The non-market benefits of early and partial gains in managing threatened salmon.

Threatened species are increasingly dependent on conservation investments for persistence and recovery. Information that resource managers could use to evaluate investments-such as the public benefits arising from alternative conservation designs-is typically scarce because conservation benefits arise outside of conventional markets. Moreover, existing studies that measure the public benefits of conserving threatened species often do not measure the benefits from partial gains in species abundance that fall short of official recovery, or the benefits from achieving gains in species abundance that happen earlier in time.

Defining the economic scope for ecosystem-based fishery management.

The emergence of ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM) has broadened the policy scope of fisheries management by accounting for the biological and ecological connectivity of fisheries. Less attention, however, has been given to the economic connectivity of fisheries. If fishers consider multiple fisheries when deciding where, when, and how much to fish, then management changes in one fishery can generate spillover impacts in other fisheries.

A comparison of regional and national values for recovering threatened and endangered marine species in the United States.

It is generally acknowledged that willingness-to-pay (WTP) estimates for environmental goods exhibit some degree of spatial variation. In a policy context, spatial variation in threatened and endangered species values is important to understand, as the benefit stream from policies affecting threatened and endangered species may vary locally, regionally, or among certain population segments. In this paper we present WTP estimates for eight different threatened and endangered marine species estimated from a stated preference choice experiment.

The importance of survey content: testing for the context dependency of the New Ecological Paradigm Scale.

Using a regression-based analysis of a survey of U.S. households, we demonstrate that both environmental concern, as measured by the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) Scale, and facets of environmental concern, as measured by three NEP factors, are influenced by survey context.

Are environmental attitudes influenced by survey context? An investigation of the context dependency of the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) Scale.

General environmental attitudes are often measured with questions added to surveys about specific environmental or non-environmental issues. Using results from a large-scale national survey on the protection of threatened and endangered marine species, we examine whether the context of the survey in which New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) Scale items are asked influence measured environmental concern. In this application the role that specific threatened or endangered species play in affecting responses to NEP Scale items is explored using a combination of non-parametric and parametric approaches.

Public willingness to pay for recovering and downlisting threatened and endangered marine species.

Nonmarket valuation research has produced economic value estimates for a variety of threatened, endangered, and rare species around the world. Although over 40 value estimates exist, it is often difficult to compare values from different studies due to variations in study design, implementation, and modeling specifications. We conducted a stated-preference choice experiment to estimate the value of recovering or downlisting 8 threatened and endangered marine species in the United States: loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta), leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea), North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis), North Pacific right whale (Eubalaena japonica), upper Willamette River Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), Puget Sound Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), Hawaiian monk seals (Monachus schauinslandi), and smalltooth sawfish (Pristis pectinata).

Valuing improvements to threatened and endangered marine species: an application of stated preference choice experiments.

Non-market valuation research has produced value estimates for over forty threatened and endangered (T&E) species, including mammals, fish, birds, and crustaceans. Increasingly, Stated Preference Choice Experiments (SPCE) are utilized for valuation, as the format offers flexibility for policy analysis and may reduce certain types of response biases relative to the more traditional Contingent Valuation method. Additionally, SPCE formats can allow respondents to make trade-offs among multiple species, providing information on the distinctiveness of preferences for different T&E species.