and buildings that obstruct views. For comparison, we also create viewsheds based on bare-earth digital elevation model (DEM), which has been more typically used other studies. Using data from New England, USA, we use a difference-in-differences identification strategy with treatment defined by the visibility of a wind turbine, while also controlling for proximity-based treatment effects. The results suggest that property values decline by 2.2% to 2.5% when a wind turbine is visible, with larger impacts in urban and coastal areas. DEM methods misclassify viewshed for about 75% of properties, when compared to the DSM-based viewshed, and the resulting DEM-based valuation estimates are attenuated. This paper was published in Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.
  

University of Tennessee

• Dale Manning and collaborators completed an analysis of the use of stated preference methods to generate supply curves and estimate the scope and composition of abatement supply curves in agriculture. This was a collaboration with Amy Ando, a fellow member of w5133.
• Dale Manning worked with Lynne Lewis, a friend of w5133 to study the use of images for eliciting the benefits of additional fish stocks for artisanal fishers,

Virginia Tech

• During the 2024/2025 reporting period Klaus Moeltner developed a novel methodological framework to facilitate benefit transfer (BT), the leading approach used by federal agencies to determine the environmental benefits of planned policy interventions. In essence, BT synthesizes benefit estimates and ancillary data reported in the existing literature to predict societal benefits for new policy contexts. This is done in a systematic, quantitative fashion, typically using regression-type approaches. I developed a fully nonparametric framework (= very flexible framework that does not rely on explicit functional relationships) for BT built around Local Linear Forest (LLF), a custom-tailored Machine Learning (ML) technique that has been recently introduced to the applied economic / statistics literature. "Forests" are a type of modeling approach where the relationship between an outcome of interest and a (potentially large) set of explanatory variables is determined by repeatedly splitting the sample based on underlying statistical rules. "Machine Learning" is simply a modern term for applied statistical tools that have also been adopted in the field of Computer Science. Moeltner applied this method to a water quality meta-dataset to predict benefits for water cleanup scenarios in a large watershed. The new method improved predictive accuracy (= how far "off" are the predictions compared to the actual value?) and efficiency (= how wide are confidence intervals for the predictions?) by an order of magnitude compared to traditional approaches, including the Locally-Weighted Meta-Regression (LWR) I developed in the preceding reporting period (= a type of more formal regression approach with a specific functional relationship between outcome and explanatory variables). LWR was a (big) step in the right direction, capturing the general notion that some meta-observations are closer to the policy context than others. LLF builds on this concept, but enhances the statistical properties of the general approach.
• During the 2024-2025 performance period Klaus Moeltner also developed a new ML-based estimator to process primary valuation data, as typically collected during economic valuation, or "Stated Preference" surveys. Specifically, I introduced a novel, fully nonparametric estimation framework to process data from preference elicitation via Contingent Valuation, i.e. survey-based environmental valuation approaches with a binary, referendum-style choice question (Example: "Would you be willing to pay $[x] in mandatory fees and taxes to obtain the cleaned-up version of this watershed, or stick with the current situation at no extra cost?") My approach combines the construction of choice probabilities via Random Forests (RFs) with welfare predictions via popular distribution-free estimators. Standing alone, these distribution-free methods are poorly suited for the incorporation of observation-specific heterogeneity (= capturing the fact that different individuals have different preferences). In contrast, my new Random Forest Non-Parametric (RFNP) approach produces willingness-to-pay (WTP) estimates at the individual level, conditioned on a potentially large set of explanatory variables. Using simulated data, as well as an empirical application to water quality improvement in New England, I find that the new approach is substantially more robust to mis-specifications of underlying functional relationships (because it AVOIDS any functional relationships by construction), while being able to compete with even correctly specified parametric approaches in terms of asymptotic (= large-sample) efficiency.
• Moeltner developed an RF model to predict the importance, or "salience" of an existing watershed to a given household or individual based on the watershed's physical and hydro-morphological features. This will become an integral (and novel) component for the "Improved Choice Experiments for agricultural conservation and ecosystem services" project listed in the project initiation report for this multi-state effort. The application is water quality improvement as a result of sustainable agricultural practices in Virginia.

West Virginia University

• Julian Hwang collected survey data about the public’s preferences for coastal wetland restoration in Florida and found that the survey respondents formed perceptions about the benefit and cost of the restoration that were different from what was specified in the survey.

Objective 3: Develop Solutions for Integration of Economic Valuation with Policy and Decision-Making

Ohio State University

• Ohio State University researchers addressed Task 3-1: Design Decision Support Tools for Managing Natural Resources, Ecosystem Services, and the Impacts of Natural Hazards through efforts to build modeling tools for integrated assessment and use of satellite images.

