Willingness-to-pay for an area-wide integrated pest management program to control the Asian tiger Mosquito in New Jersey

Abstract

Using contingent valuation we estimated the perceived value of an area-wide integrated pest management program for the Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus, implemented in Monmouth and Mercer counties, NJ. We estimated residents' maximum willingness-to-pay and perceived monetary benefits (willingness-to-pay excluding residents who protested all types of payments) and payment modality through a telephone survey of 51 randomly selected households. The mean (± SE) perceived monetary benefits for an enhanced mosquito abatement program was $9.54 ± 2.90 per capita per year. Most respondents would have been willing to pay through taxes (35) or charitable donations (6) starting then, or through one of these approaches in the future (43), whereas 16 were completely unwilling to pay any additional costs whatsoever. We projected that the perceived monetary benefits to the counties' 1.01 million residents for an enhanced mosquito control program would be $9.61 million annually. Thus, collectively residents perceived monetary benefits of 3.67 times the combined 2008 annual operating costs of the counties' existing mosquito control programs of $2.61 million. © 2012 by The American Mosquito Control Association, Inc.