Browsing by Author "Boyle, Kevin J."

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    2013 Virginia Residential Real Estate Appraiser Remuneration: Survey And Report
    Sanderford, Andrew R.; Boyle, Kevin J.; McCoy, Andrew P.; Xu, Weibin; Jones, Mel (Virginia Center for Housing Research, 2014-10-09)
    This report describes the results from a survey of Virginia real estate appraisers. The survey was conducted by the Virginia Center for Housing Research and the Virginia Tech Program in Real Estate in the spring of 2014 and focused on fees paid for residential real estate appraisals in Virginia in 2013.
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    The Amenity Value of Trees: a Meta-analysis of Hedonic, Property-value Studies
    Heier, Elizabeth (Virginia Tech, 2012-08-09)
    Tree species migration as a result of climate change may alter the composition of trees in local communities. Shifts in tree diversity, stand age, species predominance and the overall number of trees are potential changes. Community tree programs may also change the characteristics of local trees through planting or preservation efforts, but these programs may also mitigate the effects of climate induced tree migration. Numerous hedonic property value studies have estimated the implicit price of tree amenities associated with residential properties. Quantitative analysis of the results from multiple studies valuing trees can identify if the relationship between implicit price and tree amenities extended across these studies. The results of the meta-regression found systematic variation was present across positive implicit prices for local tree cover. The scarcity, age and type of local trees were also significantly related to the implicit price of amenity tree cover. The amenity tree cover findings suggest that county tree canopy cover of about 42% optimizes implicit price. Recent extreme weather events and ownership of trees contributed to negative implicit prices. These results may assist in planning and goal setting for community tree programs to mitigate the effects of climate induced tree migration.
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    Arsenic in drinking water in Bangladesh: factors affecting child health
    Aziz, Sonia N.; Aziz, M.S. Khwaja; Boyle, Kevin J. (Frontiers, 2014-06-16)
    The focus of this paper is to present an empirical model of factors affecting child health by observing actions households take to avoid exposure to arsenic in drinking water. Millions of Bangladeshis face multiple health hazards from high levels of arsenic in drinking water. Safe water sources are either expensive or difficult to access, affecting people’s individuals’ time available for work and ultimately affecting the health of household members. Since children are particularly susceptible and live with parents who are primary decision makers for sustenance, parental actions linking child health outcomes is used in the empirical model. Empirical results suggest that child health is significantly affected by the age and gender of the household water procurer. Adults with a high degree of concern for children’s health risk from arsenic contamination, and who actively mitigate their arsenic contaminated water have a positive effect on child health.
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    Buying to Thrive: Exploring the Potential for Market-Based Approaches to Contribute to Increases in Diet Diversity in Mozambique
    Agnew, Jessica L. (Virginia Tech, 2020-08-04)
    Globally, more than two billion people suffer from deficiencies in micronutrients that are essential for human health. Low-income populations in low- and middle-income countries are especially vulnerable to these deficiencies. There are three priority interventions used to reduce micronutrient deficiencies and improve overall nutrition status — supplementation, fortification, and diet diversity. As the share of food purchases made by low-income households has been increasing, there is increasing interest in the role the private sector can play in these interventions. Currently, there is little known about the potential for a market-based approach to contribute to improvements in diet diversity. Proven to be one of the most effective ways of improving nutritional status, increasing diet diversification among low-income populations will be essential for reducing micronutrient deficiencies in the long-term. The purpose of this research is to contribute evidence on the potential for a market-based approach to increase diet diversity among low-income households in Mozambique. This research starts by examining the extent to which low-income consumers in Nampula, Mozambique make diverse food purchases and the amount they are willing to pay for such diversity. Since diet diversification is intended to improve health, the connections between individual-level health constructs and diversity of food purchases is subsequently investigated. These studies are then used as the basis for a participatory community-based intervention that explores if health constructs influence modifications in food purchases and the barriers and enabling factors that exist to using the market to increase household diet diversity. The findings of this work reveal that there is potential for markets to contribute to the diversity of foods consumed by low-income households; however, concerted efforts between the private, public, and civil sectors will likely be required for the success and longevity of market-based approaches.
