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Many water quality valuation studies and Federal cost–benefit analyses build from pioneering work using a “water quality ladder” or a single water quality index (WQI) to characterize both current conditions and effects of policies. When policies lead to contrasting changes in valued ecosystem services like recreational fishing and swimming, analyses using a single ladder or index might obscure important underlying service trade-offs. We test for this effect using alternative approaches that separate water quality indices and value changes in distinct ecosystem services stemming from policies with small to moderate changes in water quality. The indices we test relate to nutrient loadings in Michigan’s rivers, lakes, and Great Lakes. Our split-sample experiment compares economic values for treatments with two versus three quality metrics. The key distinction is that the two-index survey, like many existing studies, aggregates subindices for water contact (for swimming and boating) and fish biomass scores (for fishing) into a single WQI, whereas the three-index survey separately utilizes both. We find that changes in our index reflecting changes in fecal bacteria and water clarity are valued differently from changes in our recreational fishing index. Aggregating changes in these two distinct recreational services using a single WQI yields consistently lower benefit estimates across a range of underlying changes in our experiment. In valuation scenarios with small changes in overall water quality, the WQI-based benefit estimates can differ substantially from benefits measured by decomposing the index and valuing the disparate subindices, differences which might change balance of benefits and costs in regulatory evaluations.

This paper describes our efforts to integrate economic and biophysical models to evaluate the effects agri-environmental policies have on the value of freshwater ecosystem services. We are developing an integrated assessment model (IAM) that links changes in phosphorus-related management practices on farm fields to changes in the value of key freshwater ecosystem services, including biological condition, water clarity, species-specific fish biomasses, and beach algae. Our IAM approach enables examination of the effects of policies and conservation programs on ecosystem services and values. Results will help policy makers allocate conservation dollars to improve water quality, enhance ecosystem services, and promote more sustainable agricultural production.

Agricultural intensification can negatively affect farmer and social welfare through health and environmental externalities if producers have imperfect knowledge of the risks posed by agric...

Resource managers often use “dynamic lotteries” to allocate access to recreational opportunities. Under these lotteries, applicants’ probability of winning access increases with their senio...

This article discusses best practices for implementing recreation demand models. We focus on insights that research and experience provide for the typical recreation application, where the ...

We estimate the ecosystem service value of water supplied by the San Bernardino National Forest in Southern California under climate change projections through the 21st century. We couple water flow projections from a dynamic vegetation model with an economic demand model for residential water originating from the San Bernardino National Forest. Application of the method demonstrates how estimates of consumer welfare changes due to variation in water supply from public lands in Southern California can inform policy and land management decisions. Results suggest variations in welfare changes over time due to alterations in the projected water supply surpluses, shifting demand limited by water supply shortages or surpluses, and price increases. Results are sensitive to future climate projections—in some cases large decreases in welfare due to supply shortages—and to assumptions about the demand model.

Development into the wildland–urban interface, combined with heat and drought, contribute to increasing wildfires in the U.S. West and a range of damages including recreation site closures and longer-term effects on recreation areas. A choice experiment survey is used to estimate visitor preferences for vegetation and the effects of past fire at recreation sites. Intercept interviews are used to randomly select visitors at national forest sites near Los Angeles. The choice model results reveal that recreation sites with waterbodies and sites with tree cover, instead of shrubs or barren areas, are highly desirable, while evidence of past fires decreases the value of a site. We find the effects of past fire depend on vegetation type, fire intensity and time since the fire ended. Older forest fires and shrub fires are undesirable, but forest fires that reach the crowns of trees are least desirable. The findings add to evidence that fire damage to recreation areas extends beyond closures and depends on vegetation, which can inform the allocation of firefighting and prevention resources.

