Wetlands play a crucial role in the agricultural landscapes of Canada's Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) but are being lost to agricultural and urban development. There is increased interest from governments and conservation organizations in restoring previously drained wetlands, but these projects are costly and associated with intangible ecosystem service benefits. We conduct a stated preference survey of 1,999 people in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba to elicit preferences for provincial wetland restoration programs using an incentive compatible valuation question. We estimate welfare measures from these choices and find that people are willing to pay on average $368 per year to restore 10% of lost wetlands in their home province when they feel their choice is consequential. Willingness to pay (WTP) estimates are consistently highest in Manitoba and exhibit heterogeneity with respect to respondent characteristics in all provinces. Our results show that the aggregated per hectare social benefits of wetland restoration can exceed the per hectare costs of restoration, but the per hectare social benefits diminish as restored wetland area increases.

Obtaining valid answers from respondents has been a central concern of stated preference (SP) studies. In contrast, sample representativeness is the main focus of current public polling accuracy debates, largely due to declining survey response rates. We introduce the multi-level regression and post-stratification (MRP) modelling approach to welfare estimation using discrete choice models. Through Monte Carlo simulations and two water resource valuation surveys, we demonstrate how MRP can help researchers to (i) generate population-relevant welfare measures from non-representative samples, (ii) estimate preference heterogeneity and distributional impacts across people, and (iii) evaluate the impacts of removing potentially invalid responses using a consistent target population frame. We propose MRP as a complementary modelling approach for non-market valuation data and discuss its opportunities and limitations.

This study examines how current conditions shape people's preferences for public policies that improve environmental quality. We use a stated preference survey with experimentally varied status quo levels in a setting with a spatially explicit freshwater health score across a wide geographic area. We provide causal evidence that people have a higher willingness to pay when status quo water quality levels are worse. These findings highlight the importance of accurately describing the status quo condition in stated preference studies. This study also provides empirical insights into the monetized economic benefits of landscape-wide water quality improvements in Canada. We find that the public's willingness to pay for water quality improvements varies by spatial scale and proximity to the policy site. Local improvements in home basins or sub-basins are estimated to have a higher willingness to pay than distant ones. Recreational users have substantially higher willingness to pay, underscoring the joint role of non-use and use values.

Travel cost data used in recreation demand analysis are assumed to reflect actual behavior. However, these data are typically collected through surveys, which raises concerns about the accuracy of respondents’ self-reports. Recall issues and associated biases, such as rounding bias and telescoping error, are well documented in empirical research and affect estimates of the benefits of recreation. We study whether trip recall can be improved through dedicated survey tools. We implement split-sample treatments to examine how response formats for trip-number elicitation and recall aids influence reported trip behavior and associated welfare estimates. The survey of more than 3,000 Polish residents asked about their past trips to the Baltic seaside. Our findings indicate that a drop-down response format lowers the frequency of round numbers of trips compared to a commonly used text-box response format, arguably increasing the precision of the number. We also observe that providing a timeline graph illustrating the recall period may increase the number of zero-trip responses and decrease the overall reported number of trips, which suggests a possible reduction in telescoping error. We further find these two recall-aiding approaches lead to lower estimated consumer surplus derived from recreation demand models.

This paper examines food price changes before and during the COVID‐19 pandemic over a 5‐year period from 2017 to 2021 in Fox Lake, a remote Indigenous community in Northern Alberta, and compares them to provincial trends in Alberta. Using retail price data for 51 food items from The Northern , the sole grocery store in Fox Lake, and Statistics Canada records, we analyze differences in food price levels, temporal changes in food price indices, and their implications for living wages. We identify significant food price disparities, with Fox Lake exhibiting consistently higher price levels. During the pandemic, we observe mixed trends: disparities narrowed for perishable goods but widened for non‐perishable items. The Fox Lake food price index fluctuated over time, peaking above Alberta's in 2018 but remaining lower during the pandemic. These trends may reflect targeted strategies by The Northern to reduce disparities for essential items and stabilize prices, potentially supported by the Nutrition North Canada subsidy. Despite smaller percentage increases in food prices in Fox Lake, the higher share of food costs in total expenses resulted in a greater proportional impact on living wages. These descriptive results contrast with reports showing pandemic‐related food price spikes in other remote Indigenous communities.

