THE REGIONAL INCOME DISTRIBUTION EFFECTS RESULTING FROM ENERGY RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT ON PUBLIC LANDS: A CASE STUDY

Past legislative trends concerning the management of public lands, such as the mandate to manage them under the multiple use concept, increased public participation in the decision making processes, and land withdrawals for wilderness designation, have made the land use decisions of public land management agencies a complex task. These decisions in turn affect the status of natural resource development. Land policies emphasizing development of natural resources are often challenged by special interest groups supporting "natural state" or wilderness designation.; To date, income distribution has rarely been considered in public land use decisions affecting natural resources. One of the reasons is the lack of any operational model by which to determine distributional impacts. This study develops an income distribution model that a land management agency can use to assess the ramifications of various natural resource policies on an area's distribution of income. The model incorporates all the sources of personal income and traces this income to the industry of origin and income class size of the recipient. The model is part of an input-output modeling framework capable of determining both direct and second-order effects of alternative policies. The empirical model is first developed for the United States, then using regionalization techniques, is scaled to a national forest dependent economy in West Virginia.; The model is applied to the analysis of the impacts of a land use adoption of surface coal mining within the Monongahela National Forest. Income changes as a result of the policy are identified and, using normative and positive evaluations, the fairness of the policy and the likelihood of public acceptance are assessed, respectively.; Contributions of the study include the development of a multisector income distribution model incorporating all components of personal income, regionalization procedures enabling the decision making entity to scale the model to any regional level, and a practical application of the model to a natural resource development issue.