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Browsing by Author "Seidl, Andrew, committee member"

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    Examining efficiency gains through combining revealed and stated preferences, and issues related to scope with contingent valuation
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013) Gebben, David J., author; Loomis, John B., advisor; Seidl, Andrew, committee member; Graff, Gregory, committee member; Goldstein, Joshua, committee member
    An increase in the statistical efficiency for non-market valuation techniques is often desired in order to narrow the confidence intervals and provide better policy recommendations for resource managers. This is important to assist the managers in conducting benefit-cost analysis for the scare resources at their disposal. This dissertation examines the gains that come from combining revealed and stated preference data, exploring how estimation techniques can reduce the variance of a WTP amount. This first parts of this dissertation looks at why resource managers would be interested in methods of combining Revealed and Stated preference data and measurement of the gains. One chapter does this by combining DC CVM with an MNL travel cost study. The following chapter examines the role anchoring can play in DB CVM studies for an onsite user of a beach resource. The final part of this dissertation studies the issue of scope in CVM studies through a meta-analysis. This dissertation finds that, in organizing the collected survey data, there are low cost methods to increase the efficiency of estimators that provide a significant reduction in variance. This reduction is critical for the resource manager wanting to examine if the project or policy would pass a benefit cost test. It also finds that the key factors necessary to reflect scope require more research with CVM.
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    Investments in watershed services: understanding a new arena of environmental governance in the western United States
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Huber-Stearns, Heidi Rebecca, author; Cheng, Antony S., advisor; Schultz, Courtney, committee member; Reid, Robin, committee member; Seidl, Andrew, committee member
    Issues around sustainably managing freshwater resources are one of the most challenging and timely issues affecting the globe. In response to rising social and ecological complexities, decision makers are faced with designing new policies and programs to effectively govern water resources. This shift towards new freshwater resource management approaches is in line with recent movement toward incentive-based mechanisms such as “Investments in Watershed Services” (IWS). The western United States contains one of the most concentrated IWS populations, in a time when population growth, intensifying land uses, and climate-induced environmental changes are stressing ecological systems in the region. My dissertation focuses on understanding this new arena of environmental governance aimed at freshwater conservation in the US West. Through three sets of data and analytical lenses I explore: the characterization of this new arena of governance, what led to its recent and significant growth, and what changes have occurred with respect to how such water resources were traditionally governed. I employ a mixed methods approach, using quantitative approaches to characterize the study population and temporal changes, and qualitative approaches to dive deeper into understanding specific phenomena. First, I improve understanding of IWS as an institution, and demonstrate the importance of dynamics between institutional factors for external context, program structure, and other related analytical domains in shaping how PWS is applied to water resources challenges globally. Through an institutional analysis of IWS and the use of cluster analysis to group programs around buyer types and management actions, I highlight the role of government, influence of geographic context, and role of both regional and local conditions in shaping IWS design and structure. Second, I demonstrate that government actors are essential to IWS in the region, expanding beyond existing regulations and traditional roles. This exploration of the role of government within adaptive governance shows the evolving and expanding role of government over time, from federal regulations driving early water quality management, then state legislation driving water quantity programs, and more recently, federal agencies partnering on local water source protection efforts. Third, I show how key individuals and organizations create voluntary IWS in response to risk, aligning policies, politics and problems into solution framing, which suggests policy process theories more explicitly consider social-ecological complexities. These programs constitute the most recent expansion of IWS in the US West, and applying a policy process theory sheds light into the formation of the IWS, and the political, economic, ecological and social components that aligned to make the programs possible. My research shows this new arena of environmental governance as adaptive, place and problem-based, learning and collaboration-focused, accepting of uncertainty, and containing nimble and adaptive government across scale. My work also creates a baseline of IWS in the region, and identifies areas for future research as IWS matures over time.