River deltas around the world have experienced ecological decline due to upstream development and human activities. However, assessing the monetized benefits of ecosystem restoration is challenging due to the less tangible nature of many values that people hold for these natural areas. This paper quantifies the non-use values for river delta ecological conservation using a stated preference survey. The empirical application is the Saskatchewan River Delta in Canada where we develop and administer a national survey to elicit people’s preferences for restoration scenarios with changing fish and wildlife population levels and changes in the extent of habitat in good ecological condition. We find that Canadians are willing to pay for river delta restoration improvements, and preferences for restoration options are heterogeneous across the population. Models with nonlinear attribute levels fit the choice data better than linear attribute specifications suggesting the presence of diminishing marginal willingness to pay as ecological improvements increase. The annual monetized benefits for Saskatchewan River Delta future scenarios are estimated to be $79 to $223 per household depending on the level of restoration efforts. This study contributes to the empirical evidence that the benefits of nature accrue to people that live far away from natural areas.

This paper assesses the economic feasibility of a novel market-based instrument for wetland conservation-a certification scheme for agricultural products. Using a stated preference survey involving wheat flour purchase decisions, we estimate that consumers are willing to pay 25%-29% more for wheat flour produced on fields with restored wetlands. These consumer price premiums translate to a 11%-12% increase in the prices received by producers after accounting for supply chain costs. Producer benefits of adopting the wetland certification scheme generally outweigh the wetland restoration costs for a typical Saskatchewan field, but the change in profits is minimal. The results suggest that this voluntary wetland certification scheme may be a useful addition to the wetland conservation policy toolbox, but will face barriers to producer adoption.

This article synthesizes the water quality hedonic property literature and develops a Canadian freshwater amenity valuation model to derive spatially explicit national benefit estimates. We use over 600 meta-observations from 29 hedonic price studies to estimate price elasticities for changes in water quality measured by Secchi disk depth. We find that a 10% increase in water quality is associated with a 1.60% price increase for residential properties within 500 meters of the lakeshore. A distance-decay effect is observed, with a smaller price premium of 0.08% for properties located 500 to 1,000 meters from the lakeshore. These elasticities are integrated with spatial data to estimate the amenity values of a potential 10% water quality improvement across Canada's freshwater lakes. The estimated local amenity benefits total $8.2 billion, with Ontario receiving 55% of the benefits and British Columbia experiencing the highest per-household gain among the provinces.

Freshwater lakes are increasingly threatened by cultural eutrophication, caused by human activities such as agriculture and sewage outflows that over-fertilize waterbodies with nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus, often triggering harmful algal blooms (HABs). Addressing these issues—which are both complex and costly—requires informed decision-making. Economic valuation of lake ecosystem services can contribute to informed decision-making by estimating the benefits of lake restoration and identifying acceptable trade-offs amongst ecosystem services—especially when designed using economics, environmental science, and local knowledge. We present a case study of collaboration with a community using an economic tool known as a discrete choice experiment survey to assess community preferences and willingness to pay for restoring a Canadian lake facing worsening water quality. Results show economic benefits of restoration far outweigh the costs, as well as strong preferences for non-use ecosystem services like biodiversity, highlighting the collective value placed on lake health in this community and contributing to targeted management efforts. These results contribute to the growing literature showing substantial benefits to society from restoring lakes, and showcase the value of drawing on multiple ways of knowing to guide environmental decision-making.

Economic analyses of environmental policy projects typically use pre-existing estimates of welfare measures that are then transferred over time to the policy relevant periods. Understanding how stable and predictable these welfare estimates are over time is important for applying them in policy. Yet, revealed preference models of recreation demand have received few temporal stability assessments compared to other nonmarket valuation methods. We use a large administrative panel dataset on campground reservations covering 10 years to study temporal stability and predictability of environmental quality welfare estimates. Welfare estimates are statistically different across years in 62% of the comparisons, and this ranges from 47%-71% depending on modeling assumptions. Using an event study design, we find evidence that week-specific welfare estimates are stable after an initial adjustment week in response to a change in environmental quality. Our findings further reveal that using 2 years of data in the modeling compared to a single year improves the prediction of future welfare measure estimates substantially, but further prediction improvements are modest when including more than 2 years of data. Predictions of welfare estimates are more consistent when using data closer in time to the prediction year. We discuss the implications of our results for using revealed preference studies in policy analysis.