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    Childhood Misnourishment, School Meal Programs and Academic Performance
    Capogrossi, Kristen Lynn (Virginia Tech, 2012-03-29)
    Both types of childhood misnourishment, overweight/obesity and underweight, are accompanied by serious health consequences and a heavy economic burden. In 2008, 19.6% of US children aged 6 to 11 and 18.1% of adolescents aged 12 to 19 were obese equating to 13 million children. Furthermore, in 2006, 2.7% of US children aged 6 to 11 and 3.9% of adolescents aged 12 to 19 were underweight translating to 2.4 million children. This dissertation contains three essays on the relationship between child weight, school meal program participation and academic performance. Chapter II examines how childrens' weight impacts their academic performance using a quantile analysis while controlling for potential simultaneity between weight and school outcomes. Results indicate that programs targeting child weight could potentially have positive spillover effects on academic performance leading to the question of what can be done to mitigate the problem. Since children consume one-third to one-half of their daily calories while in school each day, school level programs are natural policy instruments to tackle misnourishment. Specifically, the School Breakfast Program (SBP) and National School Lunch Program (NSLP) are two federally-funded programs providing meals to over 31.7 million children daily. Chapter III examines the impact that these programs have on child weight using a multiple simultaneous treatment analysis controlling for self-selection into the programs. Chapter IV then investigates whether these programs have spillover effects on academic performance through the mediator of child weight using structural equation modeling and multiple simultaneous equation methodologies. Each of these essays provides further insight to the relationship between child weight, school meal program participation and academic performance offering potential policy implications to tackle child misnourishment.
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    Conditional, Structural and Unobserved Heterogeneity: three essays on preference heterogeneity in the design of financial incentives to increase weight loss program reach
    Yuan, Yuan Clara (Virginia Tech, 2015-08-27)
    This dissertation consists of three essays on forms of preference heterogeneity in discrete choice models. The first essay uses a model of heterogeneity conditional on observed individual-specific characteristics to tailor financial incentives to enhance weight loss program participation among target demographics. Financial incentives in weight loss programs have received attention mostly with respect to effectiveness rather than participation and representativeness. This essay examines the impact of financial incentives on participation with respect to populations vulnerable to obesity and understudied in the weight loss literature. We found significant heterogeneity across target sub-populations and suggest a strategy of offering multiple incentive designs to counter the dispersive effects of preference heterogeneity. The second essay investigates the ability of a novel elicitation format to reveal decision strategy heterogeneity. Attribute non-attendance, the behaviour of ignoring some attributes when performing a choice task, violates fundamental assumptions of the random utility model. However, self-reported attendance behaviour on dichotomous attendance scales has been shown to be unreliable. In this essay, we assess the ability of a polytomous attendance scale to ameliorate self-report unreliability. We find that the lowest point on the attendance scale corresponds best to non-attendance, attendance scales need be no longer than two or three points, and that the polytomous attendance scale had limited success in producing theoretically consistent results. The third essay explores available approaches to model different features of unobserved heterogeneity. Unobserved heterogeneity is popularly modelled using the mixed logit model, so called because it is a mixture of standard conditional logit models. Although the mixed logit model can, in theory, approximate any random utility model with an appropriate mixing distribution, there is little guidance on how to select such a distribution. This essay contributes to suggestions on distribution selection by describing the heterogeneity features which can be captured by established parametric mixing distributions and more recently introduced nonparametric mixing distributions, both of a discrete and continuous nature. We provide empirical illustrations of each feature in turn using simple mixing distributions which focus on the feature at hand.
