Willingness to Pay Estimation When Protest Beliefs are not Separable from the Public Good Definition

Public good attributes that are correlated with protest beliefs but not separable from the good's value, would affect stated preference estimates of the WTP for the public good. Survey data collected to value a program to prevent ecosystem losses on Nevada rangelands, where the majority of land is publicly owned and managed, reveal more than half of the respondents exhibiting some protest belief. Of these, about 60% voted 'yes' to some nonzero bid amount. By treating protest beliefs and opposition to the proposed program as separate concepts, we systematically analyze their determinants and impacts on WTP. In this framework, people with protest beliefs may or may not vote 'no' to all bids and people may, without being protesters, answer 'no' to all dollar amounts. Multinomial logit regression results suggest that factors motivating people to protest and/or oppose the proposed program are so diverse that a single model does not provide a good fit. We estimate nested models and conclude that different underlying processes determine WTP for "protesters" ($34.02) and "non-protesters" ($69.56).Stated preferences; Willingness to pay; Protest responses; Rangelands; Valuation of ecosystem services

Willingness to Pay Estimation When Protest Beliefs are not Separable from the Public Good Definition

Public good attributes that are correlated with protest beliefs but not separable from the good\u27s value, would affect stated preference estimates of the WTP for the public good. Survey data collected to value a program to prevent ecosystem losses on Nevada rangelands, where the majority of land is publicly owned and managed, reveal more than half of the respondents exhibiting some protest belief. Of these, about 60% voted \u27yes\u27 to some nonzero bid amount. By treating protest beliefs and opposition to the proposed program as separate concepts, we systematically analyze their determinants and impacts on WTP. In this framework, people with protest beliefs may or may not vote \u27no\u27 to all bids and people may, without being protesters, answer \u27no\u27 to all dollar amounts. Multinomial logit regression results suggest that factors motivating people to protest and/or oppose the proposed program are so diverse that a single model does not provide a good fit. We estimate nested models and conclude that different underlying processes determine WTP for protesters ($34.02) and non-protesters ($69.56)

The 2005 Nevada Rangeland Vegetation Survey General Public Questionnaire and Survey of Responses

The 2005 Nevada Rangeland Vegetation Survey was conducted as a collaborative effort between the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) Department of Resource Economics and the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension (UNCE) Natural Resources Program to fulfill two roles