Whether meat-related terms should be permitted on the labels of plant-based meat alternatives is hotly debated. Utilizing survey data featuring a discrete choice experiment, we examine consumer responses to plant-based meat alternatives under three labeling scenarios: no restrictions; a ban on meat-related terms; and a requirement for a qualifying statement. We find stronger preferences for plant-based meat alternatives in an unregulated labeling environment versus a ban on meat-related terms or when label qualifiers are present. Label qualifiers perform similarly to a ban. A latent class model identifies consumer segments with heterogeneous responses to the labeling policy environment.

CONTEXT: Wetland drainage has become an increasingly important conservation issue in the Prairie Pothole region of North America. Financial incentives for annual crop production have driven wetland drainage for decades, and the removal of wetlands has detrimentally impacted key wetland ecosystem services such as wildlife habitat and carbon sequestration. Past studies which model the farmer's decision to drain wetlands often operate on the assumption that drained wetlands will produce similar yields to upland regions of the field. OBJECTIVE: Our objective is to estimate the effects of wetlands and their buffer zones on crop yields, farm financial performance, and incentives for wetland drainage in the Prairie Pothole Region. METHODS: We combine precision yield data and detailed wetland mapping data from 36 fields in the Black and Dark Brown soil zones of Saskatchewan, Canada to estimate the agronomic impacts of wetlands and their buffer areas on crop yields. Then, we incorporate these yield effects into a farm accounting model with three wetland drainage scenarios to estimate the annual per cultivated acre net benefits of wetland drainage in the study area, and compare these results to those estimated without wetland yield effects. RESULTS: We find that yields in wetland basins are relatively lower than the field's average yield, with substantial variability with respect to crop type, soil zone, and annual precipitation. Wetland drainage can mitigate these yield effects, but yields in drained wetland basins still fail to meet the field average yield. These yield effects can extend more than 50 m beyond the wetland boundary. We find that these effects substantially impact the net benefits of wetland drainage. The returns from wetland drainage increase when yield effects are considered. On average, full wetland drainage within the study area increases net benefits by $17 to $33 per cultivated acre relative to full wetland restoration. SIGNIFICANCE: The results demonstrate the importance of considering wetland and buffer zone yield effects in wetland drainage decisions, improve our understanding of wetland costs, and potentially inform policy development and the design of incentives for wetland conservation in agricultural landscapes.

Wetland conservation continues to be a pressing issue as wetlands continue to be lost due to urban, industrial, and agricultural expansion. This paper synthesizes the current knowledge about wetland conservation economics in Canada, with a focus on prairie landscapes. We review the methods economists use to empirically measure the costs (i.e., supply) and benefits (i.e., demand) of wetlands and their ecosystem services. We find a wide range of wetland conservation cost estimates both across studies and across wetlands suggesting an important role for targeting. For the benefits side, we outline the wetland ecosystem service conceptual framework, describe the main approaches used in wetland benefit valuation, and review the sparse empirical evidence. The paper concludes with a call for more careful empirical evidence demonstrating the economic benefits of wetlands that can be compared to conservation costs operationalized into policies.

One of the major rationales for improving water quality is to increase the benefits and enjoyment of water-based recreation yet quantifying these behavioural responses and values remains challenging. We apply a recreation demand model using a large, multi-year data set on camping trips and water quality advisories across provincial parks in Alberta. The recreation data includes information on over 447,000 trips by 225,700 individuals over a five-year period. We use a nested logit model to understand people's recreation choices to one of 76 campgrounds. We find that the presence of a water quality advisory has a negative impact on the likelihood of visiting an affected campground. On the one hand, this suggests that advisories work in limiting human contact with unsafe water, but these behavioural changes also carry economic costs. We estimate that the welfare costs of a beach advisory are $14 per camping trip. We use the model to evaluate the welfare impacts of removing all beach advisories. These results can be used to inform the design of policies aimed to improve lake water quality.

Cultural eutrophication—the pollution of water bodies with nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus from human activities—and associated harmful algal blooms are key issues facing decision-makers, yet costs are often identified as a barrier to restoration. When designed in collaboration with impacted communities, economic valuation of lake ecosystem services can contribute to informed environmental decision-making by quantifying economic benefits of lake restoration and understanding the trade-offs people are willing to make. Here, we collaborate with the local community, stakeholders, and decision-makers to develop and implement a discrete choice experiment survey to estimate people’s preferences and willingness to pay for restoring Elk/Beaver Lake, Canada, which has been experiencing worsening harmful algal blooms and other water quality issues. Over half of survey respondents (66%) indicated that water quality issues impact their use of the lake, and many (52%) indicated they did not feel safe swimming in or allowing their pets to drink from the lake (64%). Responses to the choice experiment are analyzed using choice models which reveal that the annual economic benefits of lake restoration across different model specifications ranged from $141 to $292 CAD per household with substantial heterogeneity across people. The aggregate annual benefits of lake restoration are $27 to $55 million which is notably greater than the estimated costs of restoration plans. This study contributes to the growing literature suggesting that there are substantial benefits to society from restoring lakes, thus the perception of cost as an insurmountable barrier to restoration of bloom-affected lakes requires reconsideration.