This paper presents research on the economic damages from a hypothetical worst-case oil spill at the Straits of Mackinac between Lakes Huron and Michigan. This spill could occur because the Enbridge Line 5 oil pipeline traverses the Straits between Michigan's Upper and Lower Peninsula. We quantify potential economic damages to outdoor recreation, commercial fishing, shipping, residential properties, and energy and water supplies. Damages are estimated for two spill scenarios occurring at the onset of the summer tourism season with extensive shoreline oiling. Using evidence from past spills, economic damages would last for between one and two years and would affect locations on the periphery of the spill area, depending on the activity. We project the loss from the worst-case scenario would be at least $1.3 billion.

Third-party certification programs promise to improve livelihoods and promote sustainable production, yet achieving such goals rests on certification programs working well with smallholder producer...

Conditional cash transfer (CCT) is increasingly being integrated into poverty reduction strategies in developing countries. However, debate remains over key elements of CCT program design. Using a discrete choice model, this paper examines Ghanaian households’ preferences regarding key CCT program design elements including conditionality, targeting, and payment method. The results revealed a preference for CCT designs that target beneficiaries with limited or no productive capacity and CCT designs that are conditional on beneficiaries either investing in children's human capital or performing communal service, relative to unconditional programs. Also, direct bank deposit was revealed as the preferred payment mode relative to receipt of cash payments or use of mobile money systems. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Protected areas are a major approach for conserving ecosystem services globally. Effective conservation in protected areas must integrate human livelihoods into the design and management of conservation. Although ecosystem services can contribute to reducing local people's costs of conservation, exploitation of ecosystem services often results in ecosystem degradation. One important ecosystem service is fuelwood, which is used by > 2.5 billion people worldwide. Conservation policy design needs information on the demand for and values of fuelwood that can be extracted without compromising conservation goals of protected areas. We estimated local people's willingness to pay (WTP) for access to fuelwood in China's Wolong Nature Reserve, which is undergoing a net increase in forest area. Forest recovery in Wolong resulted from both the protection of the reserve and conservation under China's Natural Forest Conservation Program (NFCP). The estimated mean WTP for access to fuelwood accounted for about 21% of the payment under the NFCP. Among household characteristics, the cultural practice of cooking pig fodder, for which there were poor substitutes, played a major role in driving the demand for fuelwood. Although fuelwood collection can be prevented through increased conservation payments, fuelwood collection under forest management that fulfills conservation goals of the reserve can substantially reduce the costs of conservation. In addition, many other ecosystem services are also important to local people's livelihoods, and the combined values of different ecosystem services can substantially lower the costs of effective conservation in Wolong and many other protected areas around the world.

Water sustainability in megacities is a growing challenge with far-reaching effects. Addressing sustainability requires an integrated, multidisciplinary approach able to capture interactions among hydrology, population growth, and socioeconomic factors and to reflect changes due to climate variability and land use. We developed a new systems modeling framework to quantify the influence of changes in land use, crop growth, and urbanization on groundwater storage for Beijing, China. This framework was then used to understand and quantify causes of observed decreases in groundwater storage from 1993 to 2006, revealing that the expansion of Beijing's urban areas at the expense of croplands has enhanced recharge while reducing water lost to evapotranspiration, partially ameliorating groundwater declines. The results demonstrate the efficacy of such a systems approach to quantify the impacts of changes in climate and land use on water sustainability for megacities, while providing a quantitative framework to improve mitigation and adaptation strategies that can help address future water challenges.

A comprehensive inventory of ecosystem services across the entire Great Lakes basin is currently lacking and is needed to make informed management decisions. A greater appreciation and understanding of ecosystem services, including both use and non-use services, may have avoided misguided resource management decisions in the past that have resulted in legacies inherited by future generations. Given the interest in ecosystem services and lack of a coherent approach to addressing this topic in the Great Lakes, a summit was convened involving 28 experts working on various aspects of ecosystem services in the Great Lakes. The invited attendees spanned a variety of social and natural sciences. Given the unique status of the Great Lakes as the world's largest collective repository of surface freshwater, and the numerous stressors threatening this valuable resource, timing was propitious to examine ecosystem services. Several themes and recommendations emerged from the summit. There was general consensus that 1) a comprehensive inventory of ecosystem services throughout the Great Lakes is a desirable goal but would require considerable resources; 2) more spatially and temporally intensive data are needed to overcome our data gaps, but the arrangement of data networks and observatories must be well-coordinated; 3) trade-offs must be considered as part of ecosystem services analyses; and 4) formation of a Great Lakes Institute for Ecosystem Services, to provide a hub for research, meetings, and training is desirable. Several challenges also emerged during the summit, which are discussed in the paper.

