Valuation of a quasi-public good using revealed and stated preference techniques

Policy makers are interested in optimally providing public goods. One interesting context of public goods is the amenity benefit associated with land preservation services, where the services likely provide quasi-public goods. The use of a stated preference technique is required if the total value for these pubic goods is to be estimated. This dissertation investigates the use of two distinct valuation methodologies to estimate the amenity benefits of this quasi-public good---land preservation. The literature indicates the use of stated preference methods has its own set of considerations regarding the interpretation and application of the resulting welfare measures (Duke and Johnston, 2010b) when used for benefit measures of quasi-public goods. This dissertation addresses this problem in three essays.;An existing choice experiment (CE) that estimated benefits for land preservation in Delaware is augmented to explore more thoroughly spatial patterns in the data. Limited evidence of distance decay is found in the welfare estimates. However, highly proximate households are found to have a higher willingness to pay (WTP) for preservation of the parcel. This model may suggest that the stated WTP estimates may measure some excludable value and not purely the public good benefits resulting from the policy action. A hedonic pricing model (HPM) is designed to complement the valuation measures from the CE and offers supporting evidence of the location-dependent amenities provided by land protection in the region.;Finally, this dissertation offers a conceptual overview for the comparison of the two nonmarket valuation techniques. The results suggest that the relative magnitudes of these two measures may not conform to expectations and reasons for this discrepancy are explored. However, this finding may alleviate some of the policy concerns stemming from the measurement of quasi-public goods. If the SP method is not fully capturing the excludable values, as found in this research, the use of SP estimates for quasi-public goods may not be as problematic in practice as theory would suggest.