Measuring the Benefits of Improvements in Water Quality: The Chesapeake Bay
1989; University of Chicago Press; Volume: 6; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1086/mre.6.1.42628999
ISSN2334-5985
AutoresNancy E. Bockstael, Kenneth E. McConnell, Ivar E. Strand,
Tópico(s)Water resources management and optimization
ResumoFederal, state, and local government agencies have joined forces in the ambitious and expensive task of improving the water quality of the Chesapeake Bay. Clean-up efforts will be devoted to three major problems: nutrient over enrichment, toxic substances, and the decline of submerged aquatic vegetation. Although the beneficiaries are ultimately human, criteria for judging the Bay's water quality have been primarily biological and physical. This paper addresses the question of the human values from the Bay. How do people use the Bay and how much are they willing to pay for the changes in water quality that improve their use? With a variety of methods and data sources, we estimate the annual aggregate willingness to pay for a moderate improvement in the Chesapeake Bay's water quality to be in the range of $10 to $100 million in 1984 dollars.
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