Information plays an important role in technology adoption and behavior change. This may be particularly true for pesticide decisions, which affect farmer income, health, and the environment. Pesticide use is increasing, and farmers often have incomplete knowledge of how pesticides affect crop production and health. Researchers regularly recommend information interventions to improve pesticide knowledge. This study uses a randomized controlled trial of a pesticide training program in Zambia to identify the effects of information on farmer knowledge of both the health risks and the production benefits of pesticides. We use detailed knowledge assessments covering identification and interpretation of toxicity color labels, pest control properties, and exposure to reveal a more complete picture of pesticide knowledge and to identify where information can have the greatest impact. Our results show that training significantly improved farmer knowledge, particularly for the more complicated pesticide characteristics that are harder to learn from experience. We also find that more experienced farmers had worse prior knowledge of pesticide toxicity, though they also had larger increases from training. Overall, our results suggest that pesticide information interventions should focus on the pest control properties of pesticides and on showing pesticides' true colors through toxicity identification by color labels.

Despite the success of efforts to reduce phosphorus (P) pollution from point sources, P from non-point agricultural sources remains a vexing problem with many U.S. water bodies having impairments. Key to solving the P pollution puzzle is to take stock of progress to date, the puzzle pieces available, and the gaps to be filled. In this paper, we synthesize the state of knowledge on P pollution, discuss the state of existing public programs, and review economists’ contributions to informing P pollution policies. We review the water quality valuation literature, identifying limitations in the linkages to policy-relevant environmental quality metrics. We examine how and why P is used agriculturally, along with recent advances in market-based policy design and field testing. We survey new knowledge in biology and engineering, including improved understanding of the fate and transport of P. In light of recent learning and persistent knowledge gaps, we recommend directions for economic research to add needed pieces to the puzzle of how to protect our water bodies. Puzzle gaps meriting attention include mechanisms to target public funds more effectively in voluntary abatement programs, policy design for emerging mitigation technologies, new ways to implement performance-based policies, means to leverage social norms and behavioral cues, changes in the “pay-the-polluter” paradigm, and application of state-of-the-art evaluation methods to conservation programs. Beyond the realm of public policy lies that of private supply chains, where establishment of environmental standards holds additional promise. Rich research opportunities exist for economists in tandem with biologists, engineers, and others

In a world free of transaction costs, reverse auctions can cost-effectively allocate payment for environmental service contracts by targeting projects that provide the most benefit per dollar spent. However, auctions only succeed if enough farmers choose to bid so that the auctioneer can evaluate numerous projects for targeted funding. A 2014 conservation auction to allocate payments for phosphorus reduction practices in NW Ohio experienced very thin bidding. According to a follow-up survey, auction participation was deterred by the complexity of the bidding process and the need to negotiate with renters. Due to low participation, the actual conservation auction made payments for phosphorus reduction that were surprisingly costly at the margin. Applying a farmer behavioral model to the Western Lake Erie Basin, we simulate participation choice and cost-effectiveness of environmental outcomes in reverse auctions and uniform payment conservation programs. Results reveal that when perceived transaction costs of bid preparation are high, reverse auctions are less cost-effective than spatially targeted, uniform payment programs that attract higher participation. Keywords: reverse auctions, transaction costs, cost-effective, conservation programs, endogenous participation