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    Determining the Value of Pedestrian Surfaces in Suburban DC
    Ayers, William Grove (Virginia Tech, 2014-07-01)
    Recent demographic studies suggest a shift in consumer preference away from auto-centric suburban housing to more walkable suburban communities. In response to these changes, efforts have been made to model the walkability of a location and determine its effect on the market value of both residential and commercial real estate. Existing walkability models have considered the importance of amenities and potential pedestrian routes, but have neglected to identify the importance of pedestrian surfaces such as sidewalks and trails as a proportion of the route traveled, and have typically modeled pedestrian movement using exclusively street or trail centerline data. The following paper uses a new walkability model to provide insight on the effect pedestrian surfaces along these amenity routes have on the market value of single family detached and semi-detached homes in Fairfax County, VA. It was found that increases in pedestrian surfaces along amenity routes had little to no effect on home value, but that 3.3%, 1.2 %, and 0.7 % price premiums existed for single family homes that had amenity paths of less than 1 mile to public transportation, public spaces, and recreational facilities, respectively. Price reductions of 3.0 % were discovered for homes that had amenity paths within 1 mile of retail locations.
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    Early Warning Systems, Mobile Technology, and Cholera Aversion: Evidence from Rural Bangladesh
    Pakhtigian, Emily L.; Aziz, Sonia; Boyle, Kevin J.; Akanda, Ali S.; Hanifi, M. A. (Elsevier, 2024-05)
    In Bangladesh, cholera poses a significant environmental health risk. Yet, information about the severity of cholera risk is limited as risk varies over time and changing weather patterns make historical cholera risk predictions less reliable. In this paper, we examine how households use geographically and temporally personalized cholera risk predictions to inform their beliefs and behaviors related to cholera and its aversion. We estimate how access to a smartphone application containing monthly cholera risk predictions unique to a user’s home location affects households’ beliefs about their cholera risk and their water use and hygiene behaviors. We find that households with access to this application feel more equipped to respond to environmental and health risks and reduce their reliance on surface water for bathing and washing – a common cholera transmission pathway. We do not find that households invest additional resources into drinking water treatment, nor do we find reductions in self-reported cholera incidence. Further, households with a static, non-personalized app containing public health information about cholera exhibit similar patterns of beliefs updating. Taken together, our results suggest that access to risk information can help households make safer water choices, yet improving design and credibility remain important dimensions for increasing application usability.
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    Early Warning Systems, Mobile Technology, and Cholera Aversion: Evidence from Rural Bangladesh
    Pakhtigian, Emily L.; Aziz, Sonia; Boyle, Kevin J.; Akanda, Ali S.; Hanifi, M. A. (Resources for the Future, 2022-10)
    In Bangladesh, cholera poses a significant health risk. Yet, information about the nature and severity of cholera risk is limited as risk varies over time and by location and changing weather patterns have made historical cholera risk predictions less reliable. In this paper, we examine how households use geographically and temporally personalized cholera risk predictions to inform their water use behaviors. Using data from an eight month field experiment, we estimate how access to a smartphone application containing monthly cholera risk predictions unique to a user’s home location affects households’ knowledge about their cholera risk as well as their water use practices. We find that households with access to this application feel more equipped to respond to environmental and health risks they may face and reduce their reliance on surface water for bathing and washing—a common cholera transmission pathway. We do not find that households invest additional resources into drinking water treatment, nor do we find reductions in self-reported cholera incidence. Access to dynamic risk information can help households make safer water choices; tailoring information provision to those at highest risk could reduce cholera transmission in endemic areas.
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    The Effect of Mountain Pine Beetle Induced Tree Mortality on Home Values in the Colorado Front Range
    Cohen, Jed Jacob (Virginia Tech, 2013-06-06)
    Throughout the past decade American pine forests have experienced an epidemic of Mountain Pine Beetle (MPB) induced tree mortality. This thesis estimates the losses to home values caused by deteriorating forest quality in the Front Range Counties of Larimer and Boulder Colorado. We employ a repeat sales model that allows for region specific price indices, and non-linear age-related depreciation in home values. We use the time-invariant existence of pine forest near a home to overcome shortcomings in the measurement of MPB damage. We infer from temporal changes in the marginal "effect of pine trees near a home the approximate MPB "effect . We label this strategy the translating commodity approach. Using this strategy we are able to show that diminished forest quality causes forests to become a dis-amenity that negatively affects nearby home values. The total loss in 2011 home values due to their proximity to dying forest is estimated to be $137 million for all the homes in our sample. Such substantial losses may justify a forest management policy shift in order to better mitigate the risk of future MPB outbreaks.
