Economics
Document Type
Article
Abstract
Households’ willingness to pay (WTP) for water quality improvements—representing their economic value—depends on where improvements occur. Households often hold higher values for improvements close to their homes or iconic areas. Are there other areas where improvements might hold high value to individual households, do effects on WTP vary by type of improvement, and can these areas be identified even if they are not anticipated by researchers? To answer these questions, we integrated a water quality model and map-based, interactive choice experiment to estimate households’ WTP for water quality improvements throughout a river network covering six New England states. The choice experiment was implemented using a push-to-web survey over a sample of New England households. Voting scenarios used to elicit WTP included interactive geographic information system (GIS) maps that illustrated three water quality measures at various zoom levels across the study domain. We captured data on how respondents maneuvered through these maps prior to answering the value-eliciting questions. Results show that WTP was influenced by regionwide quality improvements and improvements surrounding each respondent’s home, as anticipated, but also by improvements in individualized locations identifiable via each respondent’s map interactions. These spatial WTP variations only appear for low-quality rivers and are focused around particular areas of New England. The study shows that dynamic map interactions can convey salient information for WTP estimation and that predicting spatial WTP heterogeneity based primarily on home or iconic locations, as typically done, may overlook areas where water quality has high value. Copyright © 2023 the Author(s).
Publication Title
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Publication Date
4-2023
Volume
120
Issue
18
ISSN
0027-8424
DOI
10.1073/pnas.2120255119
Keywords
choice experiment, map interaction, spatial, water quality, willingness to pay
Repository Citation
Johnston, Robert J.; Moeltner, Klaus; Peery, Seth; Ndebele, Tom; Yao, Zhenyu; Crema, Stefano; Wollheim, Wilfred M.; and Besedin, Elena, "Spatial dimensions of water quality value in New England river networks" (2023). Economics. 6.
https://commons.clarku.edu/faculty_economics/6
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.