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    Nature's contributions to people: socio-economic assessments of strategies to conserve natural capital and guide the sustainable provision and equitable distribution of ecosystem services in developing countries
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Salcone, Jacob, author; Jones, Kelly W., advisor; Manning, Dale, committee member; Seidl, Andrew, committee member; Manson, Robert, committee member
    Natural resources continue to be unsustainably used and their benefits inequitably shared. In many instances economic incentives and resource management approaches have not led to the sustainable use or equitable distribution of the benefits of natural resources such as fisheries and forests. This has occurred in part because policy makers and natural resource users and managers, particularly in developing countries, lack information about the outcomes and impacts of current economic incentives that drive natural resource use behavior and potential alternative strategies for resource governance and management. This dissertation uses theories and approaches from the discipline of natural resource economics to measure the benefits of natural resource use under current governance approaches, evaluate the effectiveness of popular natural resource conservation strategies, and propose options for improving the effectiveness of those strategies in developing countries, thus contributing scientific evidence to the body of literature on the effectiveness of natural resource management approaches. In three chapters, it evaluates: 1) the effectiveness of a PES scheme in securing additional provision of watershed ecosystem services, 2) the elasticity of supply of watershed ecosystem services as a function of payments for forest conservation, and 3) the use of an ecosystem services perspective to measure the distribution of benefits from wild capture fisheries to different stakeholder groups. Chapter 1 finds that PES impacts may be somewhat offset by leakages; Chapter 2 finds that participation in PES programs could be increased by higher payments, but the relationship between payments and participation is non-linear; and Chapter 3 that an ecosystem services perspective can shed new light on managing fisheries for greatest local benefits and sustainability. These three independent analyses improve our understanding of natural resource management by dissecting resource management concepts, building upon existing ecosystem service valuation and evaluation methods, and supplying empirical evidence to resource management debates.
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    The total economic value of the National Park Service: a contingent valuation method analysis
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Quay, Brian, author; Loomis, John, advisor; Seidl, Andrew, committee member; Kling, Robert, committee member
    This thesis estimates the total economic value (TEV) of avoiding up to 40% cuts to the National Park Service (NPS) park lands and NPS programs. TEV is made up of visitor use and nonuse values (existence can bequest values). We use a Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) survey to estimate benefits generated by the NPS, from a nationwide perspective. Thus, in order to estimate the TEV of the NPS, we use the Turnbull estimator and a logit regression to estimate household-level willingness to pay (WTP) from the data collected in the CVM survey. This study, by nature, is a benefit analysis. It uses stated consumer preferences to estimate aggregate WTP. The mail and internet survey had a response rate of 18 percent with a sample size of 317. Depending on model specification we find conservative lower bound annual household WTP estimates for avoiding up to 40% cuts to NPS park lands of $243.39 and $194.20 for avoiding up to 40% cuts to NPS programs (both values were estimated using the Turnbull estimator), and upper bound estimates of $1,015.10 for avoiding up to 40% cuts to NPS park lands and $430.00 to avoid up to 40% cuts to NPS programs (both values were estimated using a logit model). By summing the above statistics, we find estimated annual household WTP for avoiding up to 40% cuts to the NPS ranging from $437.59 to $1,445.10. Applying the lower bound WTP estimate to 18 percent of the households in the United States (as consistent with the survey response rate, in order to treat nonresponses as 'no' votes), we conservatively estimate the annual TEV of avoiding up to 40% cuts to the NPS to be $9 billion. Using the upper bound household WTP estimate and applying it to the all households equates to an annual TEV of avoiding up to 40% cuts to the NPS to be $167 billion.
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    Three essays on public policies in Indonesia
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Tampubolon, Devanand Pandapotan, author; Pena, Anita Alves, advisor; Braunstein, Elissa, committee member; Cutler, Harvey, committee member; Seidl, Andrew, committee member
    This dissertation studies tax burden, tax compliance, and cooking fuel choice and energy policy in Indonesia. The three papers observe the impact of recent public policy changes in taxation and cooking fuel. The first paper comprehensively analyzes the burden of Value-Added Tax (VAT), focusing on current exemptions. This paper uses expenditure as the proxy of income or welfare to examine the VAT burden. This paper finds that the effective VAT rate is 4.51 percent nationally and weakly progressive. The effective VAT rate is relatively similar to other developing countries, but only half of the developed countries. The VAT burden is lower and more progressive in rural areas than in urban areas. The tax burden on food consumption is lower and regressive, while higher and progressive for nonfood consumption. While households in non-Java islands spend more than households in Java, this paper finds that the effective tax rate in non-Java is less than in Java. The first paper also simulates the impact of the VAT reform implemented in April 2022. The result shows that if the exempted items are maintained (by only changing nontaxable to taxable but still excused from VAT) and the tax rate increase from 10 percent to 11 percent, the tax burden will increase proportionally to all expenditure deciles by 10 