Search

Chapter 1: Does lead pollution increase crime? We perform the first meta-analysis of the effect of lead on crime, pooling 542 estimates from 24 studies. The effect of lead is overstated in the literature due to publication bias. Our main estimates of the mean effect sizes are a partial correlation of 0.16, and an elasticity of 0.09. Our estimates suggest the abatement of lead pollution may be responsible for 7-28% of the fall in homicide in the US. Given the historically higher urban lead levels, reduced lead pollution accounted for 6-20% of the convergence in US urban and rural crime rates. Lead increases crime, but does not explain the majority of the fall in crime observed in some countries in the 20th century. Additional explanations are needed. Chapter 2: How does lead pollution affect birth outcomes? Does a mother's lead exposure increase the risk of child death? Does it lower the infant's birthweight (a proxy for later health outcomes)? We test these hypotheses by examining an intervention in the Scottish water supply, which reduced water lead levels and blood lead levels in Scotland's largest two cities. In our main estimates, we use a staggered difference-in-differences design estimated with two-way Mundlak pooled OLS. We do not find the lead reduction interventions reduced birthweights. However, we do find that they may have had a large effect on infant deaths. Our main estimates suggest lead reduction accounts for 0.3-0.1 percentage points decrease in deaths in Glasgow and a 0.7-0.1 percentage points decrease in deaths in the Alnwickhill water plant supplied area of Edinburgh. However, these results are not robust to alternative specifications, and therefore can only be taken as weak evidence of an effect. Chapter 3: Does lead pollution harm educational achievement? And are the marginal effects greater at low or high levels of lead? We use exogenous variation in lead pollution from water treatment in Glasgow, Scotland, combined with within-household sibling differences, to estimate the effect of lead on education. We compare pre- and post-treatment sibling differences between treated and control areas with difference-in-differences estimation. We find a clear dose-response relationship. Treated areas with low prevalence of lead piping show no change compared to a control group. In contrast, high lead pipe prevalence areas show improvement in educational outcomes. Our findings indicate that countries and areas with very high levels of lead can expect large educational gains from even small amounts of lead abatement, while those with already low levels of lead can expect much lower marginal improvements.

This study assesses public preferences for alternative electricity generation technologies in England and Scotland, in the context of the global challenge of climate change and the current policy debate in the UK. Specifically, the study aims to provide an insight into the factors that could potentially influence the acceptability of four energy sources (onshore wind, offshore wind, fracking and nuclear energy). The preference heterogeneity is then examined with regard to observable and unobservable factors (socio-demographic and place of residence characteristics, and environmental attitudes). The choice experiment method is employed in this research to elicit preferences for future energy policy targeting environmental and climate change conditions. Through an online survey, data are collected and completed by 986 respondents residing in England and Scotland. Three choice modelling techniques are used for analysis: multinomial and mixed logit models; latent class model; and hybrid mixed model. The results show a significantly positive willingness to pay for both onshore and offshore wind energy technologies and a significantly negative willingness to pay for fracking and nuclear energy. These general results are however heterogeneous and depend to a certain extent on socio­demographic characteristics, especially age, education, income and environmental organisation membership. Furthermore, environmental attitudes (considered as three dimensions: cognitive, affective and behavioural) toward the environment and climate change emerge as significant predictors of energy sources preferences. The results also show that English and Scottish public preferences need not be considered separately, as most of the differences between them are not statistically significant. Overall, the findings of this research are useful for designing optimal future energy and climate change policies, as well as raising the public acceptability for the development of alternative energy projects in England and Scotland.

