title: Valuing shifts in the distribution of visibility in national parks and wilderness areas in the United States.
abstract: Environmental regulations often have the objective of eliminating the lower tail of an index of environmental quality. That part of the distribution of environmental quality moves somewhere above a threshold and where in the original distribution it moves is a function of the control strategy chosen. This paper provides an approach for estimating the economic benefits of different distributional changes as the worst environmental conditions are removed. The proposed approach is illustrated by examining shifts in visibility at Class I visibility areas (National Parks and wilderness areas) that would occur with implementation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Regional Haze Program. In this application we show that people value shifts in the distribution of visibility and place a higher value on the removal of a low visibility day than on the addition of a high visibility day. We found that respondents would pay about $120 per year in the Southeast U.S. and about $80 per year in the Southwest U.S. for improvement programs that remove the 20% worst visibility days.
authors.affiliation: Virginia Tech, 430A Bishop-Favrao Hall (0715), Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA. Electronic address: kjboyle@vt.edu.
authors.forename: Kevin J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Boyle
authors.affiliation: Industrial Economics, Inc., 2067 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02140, USA.
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Paterson
authors.affiliation: University of California San Diego, 9500 Gilman Dr. #0508, La Jolla, CA 92093-0508, USA.
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Carson
authors.affiliation: Bedrock Statistics LLC, 25 Bridget Circle, Gilford, NH 03249, USA.
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Leggett
authors.affiliation: BK Econometrics LLP, 4946 Rock Spring Road, Arlington, VA 22207, USA.
authors.forename: Barbara
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Kanninen
authors.affiliation: Air Resource Specialists, 1901 Sharp Point Drive # E, Fort Collins, CO 80525, USA.
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Molenar
authors.affiliation: Industrial Economics, Inc., 2067 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02140, USA.
authors.forename: James
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Neumann
mesh_terms: D000397:Air Pollution / Q000517:prevention & control; D004522:Educational Status; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007182:Income; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D000068316:Parks, Recreational; D015144:Southeastern United States; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014481:United States; D014484:United States Environmental Protection Agency; D055814:Wilderness
keywords: Air quality; Distributions; Nonmarket valuation; Stated-preference; Visibility