Douglas M. Larson

Total Economic Values of Increasing Gray Whale Populations: Results from a Contingent Valuation Survey of Visitors and Households

The consistency of an individuals willingness to pay (WTP) responses for increases in the quantity of an environmental public good (whale populations) is tested along three lines. First, we test whether WTP for 50% and 100% increases in whale populations are statistically different from zero. Second, we ask whether the incremental WTP from a 50% increase to a 100% increase is statistically significant. Finally, we test whether there is diminishing marginal valuation of the second 50% increment in gray whale populations. The paired t-tests on open-ended WTP responses supported all three sets of hypotheses. Both visitors and households provided WTP responses that were statistically different from zero and increased (but in a diminishing fashion) for the second increment in WTP. In this survey both visitors and households provided estimates of total economic value (including non-use or existence values) for large changes in wildlife/fishery resources that were consistent with consumer theory.

Second-Best Tax Policies to Reduce Nonpoint Source Pollution

Control of nonpoint source pollution often requires regulation of inputs, but first-best solutions are unattainable. Because inputs are monitored by different agencies and regulatory coordination can be costly, it may be more practical to regulate single inputs. A cost-effectiveness approach to determining the best single-input tax policy is developed and applied to the question of reducing nitrate leaching from lettuce production in California. Water is the best single input to regulate, and efficiency losses from this second-best approach appear not to be great. Conditions for the welfare ranking of policies to be invariant to heterogeneity in production or leaching are identified. Copyright 1996, Oxford University Press.

Joint Recreation Choices and Implied Values of Time

A model of joint recreation quantity choices is developed. Individuals choose both total time spent at distant sites and the number of trips taken, implicitly choosing average on-site time. The model permits nonzero marginal utility of travel, makes on-site time endogenous, and is linear in the constraints. The scarcity value of time is analyzed without assuming the marginal utility of work time is zero. A partially testable assumption about relative marginal values of travel and on-site time yields nonparametric calculations of the scarcity value of time and marginal values of trips and days on-site from peoples observed optimal quantity choices.

Valuing Recreation and Amenities at San Diego County Beaches

Abstract Policymakers and analysts concerned with coastal issues often need economic value information to evaluate policies that affect beach recreation. This paper presents economic values associated with beach recreation in San Diego County generated from a recreation demand model that explains a beach users choice of which beach to visit. These include estimates of the economic values of a beach day, beach closures, and beach amenities.

TESTING SIGNIFICANCE OF MULTI-DESTINATION AND MULTI-PURPOSE TRIP EFFECTS IN A TRAVEL COST METHOD DEMAND MODEL FOR WHALE WATCHING TRIPS

Inclusion of multi-destination and multi-purpose visitors has an appreciable influence on a standard count data travel cost model derived estimate of willingness to pay but the differences are not statistically significant. We adapt a more general travel cost model (TCM) of Parsons and Wilson (1997) that allows for inclusion of multi-destination visitors as incidental demand to allow estimation of an unbiased measure of single and multi-destination willingness to pay for whale viewing using a single pooled equation. The primary purpose trip values from the standard TCM and simple generalized TCM model are identical at

Empirical Specification Requirements for Two-Constraint Models of Recreation Choice

43 per person per day and neither are significantly different from the

Separability and the Shadow Value of Leisure Time

50 day value from a generalized model that distinguishes between joint and incidental trips. The general models avoid underestimation of total recreation site benefits that would result from omitting the consumer surplus of multi-destination visitors.

Further results on willingness to pay for nonmarket goods

Two-constraint models are common in recreation-demand analysis because of the important role time can play in consumer choices. Two versions of Roys identity hold for these models and imply coefficient restrictions on empirical demand functions. The two-constraint restrictions are fully observable and can be expressed in a form analogous to the Slutsky-Hicks equations in single-constraint consumer models. Empirical specifications that use full prices and full budgets can be consistent with the two-constraint models, when the marginal value of time is either exogenous or endogenous, but models with full prices and money income alone are not. Copyright 2001, Oxford University Press.

Valuing a beach day with a repeated nested Logit model of participation, site choice, and stochastic time value.

Recreation choices are often viewed as short-run decisions conditioned on longer-run labor supply. Using weak separability to reflect this relationship, the wage rate is the shadow value of time for individuals who get no utility from work, whether or not they are observed to be trading time for money in the short run. This result widens the circumstances under which the wage rate (not some fraction thereof) is the theoretically correct shadow value of time. Modifications to such a conclusion are developed for cases in which work is a source of utility and in which the first-stage choice is not continuous.

Stuck on Stubble? The Non-market Value of Agricultural Byproducts for Diversified Farmers in Morocco

Abstract Some implications of substitution relationships between private and public goods for measuring the value of changes in nonmarket goods such as environmental quality are explored. If a market good is (Hicks-) neutral to quality for some price vector, the total value of discrete changes in quality, consisting of both use and nonuse value, can be measured from empirical demand coefficients. A plausible motivation for neutrality is developed in the contexts of specifying incomplete demand systems for weak complements to quality and measuring nonuse value when the consumption of weak complements is (held at) zero. Previous results on bounding marginal willingness to pay for nonmarket goods are also strengthened.