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    Empirical Relationships between Water Quality and Agricultural Land Use in Rural Maine
    Dodson, Laura Lyn (Virginia Tech, 2017-02-09)
    Anthropogenic eutrophication of freshwater lakes due to land use change is a growing global problem with economic consequences, such as a reduction in shoreline property value. Managing eutrophication is of utmost importance in Maine, USA due to the large number of inland fresh waterbodies and their economic importance for fisheries, recreation, and real estate. This thesis investigates the relationships between water quality and catchment land use. Agricultural land use is a large driver of excess nutrient export to lakes, including in Maine, and can result in toxic cyanobacterial blooms, decreased water clarity, and fish kills. I developed a statistical relationship to quantitatively link agricultural intensity in the catchment and resultant water quality outcomes in Maine lakes. I observe a strong statistical relationship between water quality and anthropogenic activity in the catchment, as expected. Interestingly, I found that the effects of anthropogenic activity were most closely related to a five-year lag in water quality, which is between 0.8 to 4.71 years longer than the lake residence times. My results suggest that changes in land use may have long-term effects on water quality that last for far longer than would be expected. The analysis presented in this paper is novel for directly linking long term observational agricultural and biological datasets and presents a new way to quantitatively link water quality and anthropogenic intensity in the catchment area.
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    Empirical Studies of Discrete Choice Models in Health, Fertility, and Voting
    Hashemi, Ali (Virginia Tech, 2011-03-30)
    Almost everything that we do involves a choice. In recent years there has been a growing interest in the development and application of quantitative statistical methods to study choices made by individuals with the purpose of gaining a better understanding of how choices are made and also to predict future choice responses. In many fields, the choices made by individuals will determine the effectiveness of policy. Understanding what drives people's choices and how these choices may change is critical for developing successful policy. Discrete choice modeling provides an analytical framework with which to analyze and predict how people's choices are influenced by their personal characteristics and by the different attributes of the alternatives available to them. In an ideal situation we would build discrete choice models using information from choices that people are observed to make, i.e., revealed preference (RP) information. From these data we can quantify the influence of particular variables in the real choice context; for example, how important is price in the decision to travel by train? There are, however, potential problems with these data. There might not be enough variation of the explanatory attributes; for example little price variation across alternatives. Furthermore, several attributes might be highly correlated e.g. price and quality. But the most important of all is the fact that it is not possible to observe choices for alternatives that do not yet exist; for example new programs and technologies. In cases where the data limits the information provided by real choices it may be appropriate to collect stated preference (SP) data, which is information on preferences provided from hypothetical choice situations. This dissertation provides several applications of discrete choice modeling using both raveled preferences and stated preference. Unlike the last two chapters which deal with the revealed preference, the first Chapter, uses stated preference data. This Chapter evaluates the impact of several attributes of monetary incentives on the decision of patients to participate in a new weight loss program. Since this program does not exist yet, revealed preference data were not available and stated preference data were collected. The attributes of interest in this study include magnitude, timing and form of payment. The goal is to see what level and what combination of these attributes provides greater impact on the reach of the program. We also account for preference heterogeneity by using a random parameter framework. Chapter 2 discusses another application of discrete choice models in event history models (also called survival analysis). In these type of models, the main goal is to use the history of happening an event to learn more about the effect of different factors on the probability of occurrence. The event of interest in our case is the birth. We use the birth history of rural women and try to model their decision to give birth over time. The ultimate goal is to evaluate the effect of health clinics and family planning program on this decision. The final Chapter considers the application of discrete choice modeling in an electoral framework. The 2005 presidential election in Iran is used to model the decisions of Iranian voters. Using this revealed preference data we try to learn more about the main factors evolved in both participation and in the candidate selection.