Allocating limited funds across competing management actions to generate the fisheries improvements most desired by anglers requires in-depth knowledge of angler preferences for aspects of the fishing experience. Characterizing angler preferences in terms of a probability distribution, rather than simply a population mean, provides fisheries managers with insights into how preferences vary across the population of anglers. This is particularly important with respect to fishing regulations, for which anglers may have strong yet diverse preferences. To examine angler preferences and how these preferences vary across the population of trout anglers, we estimated a random parameters logit model of trout fishing site choice using data from a mail and internet administered choice experiment of Michigan trout anglers (response rate—44.6%). We found that, even though on average trout anglers do not prefer fishing at sites with the most strict fishing regulations (Catch and Release Only and Artificial Flies Only; p

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)Benefit transfer is a valuation method in which values calculated for a resource in a primary study are used to estimate values for a similar resource at a different policy site. It is especially useful when answering urgent policy questions in situations in which constraints on time and/or money preclude the ability to collect primary data for the site in question because it allows researchers to respond quickly to a need for estimates of the value of the resource (Freeman, Herriges, and Kling 2014). One such site is the Western Lake Erie Basin, where beaches have had to be closed periodically in recent years because of harmful algal blooms (HABs) spurred primarily by phosphorus from agricultural run-off. The algae (Microcystis sp.) produce a toxin that is dangerous for humans, pets, and wildlife, and policymakers and stakeholders urgently need information regarding the causes and impacts of the blooms (International Joint Commission (IJC) 2014).We apply two benefit-transfer methods-value transfer and function transfer-to estimate the value of Lake Erie's beaches and then analyze the relative merits of those methods when the availability of behavioral and economic data in the policy setting and the scale of the environmental damage being assessed (the number of beach sites closed) vary. When selecting a benefit-transfer method, researchers face a tradeoff between the simplicity of a value transfer and the ability of a function transfer to represent the unique characteristics of the policy site and the affected population more accurately. Our study contributes to an understanding of the relative advantages and disadvantages of each method for various policy environments.The simplest method is value transfer, which involves assigning a single point estimate of value from a study site to a policy site. Value transfer is quick and straightforward but does not account for differences between the sites and assumes that the conditions of the study site are representative of the conditions of the policy site. So, for example, value transfer does not capture how choice sets differ. In the case of Lake Erie beaches, accounting for the availability of alternative beach sites is important-fewer sites in the choice set limit the substitute beaches available when some beaches are closed and can lead to substantial welfare losses.Benefit function transfer is a more complex approach in which a value function estimated in one or more primary studies is used to value a resource at a different policy site (Boyle et al. 2010). Broadly speaking, function transfers are preferable to value transfers because they are more flexible and can account for heterogeneous population characteristics and amenity attributes (Kaul et al. 2013, Boyle et al. 2010, Johnston and Rosenberger 2010, Brouwer and Spaninks 1999). However, function transfers are more time-consuming and require additional data about the policy site to calibrate the value function.When conducting a benefit-transfer study, researchers must decide if the function transfer is worth the additional time and effort required. To evaluate the merit of the more complicated transfer method, we compare estimates of welfare losses from the closing of Lake Erie beaches using a value transfer and a function transfer. We estimate losses for single closures for each public Lake Erie beach site along the Michigan and Ohio coasts and for simultaneous regional closures of groups of beaches. Parsons et al. (2009) showed that group closures cause greater per-trip welfare losses than individual closures. In Lake Erie, bacterial contamination typically leads to one or a small number of beaches being closed while HABs typically affect much larger areas. We determine how the transfer method and number of beaches closed affect the value estimates in hypothetical closure scenarios.We find that function transfer is preferred over value transfer to estimate trip demand when reliable data about trips are not available and to estimate welfare losses from regional closures. …

As conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs spread in African countries, there is a need for well-designed programs that reflect their economic, institutional, political, and sociocultural circumstances. Using both qualitative and quantitative data analysis, this article examines the perspectives of beneficiaries, program managers, and community leaders regarding Ghana’s CCT program. It addresses sociocultural attitudes toward poverty, perceptions of CCT as a poverty reduction strategy, and experiences with CCT implementation. Findings indicate favorable views of CCT but little support for giving money to the poor as a long-term poverty-alleviation strategy. Ghana’s CCT program is seen as fair and popular, but current payment levels are viewed as inadequate, impractical, and unreliable.

