Optimal Monitoring and Controlling of Invasive Species: The Case of Spotted Wing Drosophila in the United States

Xiaoli Fan, Miguel Gomez and Shady Atallah

No 236042, 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: Spotted wing drosophila (SWD) is an invasive pest having a devastating effect on soft-skinned fruits such as blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, and cherries. Due to zero tolerance of SWD infested fruit in both fresh and frozen markets, current SWD management strategies consist mainly of preventive broad-spectrum insecticide sprays. Extension services across the United States are calling for management strategies that incorporate monitoring to reduce unnecessary insecticide sprays. Nonetheless, little is known about the economic benefits of these management strategies over the broad-spectrum insecticide sprays. In this paper, we develop a dynamic bioeconomic model to identify the cost-minimizing mix of SWD management strategies. We employ Bayesian methods in a dynamic simulation setting to evaluate the economic outcomes of alternative strategies involving insecticide sprays and monitoring combinations. We apply this model to a blueberry farmer making decisions to control SWD infestation. We find that the economic impacts of different SWD control strategies depend on the efficacy of the insecticide applied, the efficiency of monitoring traps, and also the action threshold selected. Overall, as the efficiency of monitoring traps improves, the management strategies which include monitoring are superior to the spray-only strategy. Also, growers can choose more liberal action thresholds when using monitoring traps with higher efficiency. In addition, monitor-to-initiate spray strategies perform better than the monitor-to-guide spray strategies in general.

Keywords: Environmental Economics and Policy; Research Methods/Statistical Methods; Resource/Energy Economics and Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/236042/files/S ... 160525_submitted.pdf (application/pdf)

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:ags:aaea16:236042

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.236042

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().