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    Essays in Suface Water Quality Valuation
    Swedberg, Kristen M. (Virginia Tech, 2024-05-29)
    This dissertation is comprised of three essays examining methods for surface water quality valuation. The first essay uses Zillow's ZTRAX property transaction database to investigate variation in hedonic price effects of water clarity on single-family houses throughout the United States. I consider five spatial scales and estimate models using different sample selection criteria and model specifications. The results indicate considerable spatial heterogeneity both within and across the four U.S. Census regions. However, I also find heterogeneity resulting from different types of investigator decisions, including sample selection and modelling choices. Thus, it is necessary to use practical knowledge to consider the limits of market areas and to investigate the robustness of estimation results to investigator choices. In the second essay, I integrate a coastal recreation demand model for Southern New England with property sales in Massachusetts and Rhode Island to estimate the impacts of water quality improvements for freshwater and saltwater resources throughout the region. While traditional hedonic studies for water quality reveal the direct effects of local water quality on housing prices, the spatial extent of the models is limited to 2 km from the waterfront. Integrating recreation demand models with hedonic models allows identification of additional indirect effects of water quality at recreation sites that are capitalized in housing markets through a recreational index (i.e., the potential recreational benefits for a neighborhood). However, the spatial extent of these models is currently untested. I compare the spatial extent of indirect and direct effects of water quality for multiple water quality inputs isolating spatial and temporal sources of variation. The results indicate heterogeneity in the direct effects of freshwater and saltwater clarity depending on whether the source of variation is spatial or temporal. Conflating spatial and temporal water quality variation can lead to anomalous conclusions on the impacts of coastal recreation on housing markets. In the third essay, I evaluate meta-regression models (MRMs) that are used by policy makers in calculating the potential benefits of improvements in environmental quality resulting from proposed regulatory actions. MRMs lay the foundation for benefit transfers applied by EPA to recent rulemakings under the Clean Water Act (CWA) in addition to other environmental contexts (e.g., health benefits under the Clean Air Act). While recent literature has emphasized the necessity that MRMs satisfy key theoretical conditions, including scope sensitivity and the adding up condition, existing MRMs that fulfil these properties require imposing structural model restrictions or removing relevant explanatory variables from the MRM at the expense of model fit and predictive performance. This study presents a method for defining MRMs that draws on characteristics of the given benefits transfer scenario and its relationship to the metadata while satisfying the adding up condition. This modelling framework outperforms the model used by EPA in model fit and predictive performance. Applying the results to a recent CWA rule, I find the model used by EPA substantially underestimates the potential benefits.
