Dixie Watts Reaves

Economic Analysis of Environmental Benefits of Integrated Pest Management

Public support for integrated pest management (IPM) is derived in part from concerns over food safety and the environment, yet few studies have assessed the economic value of health and environmental benefits of IPM. An approach is suggested for such an assessment and applied to the Virginia peanut IPM program. Effects of IPM on environmental risks posed by pesticides are assessed and societys willingness to pay to reduce those risks is estimated. The annual environmental benefits of the peanut IPM program are estimated at

Does Question Format Matter? Valuing an Endangered Species

844,000. The estimates of pesticide risks and willingness to pay can be applied elsewhere in economic assessments of IPM.

Valuing high altitude spruce-fir forest improvements: importance of forest condition and recreation activity

A three-way treatment design is used to compare contingent valuation response formats. Respondents are asked to value an endangered species (the red-cockaded woodpecker) and the restoration of its habitat following a natural disaster. For three question formats (open-ended, payment card, and double-bounded dichotomous choice), differences in survey response rates, item non-response rates, and protest bids are examined. Bootstrap techniques are used to compare means across formats and to explore differences in willingness to pay (WTP) distribution functions. Convergent validity is found in a comparison of mean WTP values, although some differences are apparent in the cumulative distribution functions. Differences across formats are also identified in item non-response rates and proportion of protest bids. Overall, the payment card format exhibits desirable properties relative to the other two formats.

Assessments of the Educational Value of Web-Based Instructional Tools for Introductory Agricultural Economic

Abstract High altitude spruce fir forests are typical around the world and are often subjected to multiple forms of recreational use. In this paper, we use household and recreation group data for a spruce fir forest high in the Appalachian Mountains of the U. S. to evaluate the benefits from forest protection (i. e., from improving the forest condition). Our benefits estimation procedures use the referendum-type, contingent valuation (CV) approach of Cameron (1988). We modify the usual practice of obtaining a single willingness-to-pay (WTP) value by using alternative questionnaire scenarios and conducting tests to examine i) household and recreation group value sensitivity to forest condition, and ii) recreation group differences in WTP for forest protection. A first sample of southeastern U. S. households was asked to value a forest protection program for a spruce-fir forest showing no impact from insect disturbance or atmospheric deposition. The second sample was asked to value a protection program for a forest already experiencing impact from insect infestation and air pollution. Logit analysis of the two samples revealed no statistically significant difference in household WTP between the two forest protection programs. Further analysis indicated that consumptive forest users (i. e., hunters and anglers) held forest protection values that were sensitive to a change forest condition, while nonconsumptive forest users (i. e., campers and hikers) held values that were insensitive to the same condition change. Recreation group comparisons revealed that consumptive forest users also held lower values for forest protection than nonconsumptive recreationists. These results demonstrate the importance of estimating public values for forest protection in terms of heterogeneous groups rather than as a homogeneous whole.

Sensitivity of Protection Value to Forest Condition in the Southern Appalachian Spruce-Fir Forest

A web site was designed and introduced to an introductory agricultural microeconomics course. The web site provided students with supplemental reviews, practice problems, self-tests, and a simulation exercise. A variety of quantitative assessments were conducted to determine whether the web site influenced student learning, perceptions, and motivation. Results indicate the web site provided small to modest educational benefits.

The 100-Mile Diet: A Community Approach to Promote Sustainable Food Systems Impacts Dietary Quality

The southern Appalachian Mountains have a history of natural and anthropogenic disturbance. Wide-scale clear cutting of the region’s high-elevation red spruce (Picea rubens Sargent) and Fraser fir (Abies fraseri (Pursh) Poiret) forests began in the late 1800s and continued until the early decades of this century. By the 1920s, most of the accessible spruce-fir southern Appalachian had been mined for timber, reducing the spruce-fir forests from one-half to one-tenth their pre-European settlement extent (Korstian, 1937; Saunders, 1979). Occupying nearly 20,000 hectares, the rugged high-elevation forests of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park comprise the largest expanse of uncut spruce and fir. Nearly all of the remaining southern spruce-fir forests have been cut at least once and occur in and around the Black and Balsam Mountains in North Carolina, and Mount Rogers in Virginia (Dull et al., 1988; Pyle and Schafale, 1988).