Oregon State University

• Christian Langpap’s project uses data from 115 watersheds in Washington, Oregon, California, and Idaho on salmonid population counts and expenditures by environmental nonprofit organizations and government agencies during the period 2000 – 2018. These data are used to empirically measure the impact of expenditures by these organizations and agencies on counts of salmonids at the watershed level.

Texas A&M University

• Richard Woodward developed analysis locations where offshore infrastructure is most valuable and to assess the relative merits of traditional methods for estimating marine recreational fishing effort. This work was shared with economists from NOAA Fisheries in a webinar.

University of Hawaii at Manoa

• Kristen Oleson’s project has held continual weekly meeting with stakeholders Hawaiiʻs Department of Land and Natural Resource on an interdisciplinary collaboration creating a decision tool using structured decision making and incorporating on economic valuation of recreational opportunity on public lands. The team held 2 stakeholder workshops eliciting expert information to incorporate and disseminating the research conducted through out the year of 2024. These partnerships have strengthened the project’s impact and increased its visibility within state and local communities.
• Task 3-1: Ela Ural and collaborators close to completion of an online application to exhibit our fisheries valuation results. This application is interactive, and disaggregates value by commercial type, species group, and ecosystem type. Users can click and drag for value allocations, and download selected data (for public use, pending our paper publication).
  

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

• Atallah and co-authors developed an integrated ecological-economic model of weed spread and technology adoption with peer effects where dynamic adoption decisions are specified using data from a choice experiment.

University of Maryland

• Lichtenberg and collaborators have used economic theory to evaluate the design of long term conservation subsidy contracts in light of the fact that farmland owners may opt out of that contract before the contract’s expiration date. We show that the current contract structure makes premature opt-out too attractive and derive an alternative contract structure that reduces premature project cancellation, increases environmental benefits, and improves the cost-effectiveness of a conservation subsidy program. A numerical simulation indicates that the improvements in performance are large enough to be economically significant.
• Lichtenberg and collaborators are in the process of combining the econometric estimates from our stated preference analysis with estimates of water quality and carbon sequestration impacts of riparian buffer installation to investigate how carbon credit programs and programs like CREP might interact. Emissions trading programs have been promoted as efficient means to reduce water pollution and sequester carbon from agricultural land. While trading programs are often evaluated in isolation, they compete with longstanding agricultural conservation subsidy programs. Both programs target agroforestry practices that provide environmental benefits using different payment structures: Trading pays for performance while agricultural conservation programs pay for effort. We evaluate the performance of both programs in isolation and competition using an integrated assessment model that combines a stated preference survey of agricultural landowners for establishing forests with biophysical models of water quality and carbon sequestration benefits of forests in the U.S. Chesapeake Bay region. Our numerical policy simulation suggests that the water quality trading program in isolation can provide sufficient financial incentives for landowners to engage in afforestation activities on agricultural land. However, federal agricultural conservation subsidies largely crowd out the trading program when in competition. Stacking payments for carbon offsets with water quality trading payments does not enhance trading participation. Overall, the attractiveness and effectiveness of emissions trading programs for afforestation activities on agricultural land are heavily influenced by the presence and generosity of federal agricultural conservation subsidies.

University of Tennessee

• Dale Manning and collaborators completed an integrated model of alternative water allocation institutions in the western US. this was part of a large multi-state grant made possible in part by relationships developed at w5133.

University of Wyoming

• Benjamin Rashford: Land conservation to support the provision of ecosystem services and maintain working lands and rural communities continues to be an important public policy goal. Limited budgets, however, imply a greater demand for conservation than available public and private funding can support. Policymakers and NGOs therefore need strategies to cost effectively targeted conservation dollars. Across multiple projects, our research focuses on developing decision tools to improve the effectiveness of land conservation decisions. Over the past year we worked closely with NGO partners to finalize a statistical model that estimates development risk for agricultural land parcels in WY. They combine estimates of development risk, with information about the ecosystem values and potential conservation costs to determine whether to accept proposed conservation easements. We also developed a website that provides private and government sector users access to a navigable map sharing the development risk estimates.
• On a second project, Rashford and collaborators continued work with USDA ARS to estimate the economic and ecological effectiveness of targeting strategies for Grassland CRP contracts.

Virginia Tech

• The tools developed under objective 3 will support decision-making for environmental policies, and facilitate integration of environmental valuation into broader analytical frameworks as envisioned by objective 3.

West Virginia University

• Julian Hwang analyzed participation data for a state program (“lionfish challenge program”) to remove the highly invasive species from Florida waters and measured the economic benefit of the program.