There is growing evidence that exposure to bodies of water or 'blue spaces' can result in benefits to human health and well-being. However, most blue space and health research has focused on the health and well-being impact of exposure to coastal environments and freshwater blue spaces have received significantly less research attention. Understanding the potential health and well-being benefits of freshwater blue space exposure is vitally important as more than 50% of the global population live within 1km of a body of freshwater and as freshwater and coastal environments differ significantly in their physical and hydrological properties. This thesis aimed to use multiscale and multidisciplinary approaches to quantify the health and well-being impact of access and exposure to freshwater blue space in Scotland. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were adopted, including semi-structured interviews and focus groups (qualitative) and stated preference and national scale subjective health and well-being surveying (quantitative). The key thesis findings suggest Scotland's freshwater blue spaces are important health-promoting assets. Specifically, living in neighbourhoods with high blue space availability was associated with lower uptake of antidepressant medication and self-reported visits to freshwater blue was associated with significant improvements in mental well-being. Furthermore, loch swimming can provide a wide variety of physical, social and mental well-being benefits. The thesis contains a number of novel contributions, including the first published studies to (i) quantify the non-market value of protecting lochside environments; (ii) combine national antidepressant prescribing and freshwater blue space availability data; (iii) establish the health and well-being impacts and risks of loch swimming; and (iiii) quantify the health and well-being benefits of spending time in different types of freshwater blue (e.g. lakes, rivers and canals). Collectively, the thesis findings suggest spending time in and around freshwater blue space can provide a variety of mental health and well-being benefits. It is, therefore, recommended that promoting freshwater blue space usage and accessibility receives greater consideration in urban planning and public health policy, both in Scotland and internationally. However, it is of critical importance that policies aiming to increase freshwater blue space access and usage ensure the health and well-being benefits offered by freshwater blue space are available to all.

Given the general decline of estuarine ecosystem services (ES), policy makers require to understand further the drivers and barriers to increase society's support for policies restoring them. The objective of this study is to identify significant sources of preference heterogeneity for improvements in flood control, recreation and biodiversity levels, resulting from tax-funded restoration projects that would be developed in the Clyde, Forth, and Tay catchment. We used data from a discrete choice experiment conducted in Scotland and applied several choice modelling techniques (e.g. MNL, RPL, HMXL, posterior analysis) to explore the effect of respondents socioeconomic characteristics, their latent attitudes and the local geographical context on their preferences towards policies managing estuarine ES. We found a positive and significant willingness to pay (WTP) for improving all ES, although differences in WTP estimates exist for all estuarine ES, across catchments and between user types. Recreation values were found to be lower on average than either flood control or biodiversity conservation, while preference differences emerge due to whether people live within a catchment and whether they visit it for recreational purposes or not. People visiting the areas for doing outdoor activities presented a higher latent environmental consciousness attitude. Moreover, environmentally conscious individuals showed stronger preferences for management alternatives delivering estuarine ES improvements. Finally, the presence of significant local clusters of WTP estimates suggests that respondents' preferences interact with their immediate spatial context. Nonetheless, the local clusters of WTP for estuarine ES improvements are distributed similarly in space regardless of the ES in question, or the estuary under consideration. The research findings can be informative for designing more efficient and contextualised policies. Moreover, they can be helpful in raising the social acceptability of the policies aiming to manage estuarine ES in Scotland.

The ecosystem service (ES) framework is increasingly being incorporated into management decisions, providing a basis by which ES can be quantified to understand the impact of decisions to society and the environment. Our ability to effectively implement this framework is dependent on our knowledge of the links between natural capital, ecosystem functions and ES. A need to ensure that the theoretical model is grounded in scientific evidence exists. This thesis employed ecological and economic methods to apply the ES framework in assessing the ability of restored salt marsh to provide coastal defences, and the perceived value of this by the public. Using sites planted as part of ongoing restoration in the Eden Estuary, Scotland, ecosystem functions important to the provision of coastal flood defence were assessed for equivalence to natural salt marsh sites. Plant structure was found to develop along a trajectory expected to attain comparable ecosystem function to a natural marsh. Comparable plant height was attained 10 years after planting, however marginal significant differences were still present in plant density. Due to high spatial and temporal variation no trajectory for sediment stability could be inferred. Overall, this work suggests that equivalent coastal defence provision is highly likely to be attained within the planted sites. Comparable benthic macrofaunal species richness and abundance were observed 2-3 and 4-9 years after planting, respectively; community assemblage continued to differ after 11 years. A choice experiment indicated a clear dislike for the use of engineered walls and a preference for nature-based defences within the Eden Estuary. A combination of a low wall and fronting salt marsh was preferred with the highest willingness to pay. Combining the findings from ecological and economic research enables insights that can assist in the planning of coastal flood defence providing valuable information to managers and policy makers.