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    Essays on Environmental Economics with a Focus on Non-market Valuation
    Cao, Xiang (Virginia Tech, 2019-07-09)
    This dissertation consists of two research projects in the area of Environmental Economics: water-recycling technology adoption and its cost-effectiveness in the U.S. horticulture industry (in Chapter 2), and urban tree cover's impact on residential location decision making in Milwaukee, WI (in Chapter 3). Chapter 2 evaluates the economic effects of labeling plants grown with water-recycling technology (WRT) practices in selected nursery operations in the Mid-Atlantic region of Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Partial budgeting, whole enterprise-level budgeting, sensitivity and break-even analyses are conducted to determine whether consumer premiums for plants grown with recycled water are sufficient to make WRT economically feasible combined with plant eco-labeling, and how such a labeling program would affect greenhouse/nursery production costs, gross revenues and net revenues. It is concluded that consumer premiums for plants grown with recycled water could offer nursery growers a method to improve their net returns while reducing pollution runoff and improving irrigation water usage efficiency. Chapter 3 focuses on non-market valuation of environmental (dis)amenities. Specifically, this chapter investigates the impact of urban tree cover on residential property location decision in the housing market of Milwaukee, WI. Residential sorting model embedded with "horizontal preference structure" is established to estimate the heterogeneous preferences for tree cover and other land cover attributes that vary by household socio-economic characteristics and then to identify the housing property owners' demand for these land cover attributes. The first part of this chapter mainly recovers the demand for "community trees" at the census block group level combined with 10 years property transaction data and neighborhood characteristics where the median income is aggregated to represent the household annual income. It is found that "community trees" are positively valued by the housing property owners and have a positive impact on housing price due to its positive externalities. Furthermore, income is found to be a strong exogenous demand shifter, leading to heterogeneous preference for the tree cover. The second part of Chapter 3 further investigates the impacts of both nearby trees and distant trees on residential property location decision using different spatial scales of land covers measurements. Instead of aggregating block group level median income, this study matches and merges disaggregated individual household annual incomes from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) dataset to mitigate the potential aggregation bias. It is found that different spatial scales of land cover measurement result in varying willingness to pay estimates, implying that housing property owners have heterogeneous demands for nearby trees and distant trees. In other words, preferences for urban tree cover not only vary by household annual income, but also differ across spatial scales of the tree cover measurement.
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    Essays on the Economics of Drinking Water Quality and Infrastructure
    Tanellari, Eftila (Virginia Tech, 2011-04-29)
    This dissertation consists of three essays that examine consumer behavior with respect to drinking water quality issues. The first essay uses contingent valuation method to explore consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for a hypothetical material in home drinking water infrastructure that will remain leak free. Willingness to pay is investigated using both dichotomous choice and dichotomous choice with follow-up formats using a national telephone survey of consumers. Our results indicate that consumers' concerns about future system failures and income positively affect their WTP for an improved material while satisfaction with the water quality, education and the bid amount asked negatively affect their WTP for an improved material. There are no significant differences in the determinants of WTP between respondents who have experienced problems with home water infrastructure and respondents who have not. Furthermore, the estimated mean WTP does not change significantly between the dichotomous choice questioning format and the dichotomous choice with follow-up format The second essay investigates the determinants of consumers' willingness to accept improvement programs for three drinking water issues: water quality, pinhole leaks in home plumbing infrastructure and aging public infrastructure. The research is based on a mail survey of consumers in Northern Virginia and the Maryland suburbs of Washington D.C. The analysis focuses on the relationship between information, risk perceptions and willingness to pay. Results indicate that the choice to support any of the programs is negatively affected by the cost of the proposed improvement. Consumers' risk perceptions, the external information provided in the survey and whether they read the annual report from their water utility affect their choices for investment in improvement programs. The third essay examines the effect of risk perceptions about tap water, general risk aversion and consumers' characteristics on their decision to avert drinking water risks and related expenditures. Results are based on the same survey data from the second study. The risk aversion measure is elicited using the sequence of questions employed in the National Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Results indicate that consumers' risk perceptions affect both the decision to avert and the amount spent on averting activities. However, we do not find a significant impact of risk aversion on averting behavior. In addition we find that respondents were more likely to use water treatments if they were unsatisfied with their tap water or had problems or concerns with water odor and particles.
