Job Market Paper
Water Quality and Coastal Recreation Demand: A Travel Cost Analysis Using Mobile Device Data
With Roger von Haefen
Abstract
We estimate the recreational value of changes in coastal water quality along New England Atlantic beaches from Connecticut to Maine by combining mobile-device visitation data with satellite-derived water clarity and chlorophyll abundance measures. Our data cover approximately 25.9 million projected trips from more than 25 thousand census block groups to 442 saltwater beaches in the summer of 2017. Using calculated roadway travel costs for each origin-beach pairing, we construct a two-stage nested logit travel cost model of recreation demand for the population of the states New York through Maine. We find that clearer waters are more attractive to beachgoers, while impacts from greater chlorophyll indexes may be overshadowed by Clean Water Act impairment and closure notices. We estimate that a 1% improvement in average water clarity across all modeled sites would translate into approximately 1.4 million dollars of additional welfare to beachgoers in the New England states.
Publications
Blocks for Bees: Solving Bee Business Problems with Blockchain Technology
Dobbins, A., Sprinkle, A., Hadley, B., Cazier, J., and Wilkes, J. (2018).
Proceedings of the Appalachian Research in Business Symposium, Vol. III, pp. 11–16.
Working Papers
Estimating Herbicide Selection Pressure on the Emergence of Resistant Weed Species
With Zachary Brown
Ecosystem Service Valuation: A Meta-Analysis of the Empirical Reference Frames
Work in Progress
Crop Insurance Participation Across the Farm Income Distribution: A Quantile Regression Analysis
With Roderick Rejesus
