Grantee Research Project Results
2021 Progress Report: Valuation of Water Quality Change in Environment and Economy Context: Ecosystem Services across Gradients of Degradation and Local Economic Interest
EPA Grant Number: R836320Title: Valuation of Water Quality Change in Environment and Economy Context: Ecosystem Services across Gradients of Degradation and Local Economic Interest
Investigators: Swallow, Stephen , Vadas, Timothy M. , Towe, Charles , Kirchhoff, Christine , Helton, Ashley , Liu, Pengfei
Current Investigators: Swallow, Stephen , Vadas, Timothy M. , Kirchhoff, Christine , Helton, Ashley , Liu, Pengfei
Institution: University of Connecticut
EPA Project Officer: Packard, Benjamin H
Project Period: August 1, 2016 through July 31, 2019 (Extended to July 31, 2023)
Project Period Covered by this Report: August 1, 2020 through July 31,2021
Project Amount: $799,994
RFA: Water Quality Benefits (2015) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Water
Objective:
The proposed research aims to value changes in water quality via a preference function model designed explicitly for calibration and adaptation to alternative study-sites. The work will address critical deficiencies with broad applicability and application of traditional benefit transfer following three specific objectives. First, we will measure the relative value of water quality investments and stream ecosystem restoration in sites across the spectrum of degradation. Second, we will measure how the value of water quality and ecosystem restoration is affected by the context of where the streams are relative to current and past economic activity, especially jobs in pollution intensive industries versus other employment. Third, based on these primary studies we will use measures of personal environmental attitudes, measures of ecosystem/degradation context, and measures of local economic context to develop a framework guiding the applicability for transfer of benefits to alternative sites not directly studied.
Progress Summary:
To date, we have completed Phase 1: Site Selection and Sampling Phase and Phase 2: Focus Group and Survey Development. We have also started our initial data collection for our 20-county sample using Facebook ads.
Our study region includes 11 states (MD, NJ, DE, PA, NY, CT, RI, MA, VT, NH, ME). After creating the indices for each county on 3 scales (Socioeconomic conditions, Ecological Integrity, and Pollution Economy), we assigned counties into five different clusters.
Since our last report, we collected data in the 20 counties, identified by randomly selecting 4 counties from each cluster. We recruited respondents through Facebook advertising. We used the 5 separate Facebook campaigns to facilitate targeting so that we could be sure counties with low population density would appear in our sample rather than allowing Facebook’s advertising algorithms to squeeze out lower-density counties in favor of advertising to high density counties.
On December 17th, data collection began in our 20 county sample. The following table indicates current completions by county. The average age of completions for all counties included in this sample is 36 years old, with 53% of the total sample being women.
County | State | Cluster | POP_ESTIMATE_2017 | Completion |
Hartford County | CT | 1 | 895,388 | 387 |
Jefferson County | PA | 1 | 43,804 | 209 |
Schuylkill County | PA | 1 | 142,569 | 303 |
Herkimer County | NY | 1 | 62,240 | 220 |
Franklin County | MA | 2 | 70,702 | 264 |
Cheshire County | NH | 2 | 75,960 | 281 |
Juniata County | PA | 2 | 24,514 | 109 |
Windsor County | VT | 2 | 55,100 | 222 |
Oxford County | ME | 3 | 57,439 | 203 |
Penobscot County | ME | 3 | 151,957 | 301 |
Cape May County | NJ | 3 | 93,553 | 305 |
Sullivan County | NY | 3 | 75,485 | 255 |
Hillsborough County | NH | 4 | 409,697 | 312 |
Mercer County | NJ | 4 | 374,733 | 299 |
Ontario County | NY | 4 | 109,899 | 309 |
Lebanon County | PA | 4 | 139,754 | 316 |
Fairfield County | CT | 5 | 949,921 | 309 |
Broome County | NY | 5 | 193,639 | 306 |
Onondaga County | NY | 5 | 465,398 | 303 |
Caroline County | MD | 5 | 33,193 | 154 |
During our Facebook launch, 2 Ad types were tested, one that offered a $10 gift card following completion of the survey and one that did not offer the $10 incentive. We found that the incentive ad type had a higher click rate than the ads that did not offer an incentive. However, we also found that participants largely rejected (declined to receive) the $10 gift card at the end of the survey and we are currently investigating possible factors that caused may lead respondents to be more likely to decline the gift card. The Final sample will be collected using social media, mailings, and emails.
Currently, we are preparing our mailing launch and email launch for our 20-county sample. By using Facebook with complementary samples recruited through direct emailing and U.S. Mail, over the next several months, we expect to support a checks for robustness of results to recruiting respondents by Facebook ads, U.S. Mail, and email.
Through our use of Facebook pixels, we are also able to identify people who clicked on our ads but did not start our survey, which provides a unique opportunity to explore a sample of these individuals as we launch our mail and email part of the project. This provides us with an additional, potential method assess the representativeness of results obtained through the Facebook effort.
Journal Articles:
No journal articles submitted with this report: View all 5 publications for this projectSupplemental Keywords:
ecosystem, regionalization, habitat, integrated assessment, public policy, decision making, community-based, conjoint analysis, observation, non-market valuation, contingent valuation, survey, preferences, public good, socioeconomic, willingness-to-pay, compensation, conservation, modeling, monitoring, analytical, surveys, measurement methods;Progress and Final Reports:
Original AbstractThe perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.
Project Research Results
- Final Report
- 2022 Progress Report
- 2020 Progress Report
- 2019 Progress Report
- 2018 Progress Report
- 2017 Progress Report
- Original Abstract