A comparison of CVM survey response rates, protests and willingness-to-pay of Native Americans and general population for fuels reduction policies

Abstract

A contingent valuation method (CVM) study was used to compare survey response rates, protest refusals to pay, and median willingness-to-pay (WTP) of Native American communities in Montana compared to Montana's general population for two wildland fire mitigation strategies. Understanding differences in response rates, protest refusals to pay, and median WTP between Native Americans in the United States and the general population may shed some light on how well the method may work for indigenous people in other developed countries such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Native Americans survey response rates were not significantly different from Montana residents for the initial contact (first ARTICLE IN PRESS www.elsevier.de/jfe 1104-6899/$ -see front matter wave), but were significantly different for the follow-up in-depth phone interviews (second wave). Native Americans protest rate for the prescribed burning program was not statistically different from Montana residents. Conventionally calculated, protest rates for the mechanical fuels reduction program are higher for Montana's residents than Native Americans. Results from bivariate probit with sample selection models indicate that there is no significant difference between the Native American and Montana general populations' median WTP for either program. This suggests that in Montana, Native Americans and members of the general population generally yield similar results to CVM questionnaires of forest fire management.

Incorporating economic valuation into fire prevention planning and management in southern European countries

“…These findings are in line with other studies that have stressed This study estimated changes in social welfare arising specifically from the responses of animal species to wildfire, assessing this way the social preferences for changes in the provision of a natural amenity that may occur due to wildfires (Venn & Calkin, 2011). Loomis et al (2004;2005;2009) and González-Cabán et al (2007) tested the WTP of different populations in the United States for prescribed burning or mechanical fuel reduction programs expected to reduce forest fires in 25% and the houses destroyed by fire from 20 to 8. The advantages and disadvantages of the mechanical technique are presented while these were lacking for the prescribed burning.…”

“…The second block of studies presented above uses a mixed approach, where respondents are asked to provide their preferences for a series of fire prevention management options (causal attributes), in presence of a fixed outcome in relation to the burnt area (e.g. Loomis et al (2004Loomis et al ( , 2005Loomis et al ( , 2009 and González-Cabán et al (2007)). The drawback of this approach is that the scientific link between action and end effects is many times uncertain and difficult to prove.…”

Assessing Local Communities’ Willingness to Pay for River Network Protection: A Contingent Valuation Study of Shanghai, China

“…A large majority answered “have no extra income” (36.71%), and 1.27% felt the river network was already sufficiently good and did not need protection. Reasons other than a lack of value or the inability to afford a positive WTP were considered a protest vote [51,52,53]. In this survey, 28.48% of the respondents reported zero WTP because they considered river network protection a responsibility of government, and 22.78% believed that they had paid taxes related to river network protection.…”

Applying the dissonance‐minimising format to value cultural heritage in developing countries*

“…In our case, given the classification between protest and valid ‘no’ responses, we will use the bivariate probit with sample selection model (Boyes et al. 1989; Jacobson and Roszbach 2003; Gonzalez‐Caban et al. 2007) to examine the construct validity of CV results.…”