Environmental degradation is accelerating worldwide, yet environmental conservation remains limited by funding. Tackling this limitation requires not only absolute increases in funding, but improved prioritisation of actions. On a global scale island ecosystems are of high priority, with invasive species one of their most significant threats. In this thesis I investigate prioritisation of invasive grazing species control, incorporating ecological, economic, and social concerns, on the island of Bonaire, Caribbean Netherlands. To enable the trade-off of potential grazer control options for their ecological impacts I modelled the relationship between of grazer density and vegetation, and watershed vegetation and the coral reef. I found negative relationships for goat and pig grazing with grass presence, and for donkey grazing with ground cover. Coral cover below 10m showed a positive relationship to ground cover, and, surprisingly, a negative relationship to tree biomass. Because conservation action is most likely to be sustainable when connected to funding, I conducted choice experiments with SCUBA divers, which estimated a positive willingness to pay for reef health improvements achieved using terrestrial grazer control. Through communication with local policy makers and practitioners I identified three options for grazer control, eradication, population reduction, or fencing, and estimated costs and social acceptability for each option. Though the ecological models predicted eradication to have the highest impacts on the terrestrial and marine ecosystem, lower costs and higher social acceptability identified fencing as the most suitable option for grazer control on Bonaire in the short term, with the potential to be funded through a fee on SCUBA divers. Through linking ecological, economic, and social considerations within a real world conservation context I illustrate the importance of looking beyond only ecological improvements when prioritising conservation action. This research is directly applicable to policy and practise on Bonaire.

What is sustainability and how do we measure it? Sustainability could be achieved through sustainable development and much of the literature on sustainable development has taken human well-being to be the object to be sustained. By constructing a very large and extensive National Accounts consistent database, this study develops an original set of UK wealth accounts for 25 years – 1988 to 2012 – to measure UK sustainability. While doing so, this research calculates the monetary value of UK natural capital and human capital which is then added into produced capital to develop a first comprehensive wealth account for the UK. This thesis argues that both wealth accounting approaches - "top-down" and "bottom-up" - are conceptually the same. They only differ empirically because of the methodologies employed to calculate natural capital, human capital and total wealth. This thesis shows how these both approaches can be combined together to measure UK sustainability. This study concludes that since 2007 UK is not on a sustainable path. Despite a positive genuine savings, since 2007 UK wealth has a negative growth rate and wealth per capita is in decline. A positive genuine savings with a fall in wealth per capita shows that UK savings has not been sufficient to compensate for a fall in wealth and population growth. In order to reverse the trend, either UK has to reduce its population growth or it needs to reinvest in its capital asset bases. This thesis argues that an increase in population does not always decrease per capita wealth because an increase in population driven by a skilled work force increases the value of human capital and thus total wealth. This increase in wealth could offset an increase in population keeping per capita wealth intact. Furthermore, for UK, which is not a resource rich country, investment in human capital is needed to increase the rate of wealth growth.