This study elicits willingness to supply marginal land for biomass cultivation in Southern Lower Michigan. Most of the surveyed landowners are not interested in renting land for bioenergy crop production. Those who are interested offer relatively little land for bioenergy crops, even at rental rates three times current levels. Willing landowners would prefer to grow a significant portion of these crops on cropland rather than non-crop, marginal land. Hence, the area of marginal land that owners are willing to supply for bioenergy crop production falls far short of area estimates based on remote sensing that ignore landowner preferences.

Non point source (NPS) pollution remains a challenge to communities meeting watershed management objectives around the world. Installing agricultural best management practices (BMPs) such as filter strips is a widely accepted mechanism to control NPS pollution and agricultural runoff. Government programs in the form of payment for environmental services (PES) have been introduced to encourage BMP adoption for watershed protection. However, the voluntary nature of these programs makes landowners’ decision to participate in them critical to achieving program goals. Understanding the drivers behind landowners’ decisions to participate in watershed protection programs is essential for designing effective and efficient programs. This study examines agricultural landowners’ decisions to participate in a conservation program involving filter strips. Using responses from a survey of agricultural landowners in Michigan's Saginaw Bay watershed, the study examines key programmatic, socio-psychological, and demographic determinants of landowners’ participation decisions. The study results suggest that making contract durations shorter with enhanced rental payments, and educating landowners about program efficacy as well as on- and off-farm benefits of the conservation practice would enhance participation.

There are growing concerns that timber harvesting in the tropics, even when done sustainably, can increase carbon emissions. Despite these concerns, few studies have addressed whether households that engage in timber harvesting would be willing to forgo property rights to receive payments for carbon sequestration. This study addresses this issue by examining the trade-off between timber production and carbon storage in the context of the Maya Biosphere Reserve forest concessions in Guatemala. We estimate willingness to increase carbon storage at the expense of timber harvesting through a discrete choice experiment administered to 716 households in the Maya Biosphere Reserve. Because many individuals have rights to harvest non-timber forest products and work in the tourism sector, we assess how rights for these activities would influence the willingness to participate in carbon contracts. Contract length and group or individual payment structures are also investigated. The results show that households prefer contracts that focus on carbon storage rather than timber harvesting, but access to forests so individuals can participate in non-timber forest product harvesting and tourism is critically important in this region.

As global efforts to protect ecosystems expand, there is increasing concern about conservation costs borne by rural communities. To date, these costs have often been narrowly estimated in terms of foregone livelihood opportunities directly caused by conservation, while unintended human burdens that accrue with ecological gains from conservation are often ignored. As a first attempt to quantify this previously hidden cost, we estimated the impact of converting cropland to forest under one of the world’s largest conservation policies, China’s Grain-to-Green Program (GTGP), on crop raiding in a demonstration site using the matching approach. We found that GTGP afforestation was responsible for 64 % of the crop damage by wildlife on remaining cropland, a cost worth 27 % of GTGP’s total payment to farmers. Our study highlights that the conservation cost to communities through influencing human-wildlife conflicts can be substantial, which should be quantified and considered in global conservation efforts to avoid unintended burdens on rural communities.

