Household willingness to pay for stream restoration on private and public land: Evidence from the Baltimore metropolitan region

Abstract

Streams and rivers provide a range of vital ecosystem services and goods, such as drinking water, recreational opportunities, and aquatic habitat. Stream restoration has emerged as one of the most widely used interventions to improve water quality with over 37,000 stream restoration projects in the United States (U.S.) during 1990-2003 at an estimated total cost of $15 billion (Bernhardt et al., 2005). Streams and their degradation obey no boundaries for land tenure, such that in many urban and suburban areas, a substantial number of stream miles occur on both privately and publicly owned land. Our analysis focuses on the Baltimore metro region where the majority of stream restoration projects have been undertaken on public land, despite the fact that over 80% of the total stream miles are located on private property. To comply with