This thesis looks at the role of wild pollinators in providing services to crops. Two data chapters (2 and 3) are accompanied by a modelling chapter (4) which build on the findings of the field studies. The thesis ends with an overview of the trends in pollinator populations and how these relate to the needs of farmers in the UK (chap-ter 5). It is often assumed that commercial pollinators are appropriate substitutes of wild pollinators on farms; however this view neglects the differing roles that particular pollinator taxa might play in providing pollination services. For example, crops with a long growing system may require multiple pollinators to ensure pollination throughout the season. Strawberries in Scotland have an extremely long growing season, flowering from April to August. Chapter 2 presents a study showing season-al complementarity between different pollinating taxa across strawberry farms in Scotland. Pollinators of strawberries also differed in their responses to weather pa-rameters indicating that preserving multiple pollinator taxa could ensure yields un-der different weather scenarios. The requirements of a long-growing season and ad-verse weather may be specific to strawberry production in Scotland, but the valua-tion of multiple taxa can be generalised to systems with differing needs, and also to different ecosystem services. Wild bees are not only valuable for providing complementary services to commercial pollinators, but are also valuable in the longer term as it is unknown whether com-mercial pollinators will be available in the future. There are threats to the supply of honeybees which have already triggered price rises; such supply shocks could force farmers to leave production or to seek other ways of providing pollination, including supporting wild pollinators. However farm management pressures, in particular pes-ticide use, could threaten the ability of wild pollinators to continue to support crop production. The interplay of pesticides and pollination is discussed in chapter 3 and 4. Chapter 3 presents an experiment undertaken on soft-fruit farms which had and had not used the neonicotinoid, thiacloprid, and shows that nests exposed to thia-cloprid had higher worker mortality, and lower male production than those at con-trol farms. This has implications both for pollination services now, as worker mor-tality will reduce the number of bees visiting farms, and also for the maintenance of future pollination services through decreased reproductive capacity of exposed nests. Chapter 4 uses a theoretical model to link pesticide use and habitat use to pollina-tion services, and shows that the use of commercial pollinators could mask the de-cline in wild populations, making local extinctions more likely. Chapter 5 sets out the status and extent of pollinators in the UK, along with popu-lation trends, trends in habitat and trends in pesticide use to provide an overview of how well pollination services are likely to meet the ongoing needs of crop farmers.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the development of new technologies in the energy industry and to explore how it is possible for these technologies to compete with incumbent technologies in a mature market. The pursuit of renewable energy has been at the forefront of national government and international institutional policy in recent years due to the desire to improve the security of energy supply and to reduce CO2e emissions. This thesis aims to contribute to this policy debate, particularly by focussing on the issue of governmental support for infant energy technologies. In order to conduct this investigation, two main topics have been analysed. Firstly, learning curves have been studied to establish whether support for new technologies can be justified by the potential cost reductions which arise from learning-by-doing. This research evolved into the investigation of econometric issues which affect learning curves. Patent counts are used to demonstrate an alternative output-based measurement of industry wide knowledge stock, which is used as a proxy for innovation. This alternative specification of knowledge stock corroborates recent findings in the literature, that learning curves which model cost using only cumulative capacity leads to the over-estimation of cost reductions from learning-by-doing and the failure to capture cost reductions resulting from innovation. This suggests that government support for infant technologies should form a dual strategy of incentivising the deployment of generators as well as encouraging innovation, instead of using feed-in tariffs or renewable obligations which narrowly focus on increasing deployment. A great deal of progress has been made in identifying further econometric problems affecting learning curves in recent years. In the progress of this study, it was identified that cumulative capacity, the cost of wind power and knowledge stock are all non-stationary time series variables. The hypothesis that these variables are cointegrated was rejected by the Westerlund test, which implies that learning curves produce spurious results. This has major consequences for government policy as it suggests that learning curves should not be used to justify support for infant technologies. Secondly, a choice experiment was conducted to determine Scottish households’ willingness to pay for electricity generated from renewable sources compared to conventional sources such as coal, oil and gas. A labelled choice experiment was used to determine whether households have preferences between onshore wind power, offshore wind power and wave power. The results of a latent class model reveal that the majority of households (76.5%) are willing to pay an additional £89-£196 per year to obtain electricity from renewable resources instead of conventional sources. However, there is no statistically significant difference in the willingness to pay between the renewable technologies included in the choice experiment. The latent class model also illustrated that there is a sizeable minority (23.5%) who are opposed to renewable energy development. Older respondents and those less concerned about CO2 emissions are significantly more likely to form part of this group at the 5% level of significance. The study also included a unique addition by identifying households which purchased a house in the previous seven years. Interacting the actual transaction prices of these houses in a multinomial logit model suggested that households may be concerned about renewable energy developments devaluing their properties or the additional expense required to power larger houses. Due to the increasing difficulty of conducting choice experiments in the UK, a novel method of eliciting choice experiment responses from online advertising was tested and was found to be a cost-effective method of eliciting choice experiment responses. Overall, the research indicates that caution should be exercised when interpreting the results of a choice experiment which elicits responses using Internet advertising. It can be observed that the pseudo R2 of the Internet-based sample is lower than the mail-based sample and that the mean respondent to the Internet-based choice experiment is willing to pay significantly more for renewable electricity than the mean respondent to the mail-based choice experiment at the 5% level of significance. Furthermore, the mean willingness to pay estimate in the Internet-based choice experiment appears to be unrealistically high. Further research investigating the elasticity of survey responses to the prize fund on offer would be valuable in identifying the most cost-effective strategy to obtain responses and to generate a more representative sample.

