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The Value of Water Quality to Coastal Recreation in New England (2021 Social Cost of Water Pollution Workshop)
Citation:
Mazzotta, M., N. Merrill, K. Mulvaney, J. Sawyer, S. Atkinson, AND D. Keith. The Value of Water Quality to Coastal Recreation in New England (2021 Social Cost of Water Pollution Workshop). 2021 Social Cost of Water Pollution Workshop, Virtual, April 21 - 23, 2021.
Impact/Purpose:
Nutrient pollution is a significant problem in coastal waterbodies, particularly estuaries, across the United States. There are very few existing studies of participation in and values for coastal recreation other than fishing, particularly as related to water quality, and most of those that exist are outdated. Our research explores the social dimensions of water quality and recreation, including understanding the number of people who use coastal areas for recreation, how much they value coastal recreation, and how those values are affected by changes in water quality.
Description:
Nutrient pollution is a significant problem in coastal waterbodies, particularly estuaries, across the United States. There are very few existing studies of participation in and values for coastal recreation other than fishing, particularly as related to water quality, and most of those that exist are outdated. Moreover, recreation at the many smaller but heavily-used coastal access points is minimally studied relative to larger beaches, although water pollution disproportionately affects estuaries as opposed to open coasts. Recreational benefit information is critical for integrated assessments of water quality intended to inform water quality management of coastal systems. Our research explores the social dimensions of water quality and recreation, including understanding the number of people who use coastal areas for recreation, how much they value coastal recreation, and how those values are affected by changes in water quality. Our research includes a primary data collection effort using a revealed preference survey to elicit coastal New England residents’ values for water recreation, sense of place, and perceptions of water quality. This presentation will include an overview of the survey and related research and preliminary results, including discussion of various models that we will be estimating using the survey data and water quality data. These include comparing water quality perceptions to objective measures, modeling short trips to nearby smaller access points as opposed to visits to major beaches, incorporating sense of place measures into economic analysis, and challenges and proposed approaches to developing a coastal water quality index. The New England coastal recreation survey was implemented in the summer of 2018, with 1,437 responses to a mixed-mode internet and mail survey. This survey, unlike many coastal recreation surveys, does not limit locations visited to specific access points, but instead allowed respondents to select any point on a map (online version) or by description of the location (paper version) in coastal New England. The free-form trip location elicitation led to an extensive spatial site and water quality data collection. We will use the data to estimate values for the many water activities (e.g., swimming, boating, kayaking, fishing, surfing) and how those values are affected by changes in water quality. We developed and included a set of questions about water quality perceptions for the last place visited, as well as for the places people had visited with the worst and best water quality. Complementing the traditional trip profile information, we developed a sense of place scale for coastal waters, in order to more fully understand social aspects of water quality beyond traditional measures of economic value.The survey results will contribute to development of a national water quality valuation platform that is under development at EPA (the “BenSPLASH” platform), and will provide information that regions, states, and communities can use to evaluate policies and management actions, including benefits of implementing TMDLs, reducing beach closures, opening new sites, and more. We propose a short talk (no paper) describing our research and presenting preliminary results.
