Wildlife Economics

Today’s Topics

  • Why care about economics?

  • Understanding goods

  • Applying economic methods

Why care about economics?

  • Environment → society → economy

  • But I’m not an economist… why care?

    • It is a valuable communication tool

      • politicians, other government officials

      • how to allocate limited resources, stakeholders and community members, balancing costs and benefits

  • 50% of content in NCWRC summary report related to economics

Understanding Goods

  • Characteristic of Goods

    • Non-Rival: one party’s use of the good does not prevent others’ use of that good

      • subscriptions

    • Rival: one party’s use of the good does prevent others’ use of that good

      • physical goods

    • Excludable: It is possible to prevent non-paying consumers from access to that good

      • movie theater

    • Non-Excludable: Non-paying customers cannot be prevented from accessing or using the good

      • prone to overexploitation: tragedy of the commons

      • playgrounds

    • Private Goods: Exclusive Rival (Food, clothing, land, housing)

    • Club Goods: Exclusive Non-Rival (YMCA, Country Club, Golf course)

    • Common Pool Resources: Non-Exclusive Rival (BLM grazing land, coal and gas deposits)

    • Public Goods: Non-Exclusive non-rival (Public television, municipal parks)

Applying Economic Methods

  • Quantitative: generalization, prediction, casual explanation, begins with theory (deductive), uses instruments, experiments, reduces data to numbers

  • Qualitative: contextualization, interpreting process, understanding actors’ view, ends with theory (inductive), researcher is the instrument, data is what informants express (language, action)

Market Value

Non-market Value

  • Cannot observe transactions in wildlife

  • Direct use value, indirect use value, bequest value, existence value

Non-market valuation methods

  • Revealed Preference Methods: Travel Cost, Hedonic Pricing, Benefit Transfer

  • Stated preference methods: Contingent Valuation (CV), discrete choice experiments

Applying Economic Methods: Case Study Speed Round

  • Are hunters/anglers willing to pay for the conservation of public lands?

    • Asking whether they want to pay x amount of dollars on survey

    • Contingent Valuation (CV): using a hypothetical market to reveal what people would be willing to pay for a change in the status quo

    • Other CV examples: how much are you willing to pay for a permit, etc,

  • How do we estimate the value of ecosystem services?

    • survey asks how much people want to pay to protect oysters, fisheries, biodiversity, coastal protection

    • Discrete Choice Experiment: participants presented with 2 or more packages and asked to pick the one they prefer (5-6 scenarios)

    • Allows us to see what people most value

  • How do we quantify the economic value of vagrant birdwatching events?

    • ask people how much they valued being able to watch a bird never seen on the coast before

  • How do conservation areas impact nearby real estate?

    • Hedonic pricing: deriving underlying prices for non-market commodities, distance to an amenity

  • How can agencies and local governments balance tradeoffs between land acquisition and local tax revenue?

  • How does fish/wildlife recreation contribute to local economies?

    • economic contribution analysis

    • most common technique in fisheries and wildlife is using IMPLAN software, created by FEMA and updated yearly

    • uses input-output modeling to reveal how economic activity rippes through the economy via buy-sell relationships between various economic sectors

  • How do agencies measure the impact of new policies?

    • built a model

    • accounted for supply and demand

    • price increase would provide an additional $8 million per year to the WRC