Around the globe, previously isolated rural areas are increasingly connected with other distant places (e.g., cities) by telecouplings (i.e., environmental and socioeconomic interactions over distances) such as payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs, labor migration, and tourism. Although many studies have estimated impacts of telecouplings in rural areas, little is known about how these impacts might in turn affect telecouplings themselves through feedbacks. Using household survey data collected in China's Wolong Nature Reserve for giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca), we evaluated an unexpected impact of the telecoupling of the Grain to Green Program (GTGP) - one of the largest PES programs in the world. This impact may trigger a feedback that can strengthen the GTGP in the future. A previous study in Wolong found that afforestation on marginal cropland promoted by the GTGP has significantly intensified crop damage by wildlife on nearby remaining cropland. We evaluated how this change might in turn affect the GTGP by estimating the impact of crop damage induced by the current GTGP on local households' willingness to participate in possible future GTGP. Our results show that due to the impact of the current GTGP on crop damage, local households may enroll 10.4% more cropland that is close to the afforested lands in future GTGP, which suggests a positive feedback that will strengthen the influences of the GTGP in Wolong and beyond. Our study highlights that local human-nature interactions driven by telecouplings, such as human-wildlife conflicts, may trigger feedbacks that affect telecouplings themselves. With improved understanding of telecouplings' feedbacks, scientists, policy-makers, and conservation practitioners can better anticipate the complex interactions among different places and design effective conservation strategies for achieving sustainability objectives such as those set by the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.

This chapter examines recreation ecosystem services provided by chaparral dominated landscapes. Such areas are popular around the world amongst recreation users, including hikers, mountain bikers, campers, and nature enthusiasts. Yet, relatively few studies have documented the recreation services provided by chaparral landscapes such as national forests. For policy makers to manage these areas effectively, baseline information on the provision of recreation services and the populations who benefit is important, especially given current stressors such as overuse and projected climate change effects. To this end, this chapter examines four chaparral dominated national forests surrounding the Los Angeles and San Diego metropolitan areas, namely the Angeles, Cleveland, Los Padres, and San Bernardino. Using data from the USDA Forest Service’s National Visitor Use Monitoring (NVUM) survey, we discuss the types of visitors using these public lands and their recreation use patterns. Our analyses suggest recreation in chaparral dominated national forests is especially important for minorities. Yet, these landscapes are facing altered human and natural disturbance regimes that may affect the recreation services they provide.

Nature-based tourism in protected areas, which is growing worldwide, offers much potential to enhance biodiversity conservation, poverty alleviation, and ultimately sustainable development. Understanding the evolution of protected areas as tourism destinations and the causes and consequences of changing supply and demand elements is an essential step toward sustainably managing tourism in these critical ecosystems. This research applied the Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC) model to illustrate and analyze the 30-year evolution of tourism in Wolong Nature Reserve. Being inscribed in UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and World Heritage programmes, Wolong is a flagship protected area in China. We showed that the Reserve experienced exploration, involvement, and development stages of the TALC before tourism growth was completely halted by the Wenchuan Earthquake in 2008. We systematically investigated the changes related to the evolution of tourism and identified various internal and external driving forces. We examined the dynamics of politics, economy, and tourism growth that might propel the Reserve through the life cycle and identified significant tourism governance structural changes through the stages. The results have implications for sustainable tourism development in China's protected areas and also contribute to a broader and general understanding of the complex relationships between protected areas, sustainable tourism, and community development.

The provision of ecosystem services via ecological restoration can be affected by the spatially explicit relationships between existing landscape characteristics and the proposed restoration. In such situations, effective economic targeting of restoration is aided by an accounting of the spatially explicit linkages between initial restoration actions, the resulting changes in ecosystem services, and the changes in economic benefits to individuals resulting from changes in the provision of ecosystem services. To this end, we examine the impact of landscape heterogeneity on economic benefits of USDA Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) restoration for ring-necked pheasant (Phasianus colchicus) hunters in Michigan by linking a previously developed ecological production function of ring-necked pheasant sightings to a recreation demand model of hunter site choice. Using proposed pheasant habitat restoration in Michigan as a framework for our analysis, we find that economic benefits generated by restoration depend critically upon the landscape selected for CRP restoration. Poorly targeted restoration sites yield near-zero economic benefits, while well-targeted investments yield about 2.4 times the economic benefits of the median parcel. The results show how managers can use both ecological and hunter behavior information to enhance the return on conservation investments.

