A contingent valuation method (CVM) survey to determine foreign and resident willingness to pay (WTP) for return visits to two different Costa Rican national parks was administered in 1995. WTP values were estimated for future entrance fees associated with proposed improvements to infrastructure and services in the Poas Volcano and the Manuel Antonio parks. Resulting logistic CVM models were statistically robust and mean WTP for entrance fees differed among the parks and were considerably higher than current fees. Results indicate that even in a developing country setting, the CVM is a useful tool to help determine park entrance fees in spite of the following methodological limitations which are recommended for further study: the need to include potential park visitors in survey samples; the lack of detailed information framing and contingent scenarios for park related WTP questions; and the threat of cultural-strategic biases when surveying residents of a developing country.

Evaluations of the factors influencing the adoption of agricultural and natural resource management technologies among small farmers in developing countries have been mostly limited to qualitative discussions or simple descriptive statistics resulting in superficial and inconclusive findings. This study introduces the use of Poisson Count Regressions as a statistically appropriate procedure to analyze certain common types of adoption data. It uses them to assess the impact of key socio-economic, bio-physical, and institutional factors on the adoption of integrated pest management, agroforestry, and soil conservation technologies among small farmers in three Central American countries: Costa Rica, Panama, and El Salvador.

To determine the willingness to pay (WTP) for a hypothetical groundwater protection plan in Dover, New Hampshire, a mail contingent valuation survey was conducted. The median WTP value among Dover residents was estimated to be $40 per household, and the community WTP value is estimated to be at least $100,000 annually for a groundwater protection plan. The assessed land values of respondents as well as their incomes were shown to positively influence their WTP values, while their ages had a negative influence on WTP. A variety of other socioeconomic variables were shown to have no influence on individuals WTP for groundwater protection. This research illustrates a methodology that other researchers, and water resource managers can use to estimate the value which people place on various water resources and can help to predict whether water policies and projects will be accepted by the public.

The hedonic valuation method was used to quantify the impact of floodplain location on housing values in Fargo‐Moor‐head. Being located in the 100‐year floodplain lowered the home values by $8,990, and such homes were worth $10,241 less than similar homes located outside the floodplain before the major flood event of 1997. Required flood insurance premiums for these homes were determined to account for approximately 81 percent of this price depreciation. In contrast, homes in the 500‐year floodplain were worth $3,100 more than similar homes not in the floodplain. It was concluded that more disclosure is needed regarding the location of the 500‐year floodplain, and that the hedonic valuation method can be used to calculate the economic gains and losses associated with flood mitigation projects or floodplain remapping efforts that result in the reclassification of the legal floodplain status of individual homes.

Invasive plants continue to spread in riparian ecosystems, causing both ecological and economic damage. This research investigated the impacts of common reed, purple loosestrife, riparian shrubland, and riparian woodlands on the quality and quantity of sandhill crane roosting habitat in the central Platte River, Nebraska, using a discrete choice model. A more detailed investigation of the impacts of common reed on sandhill crane roosting habitat was performed by forecasting a spread or contraction of this invasive plant. The discrete choice model indicates that riparian woodlands had the largest negative impact on sandhill crane roosting habitat. The forecasting results predict that a contraction of common reed could increase sandhill crane habitat availability by 50%, whereas an expansion could reduce the availability by as much as 250%. This suggests that if the distribution of common reed continues to expand in the central Platte River the availability of sandhill crane roosting habitat would likely be greatly reduced.