- 226 views
- 384 downloads
Estimating the Willingness-to-Pay for Agri-Environmental BMP Adoption in Alberta's South Saskatchewan Region
-
- Author / Creator
- LIN, ZHAOCHAO
-
The overall objective of this study was to determine the economic benefits associated with wildlife habitat and water quality enhancement in Alberta’s South Saskatchewan Region as results of agri-environmental BMP adoptions. Stated preference questionnaires were designed to elicit the associated non-market values by using water quality ladders and numbers of at-risk species as the survey attributes for water quality and wildlife habitat questionnaire respectively.Parametric results from logit models showed that Alberta South Saskatchewan Residents valued wildlife habitat or water quality improvements. The estimated mean annual household WTP for wildlife BMP programs ranged from $71 - $206 for one-unit improvement in the numbers of net not-at-risk species. The wildlife habitat survey results showed that urban, female as well as higher household income respondents were more willing to pay for BMP programs. In addition, awareness on farming practices and the period of the programs also could impact the values of WTP. On the other hand, the estimated mean annual household WTP ranged from $100 - $113 for changing Bow River Basin or Oldman River Basin water quality from fishable to swimmable, while only gender impacted the values of WTP. The survey data also indicated that there was a consensus between rural and urban individual regarding future government spending on water quality improvements, but no consensus on future wildlife habitat investments.The estimated aggregated welfare measure was approximately $655 - $818 million for wildlife habitat programs, and $338-$381 million for one-level water quality improvement in Bow River Basin and Oldman River Basin. Overall, the results support Growing Forward, however, the funding amount provided to agricultural producers are much less than our estimated aggregated welfare measures. To improve future BMP adoptions as well as to enhance wildlife and waterquality in SSR, government authorities need to relax the requirement of Environmental Farm Plan (EFP) and to take actions to improvement BMP and GF awareness.
-
- Graduation date
- Spring 2019
-
- Type of Item
- Thesis
-
- Degree
- Master of Science
-
- License
- Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. The author reserves all other publication and other rights in association with the copyright in the thesis and, except as herein before provided, neither the thesis nor any substantial portion thereof may be printed or otherwise reproduced in any material form whatsoever without the author's prior written permission.