Public marginal willingness to trade off among water quality programs: Estimates of statewide and watershed-specific budget values

Abstract

A budget survey is used to elicit individuals' relative values for various public water quality programs. Because a budget constraint is incorporated explicitly and people allocate across various statewide and watershed-specific programs, marginal willingness to trade off values is revealed. These values are useful in the decision making of state and federal agencies responsible for water quality programs. We estimate values using the results of a 1997 random sample of Kentucky residents, with oversampling of residents of a small watershed in eastern Kentucky. Results show that people allocate the largest amounts to combat illegal dumping, untreated sewage, and hazardous material disposal. The lowest-ranked budget category, farming erosion, receives less than half the amount allocated to illegal dumping. We find that in the watershed, while the top two categories are the same as for the state as a whole, mining drainage and logging erosion are more important.