Next Generation Choice Experiment Architecture for Spatially-Explicit Agricultural Conservation and Ecosystem Service Valuation

The USDA spends more than $5 billion annually on conservation programs to enhance environmental quality, ecosystem services and agricultural sustainability. Yet credible information on economic (and particularly non-market) benefits is often lacking, particularly for heterogeneous conservation practices that occur over large spatial scales. Current economic valuation methods are challenged by the individualized and spatially heterogeneous ways that people understand, use, and value ecosystem services over different spatial scales, posing questions for the validity and credibility of benefit estimation. This project will develop and evaluate next-generation tools designed to meet these challenges. To develop these methods, the project team will leverage advances in online, interactive map-based survey architecture, together with novel approaches for stated-preference survey design, Bayesian econometrics, and integrated assessment modeling. The approach will be demonstrated using a case study of conservation and aquatic ecosystem service improvements over the state of Virginia, but will be generalizable to other applications.