Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Abstract: Planted forests are increasingly recognised for the provision of habitats for species threatened with extinction. Despite this development, a limited number of empirical studies have been undertaken to estimate the economic value of this ecosystem service. New Zealand's planted forests provide habitat to at least 118 threatened species. These forests can be managed to increase the abundance of many of these species. We present findings from survey data obtained in a discrete choice experiment designed to estimate the non-market values for a proposed biodiversity enhancement programme in New Zealand's planted forests. We used a two-stage modelling process. First we estimated the individual specific willingness to pay values and then we explored their socioeconomic and spatial determinants. The first stage modeling process, which used a random parameters logit model with error components, suggested that willingness to pay was higher for increasing the abundance of native bird than for non-bird species. The second stage model used a least squares panel random-effects regression. Results from this method suggested that socioeconomic characteristics, such as attitudes toward the programme and distance from large planted forests, influenced willingness to pay for biodiversity enhancement.We would like to thank Reviewers 2 and 3 for their additional comments that helped 1 improved the quality of this manuscript. Our responses to their comments are in italics 2 below. 3 4Reviewers' comments: 5 6Reviewer #2: Based on the second revision I would now suggest the manuscript for 7 publication; I have just two minor points: 8 1) You may check whether all references you make are really essential; e.g., concerning 9 the experimental design you have in line 232 in total 7 references. Given the length of the 10 manuscript and as design criteria are not really your topic please consider to reduce the 11 references to those that are really essential for your work 12 13Thank you for this comment. References now reduced to 2. 14 152) Again, I would not insist on dropping the RPL model without error component ( In the set of keywords, we changed "random parameters logit with error components" to 49 "random parameters logit model" 50 51 2. Similarly, the manuscript could be easily shortened by just including Model C. There 52 is nothing to be learned from Model A and B when C is included. The authors want to 53 focus on spatial attributes (see title) so that the inclusion of models A and B ...

Background: Prior research in 2005 and 2008 estimated planted forest investment returns for a set of countries and included some natural forest species in a few countries. This research has extended those analyses to a larger set of countries and focused on plantation species, for seven years. This research serves as a "benchmarking" exercise that helps identify comparative advantages among countries for timber investment returns, as well as other institutional, forestry, and policy factors that affect investments. Furthermore, it extends the analyses to examine the effects of land prices, environmental regulations, and increased productivity on timber investment returns, as well as comparing timber returns with traditional stock market returns.

We employ an integrated spatial economic model to assess the net private and public benefits of converting marginal agricultural land into forest plantations (afforestation) in New Zealand. For numerous locations, we conduct policy analysis considering the magnitudes of net private and public benefits of land-use changes to determine whether a policy response is justified and, if so, to identify the appropriate policy instruments to encourage adoption of afforestation. Net private benefit is commonly negative, so much so, that in most cases no policy response is justified. However, in certain cases, net private benefits are slightly negative and public benefits are significantly positive justifying the use of positive incentives as the most appropriate policy instrument to encourage afforestation in New Zealand. The most commonly used policy instruments for afforestation in New Zealand, extension and awareness training, are found to be appropriate in only a minority of situations.

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1. Growing interest and affordability of environmental DNA and RNA (eDNA and eRNA) approaches for biodiversity assessments and monitoring of complex ecosystems have led to the emergence of manifold protocols for nucleic acids (NAs) isolation and processing. Although there is no consensus on a standard-

Panel data are used to study the technical efficiency of rice producers in the Philippines. Production efficiency over time is measured using a stochastic frontier regression with error decomposition. Sources of inefficiency are identified and the link between irrigation and productive efficiency is measured. Results suggest that irrigation was associated with higher levels of technical efficiency in the sample. . We thank Ken Foster, Will Masters, Doug Miller and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments. Tim Coelli also kindly provided suggestions as well as access to software.

(2015) 'Experimental design criteria and their behavioural eciency : an evaluation in the eld.', Environmental and resource economics., 62 (3). pp. 433-455. Further information on publisher's website:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10640-014-9823-7Publisher's copyright statement:The nal publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10640-014-9823-7Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Comparative results from an evaluation of inferred attribute non-attendance are provided for experimental designs optimised for three commonly employed statistical criteria, namely: orthogonality, Bayesian D-efficiency and optimal orthogonality in the difference. Survey data are from a choice experiment used to value the conservation of threatened native species in New Zealand's production forests. In line with recent literature, we argue that attribute non-attendance can be taken as one of the important measures of behavioural efficiency. We focus on how this varies when alternative design criteria are used. Attribute non-attendance is inferred using an approach based on constrained latent classes. Given our proposed criterion to evaluate behavioural efficiency, our data indicate that the Bayesian D-efficiency criterion provides behaviourally more efficient choice tasks compared to the other two criteria.Response to Reviewers: Addressing the comments from the editor and reviewers (EARE-D-12-00119R1)Comments of editor and reviewers are in text without bullet points; responses of authors are reported in bullet points. We have also included an MS Word version of our responses in the set of attached files. EARE-D-12-00119R1 June 5, 2014Dear Richard Yao, Thank you for submitting a revision of your paper, "Experimental Design Criteria and Their Behavioural Efficiency: An Evaluation in the Field" to Environmental & Resource Economics (ERE). I opted to send the paper out again for review, and now have heard back from the both of the original reviewers. The two reports are appended below. Powered by Editorial Manager® and ProduXion Manager® from Aries Systems CorporationI am pleased to say that both reviewers recommend acceptance of the paper subject to (a total of) three minor revisions.•Thank you very much for your message and comments.The one suggestion that warrants some thought is the request for some "discussion on weakness of using ANA as the measure of efficiency". I ask that you address this.•Thank you for pointing this out. A brief discussion on the weakness of ANA as the measure of eff...