This thesis addresses the problems associated with security of the electricity supply in the UK. The British electricity supply industry has experienced a significant structural change. Competition has been brought into the electricity industry and a single wholesale electricity market of Great Britain has been established. The evolution of the British electricity market raises new challenges, such as improving the liquidity of wholesale markets and developing clean energy. The wholesale electricity prices are less transparent and trading arrangements are very complex in the British electricity market. In this thesis a fundamental model, called a stack model, has been developed in order to forecast wholesale electricity prices. The objective of the stack model is to identify the marginal cost of power output based on the fuel prices, carbon prices, and availability of power plants. The stack model provides a reasonable marginal cost curve for the industry which can be used as an indicator for the wholesale electricity price. In addition, the government's targets for climate change and renewable energy bring new opportunities for wind energy. Under the large wind energy penetration scenario the security of the energy supply will be essential. We have modelled the correlations between wind speed data for a set of wind farms. The correlation can be used to measure the portfolio risk of the wind farms. Electricity companies should build their portfolio of wind farms with low or negative correlations in order to hedge the risk from the intermittency of wind. We found that the VAR(1) model is superior to other statistic models for modelling correlations between wind speeds of a wind farm portfolio.

Many bumblebee species have experienced severe population declines in response to the use of intensive land management practices throughout the UK and western Europe during the latter half of the twentieth century. The loss of wildflower-rich unimproved lowland grasslands has been particularly detrimental and, as a result, in the UK two bumblebee species are now extinct, seven are listed on the UK Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP), and only six extant species remain common and ubiquitous. Populations of the rarer species are often fragmented and restricted to isolated areas, such as the crofting regions of northwest Scotland, in which the use of intensive farming practices has remained relatively limited. Consequently, in this study I primarily focus on the conservation of B. distinguendus and B. muscorum, two of the UK’s rarest species which have strongholds in the Outer Hebrides. In this region crofting is the dominant form of agriculture, and is traditionally typified by small-scale mixed livestock production accompanied by rotational cropping activities. With the use of very few artificial inputs, traditional crofting activities are environmentally sensitive and promote the diverse wildflower assemblages characteristic of the machair which provide suitable forage for bumblebees. However, the changing demographic structure of the islands, in conjunction with a range of other socio-economic factors, is resulting in the adoption of more intensive land management practices by crofters and changing the nature of the crofted landscape. These changes are likely to have a detrimental impact on the rare bumblebee populations that rely on crofting to provide suitable foraging habitats. Neglecting to examine the socio-economic issues behind the decline in crofting activities, and failure to develop a means of making the system economically viable and sustainable, is likely to reduce the effectiveness of any bumblebee conservation measures introduced in the region. Through my research I address this socio-ecological problem by taking an interdisciplinary approach, and combine the two disciplines of ecology and economics to find a way to ensure crofting is sustainable whilst promoting sympathetic land management practices to aid bumblebee conservation. The results of my research demonstrate that current croft land management practices do not support high abundances of foraging bumblebees in the Outer Hebrides, and that sheep grazing during the summer has a particularly negative impact on bumblebee abundance on croft land. My research also highlights the importance of non-agricultural habitats for foraging long-tongued bumblebee species in agricultural landscapes. Grazing management can promote bumblebee abundance, with cattle grazing providing a valuable foraging habitat for short-tongued bumblebees in southwest England. Therefore, to conserve bumblebees in agricultural landscapes the type of farming system needs to be taken into account in developing grazing management regimes, whilst non-agricultural habitats need to be integrated into local land management plans to ensure the provision of forage for bumblebees throughout the flight period. The outputs of the ecological-economic models show that compensation payments are not always required to encourage beneficial land management practices to enhance bumblebee populations in crofted areas. However, crofting is a marginal farming system that is heavily influenced by socio-economic factors, and this should be taken into consideration in the development of future agricultural policy for the region.