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    Essays on the Non-market Valuation and Optimal Control of Bio-invasions in Urban Forest Resources
    Siriwardena, Shyamani Dilantha (Virginia Tech, 2017-02-21)
    This dissertation consists of three essays, of which, two involve assessing the value of tree cover in urban communities and the other evaluates cooperative management of an invasive species by urban communities. The first chapter summarizes the three topics and briefly describes the motivation, methods applied and main conclusions in each study. Chapter 2 presents a meta-analysis of hedonic property value studies on the value of tree cover. A meta-regression was performed using implicit value estimates for tree cover at property-level from various locations in the U.S. along with auxiliary data of county-level tree cover to investigate the relationship between tree cover and implicit-price estimates for residential properties. The study found that on average 35 percent and 40 percent tree cover respectively at property-level and county-level optimize the benefits to the property owners in urban areas. These results provide insights to forward-looking communities to adapt their tree planting and protection efforts to lessen climate-induced impacts. Chapter 3 applies a first-stage Hedonic property price model to estimate preference for tree cover in urban communities using single-family house sales data from multiple property markets across the U.S. The study analyses how home owners' preference for tree cover vary across the landscape and across cities. Further, it identifies what factors affect these variations via the general inferences obtained from an internal meta-analysis. The study confirms the heterogeneity of preferences as affected by the differences in the abundance of tree cover in study locations, regional differences and household characteristics. These findings add to the hedonic literature and provide useful information for future urban planning. Chapter 4 focuses on cooperative management of invasive species in landscapes with mixed land ownerships. This study analyzes the effect of the land ownership on the management efforts between an infested municipality and an uninfested municipality when a transferable payment scheme is involved in the cooperative agreement. A dynamic optimization problem was set up to evaluate the case of Emerald ash borer (EAB) control in multiple jurisdictions in the Twin Cities, Minnesota. The results suggest that when the infested municipality has more public lands and when the transfer payments are efficiently used to implement greater control, the municipalities are more likely to commit to bargaining, and smaller transfer payments paid over a longer span of time are sufficient for optimal control of the spread of invasive species across the municipalities. The last chapter concludes the three studies and discusses the insights for future research.
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    Essays on the Use of Hedonic Price Models to Measure Welfare for Quality Changes in the Public Goods
    Zhang, Congwen (Virginia Tech, 2012-04-27)
    This dissertation consists of three essays on Hedonic price method which is widely used in non-market good evaluation. The first chapter outlines three topics involved and briefly discusses the motivations and methods, as well we some conclusions in each of the following chapters. Chapter 2 uses a conventional first stage hedonic price method to estimate the effect of an aquatic invasive species (Eurasian watermilfoil) on lakefront property values at selected Vermont lakes. Results indicate that as the primary component of total aquatic macrophyte growth in a lake Eurasian watermilfoil significantly and substantially affects lakefront property values. As Eurasian watermilfoil infests a lake, adding to the total macrophyte growth, property values can diminish by <1% to 16% for incremental increases in the infestation level. Hence, policies that successfully prevent infestations have significant economic benefits to owners of lakefront properties and local communities. Chapter 3 focused on a previously unexplored potential impact of 9/11—the impact it may have had on housing prices near mosques. Using a unique dataset that combines the locations of functioning mosques with housing transactions near the time of 9/11, combined with a generalized difference-in-differences framework, we find that housing prices decreased by approximately 7% ($10,559 for the average home) in areas near mosques along the east coast of the U.S. on average in the two years following the attacks. However, on the west coast we find no evidence that 9/11 caused a systematic decrease in housing prices near mosques. Chapter 4 begins from a conventional model of hedonic equilibrium where a nonmarket amenity is conveyed as an attribute of a differentiated traded good. Different metropolitan areas may have different equilibrium price functions due to geographic variation in consumer preferences, income, and production costs. We demonstrate that under relatively mild restrictions on the geographic extent of taste-based sorting, indicator variables for metro areas define "imperfect instruments" that can be used to identify bounds on demand curves. Bounds on demand curves correspond to ranges of partial equilibrium welfare measures for non-marginal changes in environmental quality. We find these ranges to be informative in a preliminary application to evaluating the benefits of reducing cultural eutrophication of lakes in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. The last chapter concludes and discusses the insights for future research.