Differential impacts of policies or changes in environmental conditions on people is a growing area of interest to decision-makers, yet remains an often neglected area of study for the environmental valuation literature. Using data from a large national survey of over 24,000 people conducted in Canada, this paper implements a latent class Kuhn-Tucker recreation demand model to assess differences in preferences and values for nature-based activities. Preferences are disaggregated by self-reported Indigeneity, immigration status, and gender. We find that Indigenous people receive 63% greater benefits from participating in nature-based activities compared to non-Indigenous people living in Canada. Immigrants have the lowest participation in, and benefits associated with, nature-based activities. Similarly, women receive 21% lesser benefits associated with nature-based activities when compared to men. These results demonstrate that Indigenous peoples may be more vulnerable to adverse impacts on nature-based activities such as land-use changes, climate change, and government policies. The study also highlights the importance of disaggregated data and incorporating aspects of identity in the ecosystem service literature towards more equitable decision-making and reconciliation.

Birding is one of the most popular recreational activities, but bird populations have been declining worldwide. Understanding how much people benefit from local bird populations levels, species richness and their preferences can help inform bird conservation management. This paper uses eBird data and random utility models to assess the birders’ preferences and welfare for trips to local areas. The sample eBird citizen science data includes 35,656 trips by 290 individual birders to 1227 unique birding hotspots in Alberta, Canada. The economic value of seeing one additional bird species during a trip is estimated to be $0.68 on average. We estimated a nonlinear relationship between the utility and number of bird species suggesting satiation in recreation preferences, and the highest MWTP is estimated to be in the summer and fall seasons. Bird species at risk, based on Alberta’s strategy for the management of species at risk, are valued almost ten times higher as seeing other types of bird species. We also estimate individualized choice models and find that preference for species richness is heterogeneous across birders. Results of a combinatorial test find that the individualized choice models produce average welfare estimates that are 67% higher than the single model but the difference is not statistically significant. The members of eBird represent a convenience sample that may not constitute the general population. Thus along with proper weighting, these benefit estimates produced in this research can help inform future bird conservation management decisions including alternative funding mechanisms.

Differential impacts of policies or changes in environmental conditions on people is a growing area of interest to decision-makers, yet remains an often neglected area of study for the environmental valuation literature. Using data from a large national survey of over 24,000 people conducted in Canada, this paper implements a latent class Kuhn-Tucker recreation demand model to assess differences in preferences and values for nature-based activities. Preferences are disaggregated by self-reported Indigeneity, immigration status, and gender. We find that Indigenous people receive 63% greater benefits from participating in nature-based activities compared to non-Indigenous people living in Canada. Immigrants have the lowest participation in, and benefits associated with, nature-based activities. Similarly, women receive 21% lesser benefits associated with nature-based activities when compared to men. These results demonstrate that Indigenous peoples may be more vulnerable to adverse impacts on nature-based activities such as land-use changes, climate change, and government policies. The study also highlights the importance of disaggregated data and incorporating aspects of identity in the ecosystem service literature towards more equitable decision-making and reconciliation.

When participating in recreation individuals decide on where to go (locations) and when to participate (which time periods), and they respond to changes in external factors (e.g., environmental quality changes, provision of incentives). In examining economic decision-making, economists focus mostly on location choices, thus the behavioral and welfare impacts of the incentives associated with time choices are largely unknown. In this paper, we develop and estimate a flexible econometric model that combines spatial and temporal choices. The model is applied to examine individuals’ location and time choices of their recreation trips in response to extended recreation seasons that are proposed to encourage hunting for wildlife disease management. The data are from an online revealed and stated preference survey of recreational hunters in Alberta, Canada. We find that individuals substitute activities spatially and temporally, take more hunting trips, and gain welfare benefits when they can more flexibly choose the time of activities. Our findings show that increases in time flexibility can be used as an incentive to encourage beneficial outcomes.