The impacts of water storage infrastructure on real property values and crop production

Water storage infrastructure is an indispensable part of many water supply systems, and its importance is experiencing a resurgence due to the increasing water irregularity induced by climate change and ever-growing water demand. Leveraging the commission of Hushan Reservoir in Taiwan as a quasi-experiment, this study provides some of the first causal evidence of the economic benefits of a reservoir from housing market and crop production for guiding sustainable water management. Using the administrative property transaction data and a spatial difference-in-differences framework, we find that the commission of Hushan Reservoir increases the values of residential property and farmlands by 4.1 and 8.9 %, respectively. We also find that enhanced irrigation water availability increases rice yield by over 4 % but has no impact on planted areas. Despite expectations of reduced groundwater use, our results show no evidence of a rebound in groundwater levels in the four years following the commission of the reservoir.

The lost value for users of cultural institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic: a life satisfaction approach

Studies related to the assessment of the non-market values of culture typically employ methods based on stated or revealed preferences. In this paper, we implement a new emerging non-market valuation technique, namely the life satisfaction approach. In particular, we quantify in monetary values, the additional utility that people benefit from cultural experiences, as well as the additional disutility suffered by cultural consumers specifically due to the closure of cultural organisations during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the pandemic provides a unique setting. Using a survey conducted in Denmark in the spring of 2020, we confirm the link between cultural participation and well-being by estimating a life satisfaction model, instrumenting for both income and cultural participation to avoid simultaneity problems. Furthermore, we show that fervent cultural consumers have experienced an additional welfare loss during the lockdown period, controlling for all other known life dimensions affected by the pandemic. Our results aim to highlight the role of cultural participation in sustaining life satisfaction and, consequently, to support a well-being evidence-based cultural policy that facilitate cultural accessibility as a mean to increase the individual well-being.

Rethinking urban park irrigation under climate change

Climate change is forcing cities to reassess their water management practices, particularly for water-intensive applications like park irrigation. If water scarcity requires governments to deviate from current park management norms and allocate less water towards parks, it is essential that park managers design spaces that maintain community wellbeing. We apply the hedonic pricing method and use detailed park management information to assess the value of parks in a region where local climatic conditions require extensive irrigation to keep turf green, and where climate change is further constraining water supplies. Here we show that the impacts of irrigation on the value of parks differ depending on the dwelling types of the nearby housing populations that they serve. In most cases, the convention that parks have to be irrigated to deliver ecosystem services to the public is supported. However, we find that non-irrigated park areas are also valued positively by nearby apartment dwellers. Accelerating rates of urbanization and shifts towards high-density living may support the development of more diverse park options that are less water-intensive. Increased visibility of these alternative park forms, which could include more areas of native vegetation that do not require irrigation, may subsequently influence public expectations for landscape design.

Estimation and use of recreational fishing values in management decisions

In many countries, commercial and recreational fishing compete for access to marine resources. In some cases, recreational catch outweighs commercial harvest and may threaten species otherwise protected from commercial fishing. This has led to increasing calls for improved management of recreational fishing in the broader context of general fisheries management. As a result, fisheries managers face the challenge to decide how to allocate the available marine resources between competing uses. In this paper, we review and explain two common approaches that have been used to support recreational fishing allocation decisions. While economic activity analysis is an appropriate tool to assess how a change in resource allocation would affect regional economic activity (economic contributions and impacts), it is ill-suited to assess associated gains or losses in welfare of society as a whole (economic efficiency). Hence, economic activity analysis and social cost-benefit analysis complement each other, with each providing a different set of information answering a different set of questions. Unfortunately, both types of analysis use the term "economic value" suggesting that they are alternative approaches that provide the same information, whereas in fact they are not. If the objective of fishery managers is to ensure that society as a whole is made better off, the appropriate metric is economic value as defined by welfare economics. Under this definition, all goods and services provided by marine resources that are beneficial to humans have economic value. This includes non-use values such as the continued existence of an endangered marine species. The aim of this paper is to support managers and policymakers in allocating marine resources by reviewing relevant economic principles, concepts, and tools in the context of recreational fishing, including the use and challenges of estimating the non-market benefits generated by recreational fishing experiences.