This paper describes an economic model that links the demand for recreational stream fishing to fish biomass. Useful measures of fishing quality are often difficult to obtain. In the past, economists have linked the demand for fishing sites to species presence-absence indicators or average self-reported catch rates. The demand model presented here takes advantage of a unique data set of statewide biomass estimates for several popular game fish species in Michigan, including trout, bass and walleye. These data are combined with fishing trip information from a 2008–2010 survey of Michigan anglers in order to estimate a demand model. Fishing sites are defined by hydrologic unit boundaries and information on fish assemblages so that each site corresponds to the area of a small subwatershed, about 100–200 square miles in size. The random utility model choice set includes nearly all fishable streams in the state. The results indicate a significant relationship between the site choice behavior of anglers and the biomass of certain species. Anglers are more likely to visit streams in watersheds high in fish abundance, particularly for brook trout and walleye. The paper includes estimates of the economic value of several quality change and site loss scenarios.

Urban areas such as megacities (those with populations greater than 10 million) are hotspots of global water use and thus face intense water management challenges. Urban areas are influenced by local interactions between human and natural systems and interact with distant systems through flows of water, food, energy, people, information, and capital. However, analyses of water sustainability and the management of water flows in urban areas are often fragmented. There is a strong need to apply integrated frameworks to systematically analyze urban water dynamics and factors that influence these dynamics. We apply the framework of telecoupling (socioeconomic and environmental interactions over distances) to analyze urban water issues, using Beijing as a demonstration megacity. Beijing exemplifies the global water sustainability challenge for urban settings. Like many other cities, Beijing has experienced drastic reductions in quantity and quality of both surface water and groundwater over the past several decades; it relies on the import of real and virtual water from sending systems to meet its demand for clean water, and releases polluted water to other systems (spillover systems). The integrative framework we present demonstrates the importance of considering socioeconomic and environmental interactions across telecoupled human and natural systems, which include not only Beijing (the water-receiving system) but also water-sending systems and spillover systems. This framework helps integrate important components of local and distant human-nature interactions and incorporates a wide range of local couplings and telecouplings that affect water dynamics, which in turn generate significant socioeconomic and environmental consequences, including feedback effects. The application of the framework to Beijing reveals many research gaps and management needs. We also provide a foundation to apply the telecoupling framework to better understand and manage water sustainability in other cities around the world.

We estimated a pair of models to characterize the demand for Great Lakes recreational fishing in Michigan. With a nested logit framework, the models tested whether anglers have an unobserved tendency to substitute between fishing sites based on target species or lake-specific preferences. Results indicated that anglers tend to substitute more readily between sites within a lake, although we found that the choice of model did not qualitatively influence measures of nonmarket value. Both models predicted that the fishing destinations of anglers would be strongly influenced by catch rates. Using these results, we estimated the sportfishing value for several fish species and found that anglers have the highest willingness to pay for Chinook Salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha, Coho Salmon O. kisutch, steelhead O. mykiss, and Walleyes Sander vitreus. We also derived the access values of Michigan's coastal fishing sites and determined that day trips to a typical Great Lake site are worth about $30 per trip...

Institutions' reputation for being environmentally friendly or ‘green’ can come from many sources. This paper examines how the attributes of alternative energy management plans impact an institutions' ‘green’ reputation by focusing on the interaction between ‘external’ and ’internal’ influences. Some ‘external’ influences on environmental reputation we studied include the institution's mix of fuels, energy conservation effort, carbon emissions targets, investment time-frame, and program cost. The ‘internal’ influences on institutions' green reputation we examined include altruism (respondents' concern for the welfare of others) and environmentalism (respondents' concern for the environment). Using a stated-preference conjoint survey, we empirically examine how attributes of alternative energy management plans influence a large, research university's ‘green’ reputation. Our results show that constituents benefit from their institution's green reputation and that the energy management choices of the institution can significantly influence its perceived green reputation. Furthermore, integrating internal and external influences on reputation can create more informative models and better decision-making.

