Economists advocate that the billions of public dollars spent on conservation should be allocated to achieve the largest possible social benefit. This is what we term “cost-effective conservation”-- a process that incorporates both benefits and costs that are measured with money. This...

This study investigates the degree to which framing and context influence observed rates of free-riding behavior in a negative externality laboratory experiment. Building on the work of Andreoni (1995a) and Messer et al. (2007) we frame the decision not to contribute to a public fund as...

This research evaluates the potential gains in benefits from using Goal Programming to preserve forestland. Two- and three-dimensional Goal Programming models are developed and applied to data from applicants to the U.S. Forest Service’s Forest Legacy Program, the largest forest protection...

Using agricultural preservation priorities derived from an analytical hierarchy process by 23 experts from 18 agencies in the State of Delaware, this research uses weighted suitability attributes to evaluate the historical success of the State of Delaware’s agricultural protection fund, which...

Strategic land conservation seeks to select the highest quality lands given limited financial resources. Traditionally conservation officials implement strategic conservation by creating prioritization maps that attempt to identify the lands of highest ecological value or public value from a...

Charitable foundations should endeavor to allocate their limited resources to best serve their constituents. However, few foundations use mathematical programming techniques despite overwhelming evidence of their superiority at selecting projects that yield higher levels of total benefits. The...