Landowner valuation of a working wetlands program in the Prairie Pothole Region

Cheryl Wachenheim (), Siew Hoon Lim, David Roberts and John Devney

Agricultural Economics, 2019, vol. 50, issue 4, 465-478

Abstract: Wetlands conservation within agricultural working lands is currently incentivized by land retirement programs and farm program eligibility criteria. Private ownership of the majority of agricultural lands within which these wetlands reside and growing opportunity costs facing landowners put wetlands at risk and motivate consideration of alternative policy options. A choice experiment was used to estimate likelihood of enrollment in a hypothetical working wetlands program. Landowners preferred shorter contract lengths, higher rental rates, midterm adjustment rather than a fixed‐rate contract, the right to conduct managed burning on their lands‐containing program wetlands, and no conservation practice requirement. Landowners with higher expressed valuation of conservation and who favor protecting wetlands, believe that small wetlands are important for their farms, who would not drain any of their wetlands, and raise ruminant animals are more inclined to participate in the program. Recommendations include consideration of program targeting during program design, practicing creative thought regarding program promotion, and exploration of no‐loss wetlands solutions, especially those market based.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12503

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:agecon:v:50:y:2019:i:4:p:465-478

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0169-5150

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural Economics is currently edited by W.A. Masters and G.E. Shively

More articles in Agricultural Economics from International Association of Agricultural Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().