Unified Dataset for All Choice Decisions in Recreational Water Quality Survey: Addendum to Economics of Environmental Improvement
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Summary
The goal of this addendum was to combine the several different choice sets presented in the recreational water quality survey reported into a single model.
Expanded new results were produced in areas where multiple factors were examined at the same time. These results included:
- The relative preference of fishing, swimming, and the aquatic environment differ based upon whether the policies affected national or regional water quality. For all questions, the distribution of preferences within water quality components reflects a preference for the aquatic environment (44.6%) over fishing (34.6%) with swimming (20.8%) having the lowest priority. However, the preference for aquatic environment is more pronounced when the improvements are national in scope, while fishing has the greatest importance for regional improvements.
- The increased value of national improvements over regional improvements was confirmed. National improvements are about 25% higher than an equal improvement that only affects the respondent’s home region.
- Most primary conclusions estimated in analysis of the individual question sets are supported when including all decisions made by respondents in the survey.
Overall, the results of this analysis that addressed topics from the previous project report were similar to those estimates.
- Regional water quality value has a median value of $15.82.
- National water quality value has a median value of $19.73.
- Lake improvements are valued more highly than river improvements, though this preference is not extreme (52% preference for lakes, 48% for rivers).
Water quality features varied by the demographic characteristics of respondents in expected ways, most commonly with income, education, age, and environmental organization membership; how often respondents visited lakes and rivers was also a factor in explaining many of these variations.
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Date Linked: 08/07/2009