Although numerous studies have focused on estimating economic benefits associated with big game hunting experiences, economic valuation efforts examining small game hunting have largely been neglected. This is especially surprising with respect to hunting grouse, a family of widely distributed upland game birds targeted by about 800,000 hunters in 2011. Furthermore, despite efforts by federal and state agencies directed at improving and increasing public land for recreational hunting purposes, a dearth of studies exist regarding the economic benefits of public land to hunters. Using the travel cost method and data from a 2008 survey of Michigan ruffed grouse hunters, we examine relationships between hunting site choice and publicly accessible hunting land. We find that federally owned land, state-owned land, and publicly accessible, privately owned Commercial Forest Act (CFA) land are positive predictors of hunter site selection (P

Understanding farmers’ willingness to participate in agricultural payment-for-environmental-services (PES) programmes is an essential precondition for designing effective and efficient programmes. Willingness to participate is typically examined via stated preference surveys using the standard hurdle model for whether and how much to participate. Among respondents who decline to participate, such analyses cannot distinguish between respondents who declined due to the payment level and those who were not interested at all. This paper applies a double hurdle model to incorporate a prior condition for whether a respondent is even willing to consider participating in the PES market. The model uses a unique stated preference survey permitting separation of the consideration and enrolment decisions of 1,700 farmers in Michigan, USA. The first hurdle probit model suggests that farmers’ willingness to consider PES chiefly depends on farm and farmer characteristics, while the second hurdle tobit model shows that decisions on whether and how much to enrol depend more on the payment offer and marginal benefit–cost criteria. This study provides fresh insights on facilitating farmer participation in PES programmes using tiered strategies that differ in costs of programme payment and administration.

Payment for environmental service (PES) programs are innovative approaches for watershed and natural resources management that increasingly are being used around the world. Most well-studied PES examples rely predominately, if not entirely, on large governmental and outside non-governmental organizations for financial and management assistance. We examine the potential for using a locally-financed PES scheme in a small, agricultural community in a developing country as a means to preserve environmental services of watersheds, namely clean drinking water. A dichotomous choice, contingent valuation survey is used to examine the community’s demand for protection of the headwaters of the nearby river, the source of their drinking water. The survey results demonstrate local water users’ substantial willingness to pay for increased protection of the watershed environmental services. We find that a local-market PES scheme for watershed services, even in a relatively low-income context, may be sufficient to protect ecosystem services independent of external financial resources.

a b s t r a c t Conservation investments are increasingly being implemented through payments for ecosystem ser- vices (PES) for the protection and restoration of ecosystem services around the world. Previous studies suggested that social norms have substantial impacts on environmental behaviors of humans, including enrollment of PES programs. However, it is still not well understood how social norms are affected by the design of PES programs and how the evolution of social norms may affect the efficiency of conservation investments. In this paper, we developed an agent-based simulation model to demonstrate the evolu- tion and impacts of social norms on the enrollment of agricultural land in a PES program. We applied the model to land plots that have been enrolled in China's Grain-to-Green Program (GTGP) to examine reenrollment in an alternative payment program when the current payments ceased. The study was conducted in Wolong Nature Reserve where several thousand plant and animal species, including giant pandas, may benefit from the reenrollment. We found that over 15% more GTGP land can be reenrolled at the same payment if social norms were leveraged by allowing more than 10 rounds of interactions among landholders regarding their reenrollment decisions. With only three rounds of interactions, an additional 7.5% GTGP land was reenrolled at the same payment due to the effects of social norms. In addition, the effects of social norms were largest at intermediate payments and were smaller at much higher or much smaller payments. Even in circumstances where frequent interactions among landhold- ers about their enrollment decisions are not feasible, policy arrangements that divide households into multiple waves for sequential enrollment can enroll over 11% more land at a given payment level. The approach presented in this paper can be used to improve the efficiency of existing PES programs and many other conservation investments worldwide.