The objective of this thesis is to investigate the preferences of individuals for the management of upland landscapes in the UK. Environmental valuation techniques are becoming an increasingly important tool in the development of environmental management policy, however, they are not without their detractors. In particular a school of thought, developed from the work of Bentham, takes issue with the behavioural foundations of the dominant welfare economic doctrine which underpins many of the valuation techniques commonly adopted. They identify that heuristic rules, experience and memory can all play a role in the development of ‘value’ for a good. This thesis aims to investigate the roles of these, along with the role of association with an environmental good, in the development of value for upland landscapes using the Peak District National Park as a case study. This objective is developed in three parts. Part I introduces the topic, identifies the background of research against which this thesis is presented and introduces the case study. This part also attempts to identify how well the complex economy – ecology interactions in this landscape are understood by stakeholders. It shows that, given the complexities of the systems, there are key omissions in stakeholder knowledge and understanding. Part II uses Discrete Choice Experiments to analyse the impact on value of experience, memory, heuristics and association. A series of experiments are applied to the same landscape characteristics in order to achieve this. The results show that value can be impacted in a number of ways with implications for the development of future valuation studies. This thesis concludes with a discussion of the policy implications, limitations and future work associated with this research.

The objective of this thesis is to investigate the initial allocation of pollution permits in a dynamic tradeable market. Tradeable pollution permit markets are an increasingly common method of environmental regulation and it is apparent that future schemes may have a number of repeated compliance periods. It is important to consider how and to what extent the dynamic allocation of pollution permits determines the market efficiency at the equilibrium. This objective is developed in three parts. First, Part I introduces the topic and sets out the current relationships that exist between the initial allocation of permits and market efficiency and finds strong links between the two. It is shown that markets with imperfect competition, transaction costs or multiple periods can result in links between the initial allocation and market efficiency. In Part II, a generalised model is created to investigate the optimality of dynamic permit allocations and finds the dynamic use of grandfathering (free allocation based on emissions information) permits is, in general, sub-optimal. It is argued that alternative dynamic mechanisms should be considered, such as auctions and other relative performance mechanisms. Part II is concluded by an investigation into the link between market efficiency, dynamic initial allocations and firms' lobbying over a permit allocation. Firms have the ability to determine their permit allocation by their choice of emissions and lobbying activity. It is shown that in some circumstances, lobbying activity may alter market efficiency and may result in reductions in social welfare. In Part III, an alternative dynamic allocation mechanism is considered, namely a rank-ordered contest, which can optimally allocate permits and simultaneously accomplish a predetermined secondary policy objective. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the policy implications and future work associated with this research.