Grantee Research Project Results
2022 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, 2021 through July 31,2022
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. In addition, the implementation of the choice experiment surveys at our 20-county primary sites is ending. At the same time, Phase 3: Data Analysis, and Phase 4: Prepare Outputs and Deliverables are also underway.
At the end of the last reporting period, we attained approximately 2.4 million households’ data from our target counties as well as 300,000 email addresses in an agreement with Acxiom. To address the distributional differences at the county level from the US Census, we designed a process to sample households from the full data set to produce a target data set with similar distribution characteristics to the US Census at the county level.
In the late Fall of 2021, we did a pilot test using 5,000 direct emails to a random sample of households from our target of 20 counties. This pilot served as a proof of concept for the recruiting materials and the instrument (such as survey website, Initial contact letter, Postcard, et.), and produced usable data to make any needed refinements before the full launch. To advance to full implementation, we also fully integrated and tested the payment functionality and branching within Qualtrics using Rybbon as the vendor we used to distribute survey participant incentives, a token of compensation to respondents.
Randomized payments were then directed to the respondents with either a $10 survey participant incentive or a respondent not offered a survey participant incentive.
We chose approximately 1,000 households for each of the 20 counties in the study region. In the first stage of the launch (Spring‘22), we randomly selected 10,000 requests, with half of the participants offering a $10 gift card. We collected 399 completed surveys for this stage, suggesting continued difficulty in yielding responses. We then selected 4,000 requests from the mail sample for which we have email addresses and increased the incentive, ranging from $20 to $40 with an average of $30. Unfortunately, we only received 20 responses after nearly two months of effort. These floundering response numbers have suggested that a mail invitation pushing to the survey with a guaranteed payment is a reasonable last effort. We are finalizing that approach now.
At this stage, we changed the way to pay incentives using Greenphire Payments instead of Rybbon. We have drawn another random sample of 100 participants from the non-respondents to Stages 1 and 2 above to target our original participants. Respondents who complete the survey will receive a $40 reward. Assuming this response rate is satisfactory, we will expand the sample size and provide incentives until we expend the incentive budget. If there is continued difficulty in yielding responses, we will pursue another micro-targeted round of Facebook recruiting as we implemented and described in previous reports.
On a positive note, we now have a full dataset from Facebook and have begun a primary analysis with those approximately 3,500 responses. In this reporting period, we completed a pre-analysis plan (PAP) outlining the assumptions and specifications for the willingness to pay (WTP) for water quality improvement and a full model that serves as the basis for analysis. Based on this, we have specified site-specific preference functions and a general preference function based on all the primary study sites. Likelihood ratio (LR) tests suggest that individuals hold different values of water quality and ecosystem service improvement with different extents of degradation. Furthermore, the interaction results with current water quality levels showed that these results are not linear, with individuals holding different values with different current water quality levels. Our further analyses will divide the sample into different groups to identify the economic and environmental contextual mechanisms by which people hold different values. In addition, we also outlined the steps to test and adjust the preliminary model for further benefit transfer analysis.
Future Activities:
Stephen Swallow has retired from the University in June 2022 and is no longer the lead PI on this project. CoPI Charles Towe is now the lead PI. Ruirui Dang is a full-time RA devoted solely to this project.
At this writing, the research team does not propose any changes to the budget. The project expenditures to date are consistent with the original budget, with the timeline approved in establishing the no cost extension approved by EPA in May of 2022.
After a long pandemic, our project is now on track, and the team, during the reporting period, is attempting to stay with the current schedule provided by the most recent extension.
We will proceed according to the timeline established by the previously approved no-cost extension. We are also carrying out preliminary analysis as initially planned and will update the results after we finish the survey experiments. When the results are sorted out, we then anticipate extensive effort to test and adjust our preliminary model, including testing how well one can expect to transfer results from a subset of our counties to estimate the value of water quality for other counties.
We anticipate submissions to the annual meetings of AAEA (Agricultural and Applied Economics Association), AERE (Association of Environmental and Resource Economists), and NAREA (Northeast Association of Resource Economics Association) all in January 2023.
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;Relevant Websites:
Water Quality Research Exit , Pre-Analysis Plan Exit
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
- 2021 Progress Report
- 2020 Progress Report
- 2019 Progress Report
- 2018 Progress Report
- 2017 Progress Report
- Original Abstract