Quantifying the social benefits and costs of reducing phosphorus pollution under climate change

Excess phosphorus loading to waterbodies has led to increasing frequency and severity of harmful algal blooms, negatively impacting economic activity and human health. While interventions to improve water quality can create large societal benefits, these investments are costly and the value of benefits is often unknown. Understanding the social and economic impacts of reduced phosphorus loading is critical for developing effective land use policies and for generating public and political support for these initiatives. Here, we quantify the social benefits and costs of improving water quality in Lake Champlain under a range of phosphorus reduction and climate change scenarios between 2016 and 2050. We use statistical models to link water quality outputs from an established integrated assessment model with three categories of benefits: tourism expenditures, property sales, and avoided human health impacts. We estimate the costs of reducing phosphorus loading using data reported by the State of Vermont. We find that under the most aggressive phosphorus reduction scenario, the total benefits of improved water quality are $55 to $60 million between 2016 and 2050. Over this 35 year time horizon, the combined benefits do not outweigh the costs under any scenario. If the time horizon is extended to 2100 or beyond, however, the benefits may exceed the costs if the applied discount rate is less than 3%. Importantly, we almost certainly underestimate the value of clean water, due to the omission of other types of benefits. Despite this uncertainty, our study provides a tractable framework for disentangling the complex relationships between water quality and human well-being, and illuminates the value of reductions in phosphorus loading to society.

Values for protecting the Great Barrier Reef: A review and synthesis of studies over the past 35 years

Assessing the economic value of improved protection of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is important to demonstrate the consequences of loss and to evaluate the public benefits of programs to reduce pressures and address degradation. However, those values are not easy to measure, in part because of the diversity and complexity of the GBR, and because there are very different types of benefits involved. Since 1985, there have been over 40 major studies that have assessed values for these components at the whole GBR level, and many more for components at smaller scales. This study synthesises estimates from the major valuation studies in the GBR since 1985, generating estimates of average values across different benefit categories. We observe mixed results. While values are often reasonably consistent within sub-categories, there is mixed evidence about temporal trends and the small number of available studies makes it difficult to draw definitive outcomes.

Consumers and citizens: Identity salience in choice settings focusing on local wind turbines

We explore and illustrate the potential consequences of identity salience on stated choice valuation outcomes. The dual role of individuals as citizens and as consumers is brought to the foreground when considering investments in wind energy. To this end, we use two different settings in a stated choice experiment to elicit household preferences: one based on the decision to buy a home with particular characteristics in the neighbourhood of a wind farm and one based on the decision to support a policy to locate a wind farm in the respondent's municipality. By including a shared set of attributes to describe the wind farm in both settings, we are able to analyse the impact of identity salience on stated preferences. In the home setting, identity salience has no significant effect. In the policy setting, the consumer framing mitigates (when positive) or reinforces (when negative) the identity effect of the setting for the preferences regarding the number of wind turbines, the visibility of the wind turbines and the noise levels associated with the wind park. This finding suggests that it may be easier to shift a respondent's focus from public to private than vice versa. Our results illustrate that valuation exercises triggering a different role at the individual level will likely result in different valuation outcomes. By doing so, we issue a warning to researchers and policy makers to reflect about the objectives and set-up of valuation studies when using them for policy evaluation purposes. If the context of such a study is not adequately taken into account, potentially misleading messages and policy conclusions can emerge.

Dataset on the in-stream and off-stream economic value of water

This dataset contains 706 estimates of the economic value of water; it has been compiled from published sources. Economic values are provided for three off-stream uses (agriculture/irrigation, industry, and municipal) and three in-stream ecosystem services (recreation, waste assimilation, and wildlife habitat). The dataset covers per period and capitalised asset values. All value estimates have been standardised in USD (2014) per acre-foot. The data accompany the research article entitled "Shifting from volume to economic value in virtual water allocation problems: a proposed new framework and methodology" [1]. The dataset can be used to facilitate benefits (or value) transfer.

The Value of Greenspace Under Pandemic Lockdown

The COVID-19 outbreak resulted in unprecedented restrictions on citizen's freedom of movement as governments moved to institute lockdowns designed to reduce the spread of the virus. While most out-of-home leisure activities were prohibited, in England the lockdown rules allowed for restricted use of outdoor greenspace for the purposes of exercise and recreation. In this paper, we use data recorded by Google from location-enabled mobile devices coupled with a detailed recreation demand model to explore the welfare impacts of those constraints on leisure activities. Our analyses reveals evidence of large-scale substitution of leisure time towards recreation in available greenspaces. Indeed, despite the restrictions the economic value of greenspace to the citizens of England fell by only £150 million over lockdown. Examining the outcomes of counterfactual policies we find that the imposition of stricter lockdown rules would have reduced welfare from greenspace by £1.14 billion. In contrast, more relaxed lockdown rules would have delivered an aggregate increase in the economic value of greenspace equal to £1.47 billion.

