Social critics have taken aim at modern production agriculture using a common theme: many food, health, and environmental problems are explained by corporate farms, agribusinesses, and fast-food restaurants failing to account for the full costs of their actions. How accurate is this diagnosis?...

In traditional contingent valuation, the researcher seeks the amount a respondent is willing, ceteris paribus, to pay to obtain something. But if a respondent receives a “warm glow†from a yes response, ceteris is not paribus. In estimating willingness to pay (WTP) to reduce...

The 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments required that water utilities send quality reports to customers. We test whether receiving such reports of health violations increases purchases of bottled water using newly released data and disaggregate changes in demand at the intensive and...

We consider private provision of an environmental public good and the link between voluntary pollution-abatement markets and the optimal level of mandatory environmental regulation. We show that voluntary abatement markets react to the level of mandatory abatement imposed and that an optimal...

In view of continuing economic stagnation and consequent budgetary constraints facing the state, Hawaii public libraries have been concerned with their operational efficiency and library managers have been seeking better methods in allocating limited resources among the libraries. This paper...

As traditional methods of municipal solid waste management (MSWM) become increasingly expensive due to increased regulation, many local governments are considering cooperation as a waste management strategy. A theoretical model is used to specify a partial observability probability model to...

Despite the generally recognized need for facilities such as power plants, landfills, prisons, and medical laboratories, finding host sites has become extremely difficult. This study uses the expected utility (EU) model to explain individiuals' preferences in the hypothetical case of siting a...

Systematic supervision procedures have been proposed to improve contingent valuation surveying, particularly in developing countries. Surprisingly, the CV literature does not say much about the potential effects of supervision even though there is evidence of interviewer effects and social...

Matching grants are a prevalent mechanism for funding environmental, conservation, and natural resource projects. However, economists have largely been silent regarding the potential benefits of these mechanisms at increasing voluntary contributions. To examine the behavioral responses to...