percent. However, the calculations suggest that if all exemptions are excluded, the tax burden will be double that of the previous tax regime and the poorest households will get hit more than the richest. The second paper studies the impact of the high VAT threshold introduced in 2014 on small firms' reported revenues. The threshold is set to help both the tax authorities and small businesses. However, the existence of a threshold will be counterproductive in its strength of providing transaction information. Due to a lack of trading information, the tax authority will have more difficulties assessing the tax obligation owed by the taxpayers. This paper utilizes quasi-natural experiments and Difference-in Difference regression to explore the treatment effect. The treatment group is wholesale firms, and the control group is retail firms. This paper finds that wholesale reports lower revenues by 58-70 percent for four years than those in the retail sectors. This paper also finds that the decrease in reported revenues is larger than the reported costs. This may lead us to conclude that the lower reported revenues are due to underreporting revenues. The third paper studies the determinants of cooking fuel choices and energy policy in Indonesia amid the zero kerosene program. This study finds that government policy is important for the transition to clean energy. One percent increase in the distribution of LPG Kits increases the probability of clean energy usage by 2%. The impact is almost double in urban areas compared to rural areas. All socioeconomic and demographic factors significantly influence the household choice of cooking fuel. Households with higher income and wealth, better house infrastructure, formal education, electric network, and mobile phone are more likely to be clean energy users. On the other hand, working women, household heads working in agriculture, and bigger household sizes are identic to unclean energy. The age and gender of the head have different effects on urban and rural households. In line with the findings of previous studies, household income is still the main determinant of clean energy. One percent increase in income will impact the probability of clean energy by 10 to 13 percentage points. With steady GDP growth of around 5-6% yearly, Indonesia has a good path to transition to clean energy. The three essays complement each other to strengthen Indonesia's economic development. Taxation is essential for adequate and sustainable public funding and clean energy is for better living and productivity. Chapter One provides insight into estimates of the VAT burden in society. This will help the government to improve VAT revenue with a less negative impact on society, especially for low-income people. Chapter Two provides insight for government to improve the utilization of information from the VAT system and tax compliance. Adequate and sustainable self-funding through taxation will enable the government to provide sustainable clean cooking fuel, which may help society become healthier and more productive. Chapter Three has the implication that tax policy can be used to promote clean cooking fuel. The current VAT exemption on households that use electric power up to 6600 VA should be maintained to encourage low-income families to use clean cooking fuel.
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    Valuing economic benefits of water's ecosystem services with non-market valuation methods and regional input-output model
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2011) Ng, Kawa, author; Loomis, John, advisor; Goldstein, Joshua, committee member; Graff, Gregory, committee member; Seidl, Andrew, committee member
    Colorado has the highest trout angler participation rate in the United States, but the economic benefits of the state's anglers were last estimated more than two decades ago. Using survey data sampled in Colorado's stocked public reservoirs in 2009, Chapter one showed that trout anglers' net economic benefits were more than twice as much as non-trout anglers'. Values estimated from Travel Cost Method produced angler day consumer surpluses of US$191.60 and $61.68 for trout and non-trout anglers respectively. Values from Contingent Valuation Method are $196.48 (trout) and $73.84 (non-trout) for the mean consumer surplus, while the median are $164.53 (trout) and $56.78 (non-trout). Thus the relative values of fishing for trout versus other species are robust to non-market valuation methods, and the two valuation methods show convergent validity. Chapter two investigates the change in angler trips as a response to current season stocking level, in order to calculate the net economic benefit per fish stocked for selected hatcheries-stocked reservoirs in Colorado. Besides the unique objective to derive a marginal fish value for stocked trout in Colorado's reservoirs, this study also differs from existing studies in that it does not arbitrarily assume the proportion of stocked fish caught by anglers. As an alternative, this study utilized the relationships among catchable trout stocking level, angler catch rate, annual trips and valuation estimates to derive economic values of stocked fish: $0.38 for trout and $1.88 for non-trout. National forests contribute a substantial portion of water to the public supply in western states. In particular, units in the national forest system in Colorado are estimated to provide 68% of the water supply originating in Colorado in an average year. Chapter three used a customized value-added approach along with a state-wide input-output model to derive the marginal economic contributions to each economic sector in the state of Colorado. The approach used in this chapter differed from the traditionally applied method, in that it avoided over-estimating the value of water from implicitly assigning zero opportunity cost to all non-water inputs. Instead, the gross absorption coefficients for the water supply sector were used for adjusting the economic impacts. A method of calculating the economic contributions attributable Colorado's national forest water to each sector in the state economy was demonstrated. On an average year, summing across all sectors, water originating from Colorado's national forests contributed to a total of 4,738 jobs, $215,473,985 in labor income, and $264,485,290 in value-added for Colorado's economy.