Good Seeds Bear Good Fruit: Using Benefit-to-Cost Ratios in Multiobjective Spatial Optimization under Epistasis

Zhengxin Lang, Sergey S. Rabotyagov, Se Jong Cho, Todd Campbell and Catherine Kling

Land Economics, 2020, vol. 96, issue 4, 531-551

Abstract: Many biophysical models exhibit epistasis (interdependence), where a conservation action impacts the effectiveness of another elsewhere. At the same time, ranking conservation actions according to the independent benefit-to-cost ratios is cost-efficient when epistasis is absent. We use benefit-to-cost rankings as starting points for an evolutionary algorithm employing an epistatic biophysical model. We model a variety of conservation actions to assess trade-offs for sediment reduction and wildlife conservation in the study watershed. We find that despite the presence of epistasis, the weighted benefit-to-cost ratio-derived solutions perform remarkably well in the decision space, but effects in objective space need the model evaluation.

JEL-codes: Q25 Q52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
Note: DOI: 10.3368/wple.96.4.531
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uwp:landec:v:96:y:2020:i:4:p:531-551

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