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    Essays on Water Policy and Coupled Human and Natural Systems
    Weng, Weizhe (Virginia Tech, 2019-08-02)
    Human and freshwater ecosystems are intrinsically interconnected. To better design effective policies, modeling tools and valuation methods are necessary to help understanding the complex reciprocal linkages between ecosystem processes and human actions, and coupled human and natural systems (CNHS) sets up a critical paradigm to do so. It is thus of both academic and empirical appeal to integrate reliable economic valuation methods with tools and models from multiple disciplines in order to quantify the feedbacks between human and natural systems and to inform better policy design. Using freshwater resources as an example, this dissertation contains three essays which integrate natural science and economics models to understand how changes in human behavior and societal policies lead to changes in ecosystem services, and how changes in ecosystem services, in return, affect human decisions. The first two essays focus on agricultural nonpoint source pollution problems in United States and examines the impacts of potential water polices on both water polluters and water demanders. Specifically, in the first essay, a novel coupling between an ecological model of within-lake hydrodynamics and an economic model of hedonic property prices has been developed to quantify the connections between nutrient loading, lake water quality, and economic outcomes. Linking ecological processes with human decision-making provides a basis for enhanced evidence-based decision making in the context of reducing nonpoint-source pollution. In the second essay, an economic mathematical programming model is coupled with an agro-ecosystem model to investigate the behavioral adjustments and environmental pollution outcomes of water quality policies. A complete quantification of costs from all regulating sources are necessary to help pinpoint the efficient water policy design and reflecting the connection between human decisions and ecosystem processes. The third essay focus on the water quantity problem in another developed country, Australia. A discrete choice experiment method has been explored and used to provide estimates of willingness to pay for purchasing irrigation rights to restore a Ramsar-convention wetland. Water policy scenario described in this essay could directly affect the feedback between human and ecosystem processes and serve as a baseline for future planning and policy designs. By offering both conceptual and methodological advancements, this dissertation aims to improve the understanding of coupled human and natural systems and the implementation of water policies. This dissertation also provides a framework to establish multi-disciplinary dialogues and cooperation between scientists and economists in the search of efficient water polices.
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    Examining Implicit Price Variation for Lake Water Quality
    Swedberg, Kristen (Virginia Tech, 2020-12-16)
    Hedonic models are used to estimate implicit prices for water quality in housing markets. Recent studies aggregate sales across large spatial areas in scaled-up models leading to a concern that these models may overlook regional heterogeneity in water-quality preferences. We estimate scaled-up hedonic models comprised of multiple states and individual states and investigate how observations from subregions can differ. We find that the scaled-up model results are driven by select subregions. The results of this study call into question hedonic models using data for large geographic regions where substantial differences may arise across housing markets.
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    Examining Ways to Improve Weight Control Programs' Population Reach and Representativeness: A Discrete Choice Experiment of Financial Incentives
    You, Wen; Yuan, Yuan; Boyle, Kevin J.; Michaud, Tzeyu L.; Parmeter, Chris; Seidel, Richard W.; Estabrooks, Paul A. (2021-11-10)
    Background Both theoretical and empirical evidence supports the potential of modest financial incentives to increase the reach of evidence-based weight control programs. However, few studies exist that examine the best incentive design for achieving the highest reach and representativeness at the lowest cost and whether or not incentive designs may be valued differentially by subgroups that experience obesity-related health disparities. Methods A discrete choice experiment was conducted (n = 1232 participants; over 90% of them were overweight/obese) to collect stated preference towards different financial incentive attributes, including reward amount, program location, reward contingency, and payment form and frequency. Mixed logit and conditional logit models were used to determine overall and subgroup preference ranking of attributes. Using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data sample weights and the estimated models, we predicted US nationally representative participation rates by subgroups and examined the effect of offering more than one incentive design. External validity was checked by using a completed cluster randomized control trial. Results There were significant subgroup differences in preference toward incentive attributes. There was also a sizable negative response to larger incentive amounts among African Americans, suggesting that higher amounts would reduce participation from this population. We also find that offering participants a menu of incentive designs to choose from would increase reach more than offering higher reward amounts. Conclusions We confirmed the existence of preference heterogeneity and the importance of subgroup-targeted incentive designs in any evidence-based weight control program to maximize population reach and reduce health disparities.