John C. Whitehead

The wildlife valuation literature largely focuses on eliciting willingness-to-pay for wildlife conservation, not recreation, and frequently groups species together under the banner of “wildlife”. This study employs the contingent valuation method to value the likelihood of viewing specific wildlife in Grand Teton National Park (GTNP). We estimate willingness-to-pay (WTP) and willingness-to-accept (WTA) for species-specific recreation trips to explore substitutability between popular wildlife species. Estimates across species better equip wildlife managers to balance the inherent tradeoffs associated with climate impacts on habitats and populations as well as changing interests among recreationists.

In 2023 a survey was given to environmental and natural resource economists to gauge levels of consensus in the field. Strong consensus can signal to policymakers the relative strength of particular policy proposals. Respondents were queried on topics including air quality, groundwater, climate change, natural resource management, land conservation, environmental justice, and more. Survey results were compared to a similar survey given in 2012, to determine how consensus levels may have changed over time. We find, for the most part, significant levels of consensus today, and over time, on many key topics and policy proposals.

We use stated preference methods to estimate willingness to pay to avoid reductions in recreational catch in Great Lakes fisheries. We compare willingness to pay estimates where uncertain “in favor” votes are recoded to “against” votes to an attribute non-attendance model that focuses on the policy cost attribute. We find that the two hypothetical bias models yield similar results. We estimate another attribute non-attendance model that also considers the scope of the policy and find that the scope elasticity is significantly underestimated in other models. The willingness to pay in this last model is higher than in the other models.

We estimate the economic benefits of avoiding reductions in drinking water quality due to sea level rise accruing to North Carolina (NC) coastal tourists. Using stated preference methods and responses from recent coastal visitors, we find that tourists are 2%, 8%, and 11% less likely to take an overnight trip if drinking water tastes slightly, moderately, or very salty at their chosen destination. The majority of those who decline a trip would take a trip to another NC beach without water quality issues, others would take another type of recreational trip, with a minority opting to stay home. Willingness to pay for an overnight beach trip declines with the salty taste of drinking water. We find evidence of attribute non‐attendance in the stated preference data, which impacts the regression model and estimates of the willingness to pay for trips. Combining economic and hydrological models, annual aggregate benefit losses due to low drinking water quality could be as high as $232 million by 2040.

This paper explores the limitations of two commonly used nonparametric approaches, the Turnbull estimator and the Kriström estimator. Fat tails and flat tails in the distribution of bid responses can result in a large divergence in willingness to pay estimates across different estimation methods. Since it is extremely rare to capture the tail of the distribution, we highlight the merit of an alternative approach using 120 data sets drawn from the literature. We calculate 4 non-parametric estimates of willingness to pay for each data set. Meta analysis is used to help determine when the Turnbull and Kriström estimators diverge.

Improvements to the quality of freshwater rivers and lakes can generate a wide array of benefits, from “use values” such as recreational boating, fishing, and swimming to “nonuse values” such as improved outcomes for aquatic biodiversity. Bringing these nonmarket values into decision-making is crucial to determining appropriate levels of investment in water quality improvements. However, progress in the economic valuation of water quality benefits has lagged similar efforts to value air quality benefits, with implications for water policy. New data sources, modeling techniques, and innovation in stated preference survey methods offer notable improvements to estimates of use and nonuse benefits of improved water quality. Here, we provide a perspective on how recent applications of stated preference techniques to the valuation of the nonmarket benefits of water quality improvements have advanced the field of environmental valuation. This overview is structured around four key questions: i) What is it about water quality that we seek to value? ii) How should we design and implement the surveys which elicit individuals’ stated preferences? iii) How do we assess the validity of the findings provided by such studies? and iv) What are the contributions of these valuation exercises to public policy? In answering these questions, we make reference to the contributions provided by the papers in this Symposium.

This paper combines data to estimate the ex-ante recreational impact of oil spills. Using a unique contingent behavior question, our application highlights the gains in combining stated and revealed preferences. We consider both a reduction of the available choice set and of perceived site quality. We show that omitting perceived site quality leads to low welfare losses while omitting alternative specific constants leads to high welfare losses. Overall, we find recreational losses due to potential oil spills in Norway ranging from 347 and 524 NOK (32 to 49 US dollars) per person across the four oil spill scenarios.