Assessing management options for weed control with demanders and non-demanders in a choice experiment

Abstract

The yellow floating heart is a water weed causing nuisance problems in Swedish watercourses. An economic analysis of this is required where various management options are considered. The benefits of a management program are to a large extent recreational. Using a choice experiment we estimate the benefits of a weed management program and perform a cost-benefit analysis of different management programs. In order to be able to distinguish between those who have a demand for a program from those who do not, we introduce a way to distinguish demanders from non-demanders in the choice experiments. The advantage of our suggested approach is that we can more clearly distinguish between conditional and unconditional willingness to pay. In the empirical study we find that a share of the respondents are non-demanders. The demander willingness to pay still justifies cutting the weed in certain places in the lake, given that we use a simple cost-benefit rule.