A Global Meta-Analysis of the Value of Ecosystem Services Provided by Lakes

This study presents the first meta-analysis on the economic value of ecosystem services delivered by lakes. A worldwide data set of 699 observations drawn from 133 studies combines information reported in primary studies with geospatial data. The meta-analysis explores antagonisms and synergies between ecosystem services. This is the first meta-analysis to incorporate simultaneously external geospatial data and ecosystem service interactions. We first show that it is possible to reliably predict the value of ecosystem services provided by lakes based on their physical and geographic characteristics. Second, we demonstrate that interactions between ecosystem services appear to be significant for explaining lake ecosystem service values. Third, we provide an estimation of the average value of ecosystem services provided by lakes: between 106 and 140 USD$2010 per respondent per year for non-hedonic price studies and between 169 and 403 USD$2010 per property per year for hedonic price studies.

Chinese farmers' willingness to accept compensation to practice safe disposal of HPAI infected chicken

Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) is a high morbidity and mortality zoonotic disease, which threatens poultry and human health. An outbreak of disease in China requires strict slaughter and disposal of all chickens within a three-kilometer radius, incurring large private costs for farmers and encouraging black market transactions. A stated preference survey of 331 farmers across six provinces in China was conducted in 2015, in order to measure the responsiveness of farmers to accept various compensation prices for safely disposing of HPAI infected chicken. Findings suggest that about 25% and 40% of farmers in South and North China respectively would not adopt safe disposal at the current compensation price (10 yuan/bird) offered by the government. However, 80% of farmers would adopt safe disposal if the compensation price increased to 14.1 yuan in South China and 18.9 yuan in North China. The adoption of safe disposal by farmers was positively and significantly influenced by compensation price (p=0.000) and regular contact with epidemic prevention staff (p=0.094). However, adoption was negatively and significantly influenced by net farm income (p=0.100) and chicken production income percentage (p=0.014). Although half of (51%) of farmers were willing to receive zero compensation, a reasonable compensation scheme along with strengthened supervision, may be considered the most effective strategy to encourage safe disposal of HPAI infected chicken and reduce the risks associated with black market transactions.

A comparison of regional and national values for recovering threatened and endangered marine species in the United States

It is generally acknowledged that willingness-to-pay (WTP) estimates for environmental goods exhibit some degree of spatial variation. In a policy context, spatial variation in threatened and endangered species values is important to understand, as the benefit stream from policies affecting threatened and endangered species may vary locally, regionally, or among certain population segments. In this paper we present WTP estimates for eight different threatened and endangered marine species estimated from a stated preference choice experiment. WTP is estimated at two different spatial scales: (a) a random sample of over 5000 U.S. households and (b) geographically embedded samples (relative to the U.S. household sample) of nine U.S. Census regions. We conduct region-to-region and region-to-nation statistical comparisons to determine whether species values differ among regions and between each region and the entire U.S. Our results show limited spatial variation between national values and values estimated from regionally embedded samples, and differences are only found for three of the eight species. More variation exists between regions, and for all species there is a significant difference in at least one region-to-region comparison. Given that policy analyses involving threatened and endangered marine species can often be regional in scope (e.g., ecosystem management) or may disparately affect different regions, our results should be of high interest to the marine management community.

Estimating the willingness to pay to protect coral reefs from potential damage caused by climate change--The evidence from Taiwan

Coral reefs constitute the most biologically productive and diverse ecosystem, and provide various goods and services including those related to fisheries, marine tourism, coastal protection, and medicine. However, they are sensitive to climate change and rising temperatures. Taiwan is located in the central part of the world's distribution of coral reefs and has about one third of the coral species in the world. This study estimates the welfare losses associated with the potential damage to coral reefs in Taiwan caused by climate change. The contingent valuation method adopted includes a pre-survey, a face-to-face formal survey, and photo illustrations used to obtain reliable data. Average annual personal willingness to pay is found to be around US$35.75 resulting in a total annual willingness to pay of around US$0.43 billion. These high values demonstrate that coral reefs in Taiwan deserve to be well preserved, which would require a dedicated agency and ocean reserves.

A revealed preference approach to valuing non-market recreational fishing losses from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill

At an estimated 206 million gallons, the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) is the largest marine oil spill in the history of the United States. In this paper we develop a series of random utility models of site choice by saltwater anglers in the Southeast US and estimate monetary compensation for recreational losses due to the DWH oil spill. Heterogeneity in angler preferences is accounted for by using mixed logit models, and different compensation measures for shore-based, private boat, and for-hire anglers are estimated. Results indicate that willingness to pay for oil spill prevention varies by fishing mode and anglers fishing from shore and private boats exhibit heterogeneous preferences for oil spill avoidance. In addition, the total monetary compensation due to anglers is estimated at USD 585 million.