Browsing by Author "Fooks, Jacob R."
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Item Addressing Social Dilemmas with Mascots, Information and Graphics(Department of Applied Economics and Statistics, University of Delaware, Newark, DE., 2018-01) Butler, Juliana M.; Fooks, Jacob R.; Messer, Kent D.; Palm-Forster, Leah H.Item Continuous Attribute Values in a Simulation Environment: Offshore Energy Production and Mid-Atlantic Beach Visitation(Department of Applied Economics and Statistics, University of Delaware, Newark, DE., 2017-06) Fooks, Jacob R.; Messer, Kent D.; Duke, Joshua M.; Johnson, Janet B.; Parsons, George R.This research measures the welfare losses to beachgoers from the visual disamenity associated with offshore energy projects. We use a contingent-behavior approach in a field setting wherein respondents use a simulation to control the placement of offshore wind turbines and/or oil platforms in their choices. Our model allows for valuation results with continuous, instead of discrete, spatial resolution. We analyze the data using a duration or survival model consistent with random utility theory and recover an expression for willingness-to-pay as a function of distance of shore. We find three distinct clusters of participant responses. Most participants were relatively accepting of the wind turbines and had a much more elastic damage function as compared to oil platforms. On the other hand, a minority of participants displayed a strong aversion to any offshore installations, and had a higher level of damage from turbines instead of oil platforms.Item Endogenous entry of landowners into conservation markets over time(University of Delaware, 2016) Fooks, Jacob R.This research examines the effectiveness of different conservation auction formats in an endogenous entry setting. Induced value auction lab experiments are used to test behavior in both dynamic and static auction structures. The results support prior results on the importance of cost effectiveness in purchasing decisions, and further show that past results may have been understated by ignoring dynamic elements like strategic entry and underbidding that arise in a dynamic endogenous entry environment.Item Essays on computational applications in land and environmental economics(University of Delaware, 2014) Fooks, Jacob R.This dissertation presents three papers. The first considers a new approach to measuring and estimating willingness-to-pay for the class of nonmarket amenities with spatially explicit components. The second examines the significance, and a possible solution for poorly observed benefits in a conservation planning setting. The third reports on experiments in mechanisms for funding the development of coastal infrastructure, a spatially explicit public good, given complex inundation dynamics.Item Machine Learning Based Policy to Ease Information Asymmetry in Non-Point Pollution Management(Department of Applied Economics and Statistics, University of Delaware, Newark, DE., 2017-03) Fooks, Jacob R.; Messer, Kent D.; Suter, Jordan F.This research examines how an artificial neural network incorporating high-frequency monitoring data and natural system dynamics can inform policies that regulate an environmental externality with inherent information asymmetry. Using an experiment with both students and agricultural producers we study strategic behavior under various policies and measure participants’ relative values for different levels of information accuracy under such policies. First, we show that a neural-network-based recursive filter can be applied to monitoring data to estimate an individual polluter’s contribution to the ambient level of pollution, in essence, turning nonpoint sources into estimated point sources. We then test the implications of this result using an economic experiment that explores the effects of spatial relationships and the information structure of policies on behavior and preferences. The results of the experiments show that participants change their emissions in response to both policy and information treatments and that there are no significant differences in behavior between professional and student participants. However, we find that the agricultural producers are more willing than student participants to pay for policies that more accurately target the individual sources of pollution. This latter result suggests a strong preference for polluter-pay policies instead of ambient-based policies amongst producers, even if they do not necessarily lead to higher total profits.Item Spatial Attribution in Nonpoint Source Pollution Policy(Department of Applied Economics and Statistics, University of Delaware, Newark, DE., 2018-01) Fooks, Jacob R.; Messer, Kent D.; Suter, Jordan F.This research uses experiments involving student and farmer participants to explore the informational structure of nonpoint source pollution policies in a spatial, physically realistic stream setting with high frequency end of stream sensing. The data allows for an approximate solution to the “attribution” problem using an artificial neural network based recursive filter. This provides estimates of individual parcel contributions to the ambient pollution level. These estimates are noisy, and prove to have an interesting endogenous error structure. This is incorporated into a policy which imposes differentiated taxes on polluters. Laboratory experiments compare this estimated pollution source policy, ambient exogenous targeted tax policy, and a perfect information policy interacted with corresponding information sets. After taking part in all treatments, participants’ values for these different policies were measured using a voting mechanism. Additional information on the part of the regulator leads to increased production over the efficient level, with additional participant information exacerbating the problem. Even though the ambient policies performed better in aggregate, the voting data indicated positive willingness-to-pay for the estimated policy by some students who were located to strategically benefit from this information, while farmer subjects had a large positive willingness-to-pay for exact information, irrespective of parcel location.Item Testing Policies That Use Continuous Nutrient Sensing by Drinking Water Utilities to Reduce Non-Point Source Pollution under Climate Variability(Department of Applied Economics and Statistics, University of Delaware, Newark, DE., 2017-03) Grand, Linda; Fooks, Jacob R.; Messer, Kent D.More-frequent extreme weather events due to climate change are expected to increase operation costs for drinking water utilities, in part from increased non-point source (NPS) pollution from agricultural land. High-frequency, high-quality sensors can help utilities better monitor water quality and utilities could use this information in programs that subsidize upstream producers to improve the quality of water they receive. Such a subsidy could be based on ambient pollution—paying producers directly based on their pollution abatement—or targeted production—paying producers to implement specific practices that reduce pollution. This distinction has implications for the structure of contracts, distribution of payments, and, most notably, allocations of damage from extreme weather events to producers and the utility. Under an ambient-based subsidy, risks associated with weather are shared by producers. Under a production-targeted subsidy, the utility bears risk posed by severe weather. We use an economic experiment involving operational data from a municipal water utility to study producer responses to a theoretically equivalent ambient-based and targeted subsidy to improve water quality under various weather scenarios. We find that the level of risk associated with weather variability affects producers’ behaviors in response to subsidies. The results suggest that both types of subsidies lead to improved social welfare and decreased pollution and that production-based subsidies, which can be implemented using real-time sensing technologies, minimize the utility’s economic cost and the social cost of damage. We also find that both types of subsidies become more effective as weather variability and the likelihood of extreme events increase. Key Points: • By offering subsidies to upstream producers for watershed protection, drinking water utilities can decrease their costs. • High-quality data from continuous water-quality sensors can increase the effectiveness of subsidies by targeting individual producers • As the likelihood of extreme weather events increases, both ambient pollution and targeted production subsidies become more effective