Mike Levert

Conservation of Private Forestland in the Northeast United States: the Role of Economic Incentives, Time Commitments, and Acorn Mike Levert

This work was motivated by a market failure - that of the inefficient level of conserved forestland. Many benefits from undeveloped forestland are not reflected in the market value of forestland, leading to an inefficient level of conservation. Furthermore, the continuity of these benefits is dependant on the long-term preservation of forestland, and is critical to the sustainability of our economy. Two independent surveys were mailed to New England forestland owners in order to better understand and evaluate the economic value of undeveloped forestland. Contingent valuation was used to estimate forestland owners` willingness to accept (WTA) compensation for the conveyance of conservation easements. Landowner attributes predicting long-term conservation of their land were identified by means of factor analysis and limited dependent variable models. Bootstrapping was employed to form distribution-free estimates of WTA. Finally, the Complete Combinatorial approach (Poe et al. 2005) was used to compare regional WTA estimates and to evaluate the effect of a prediction based valuation technique on WTA.