Frank Lupi | Michigan State University (original) (raw)

Papers by Frank Lupi

A stated choice model is used to estimate wetland mitigation preferences. In a split sample mail ... more A stated choice model is used to estimate wetland mitigation preferences. In a split sample mail survey, a main effects design is compared to a randomized design. Although randomized designs estimate main effects less efficiently, several policy relevant interactions were found to be significant, suggesting some merits of randomized designs.

Global Social Policy, 2016

As conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs spread in African countries, there is a need for well... more As conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs spread in African countries, there is a need for well-designed programs that reflect their economic, institutional, political, and sociocultural circumstances. Using both qualitative and quantitative data analysis, this article examines the perspectives of beneficiaries, program managers, and community leaders regarding Ghana’s CCT program. It addresses sociocultural attitudes toward poverty, perceptions of CCT as a poverty reduction strategy, and experiences with CCT implementation. Findings indicate favorable views of CCT but little support for giving money to the poor as a long-term poverty-alleviation strategy. Ghana’s CCT program is seen as fair and popular, but current payment levels are viewed as inadequate, impractical, and unreliable.

Global Social Policy, 2016

As conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs spread in African countries, there is a need for well... more As conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs spread in African countries, there is a need for well-designed programs that reflect their economic, institutional, political, and sociocultural circumstances. Using both qualitative and quantitative data analysis, this article examines the perspectives of beneficiaries, program managers, and community leaders regarding Ghana’s CCT program. It addresses sociocultural attitudes toward poverty, perceptions of CCT as a poverty reduction strategy, and experiences with CCT implementation. Findings indicate favorable views of CCT but little support for giving money to the poor as a long-term poverty-alleviation strategy. Ghana’s CCT program is seen as fair and popular, but current payment levels are viewed as inadequate, impractical, and unreliable.

Land Use Policy, 2015

Non point source (NPS) pollution remains a challenge to communities meeting watershed management ... more Non point source (NPS) pollution remains a challenge to communities meeting watershed management objectives around the world. Installing agricultural best management practices (BMPs) such as filter strips is a widely accepted mechanism to control NPS pollution and agricultural runoff. Government programs in the form of payment for environmental services (PES) have been introduced to encourage BMP adoption for watershed protection. However, the voluntary nature of these programs makes landowners’ decision to participate in them critical to achieving program goals. Understanding the drivers behind landowners’ decisions to participate in watershed protection programs is essential for designing effective and efficient programs. This study examines agricultural landowners’ decisions to participate in a conservation program involving filter strips. Using responses from a survey of agricultural landowners in Michigan's Saginaw Bay watershed, the study examines key programmatic, socio-psychological, and demographic determinants of landowners’ participation decisions. The study results suggest that making contract durations shorter with enhanced rental payments, and educating landowners about program efficacy as well as on- and off-farm benefits of the conservation practice would enhance participation.

Land Use Policy, 2015

Non point source (NPS) pollution remains a challenge to communities meeting watershed management ... more Non point source (NPS) pollution remains a challenge to communities meeting watershed management objectives around the world. Installing agricultural best management practices (BMPs) such as filter strips is a widely accepted mechanism to control NPS pollution and agricultural runoff. Government programs in the form of payment for environmental services (PES) have been introduced to encourage BMP adoption for watershed protection. However, the voluntary nature of these programs makes landowners’ decision to participate in them critical to achieving program goals. Understanding the drivers behind landowners’ decisions to participate in watershed protection programs is essential for designing effective and efficient programs. This study examines agricultural landowners’ decisions to participate in a conservation program involving filter strips. Using responses from a survey of agricultural landowners in Michigan's Saginaw Bay watershed, the study examines key programmatic, socio-psychological, and demographic determinants of landowners’ participation decisions. The study results suggest that making contract durations shorter with enhanced rental payments, and educating landowners about program efficacy as well as on- and off-farm benefits of the conservation practice would enhance participation.

Land Economics, 2009

Researchers using questionnaires to elicit preferences must decide whether to include response op... more Researchers using questionnaires to elicit preferences must decide whether to include response options that allow respondents to express ''no opinion.'' Using a split-sample design, we explore the implications of alternative answer formats including and not including no-opinion responses in an attribute-based choice experiment. The results indicate that using multiple no-opinion responses may enable researchers to differentiate between respondents who choose no-opinion options due to satisficing and those expressing utility indifference. Existing literature suggesting no-opinion responses may be treated as ''no,'' but our results show treating no-opinion responses as no yields substantially disparate preference estimates. (JEL C25, Q24, Q25, Q51)

Journal of Natural Resources Policy Research, 2009

The long-term success of payment for environmental services (PES) schemes depends on adequate dem... more The long-term success of payment for environmental services (PES) schemes depends on adequate demand for services and sustainable financing. We examine the viability of using locally financed payments to protect watershed services in rural eastern Costa Rica. Using dichotomous choice contingent valuation, we measure households' willingness to pay higher water bills for a local PES programme to adjust upstream land use practices to protect downstream water quality. We found that every income segment of the local population of water-users exhibited significant demand and willingness to finance the PES programme to protect local water quality.

This paper focuses on the e↵ect of wildfires on the value of recreation in four national forests ... more This paper focuses on the e↵ect of wildfires on the value of recreation in four national forests surrounding the Los Angeles metropolitan area, namely, the Angeles, Cleveland, Los Padres, and San Bernardino. These forests are unique for multiple reasons. First, they represent the primary outdoor recreation opportunity to many urban residents due to their proximity to the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Second, because they share similar characteristics and are accessible for day trips from Los Angeles, they are substitutes. Third, their vegetation, which consists of shrubs and oak woods in the low lands and conifers at high elevation, is highly prone to wildfire. Last, they are under great levels of stress due to severe droughts, increased frequency and intensity of wildfires, and their heavy use by the public. For example, California recently experienced its largest wildfire in contemporary records, the Thomas fire which burned over 280,000 acres including large portions of the Los Padres National Forest. The recreation value of these sites and an understanding of how these values change as a result of increased wildfire is thus policy-relevant. In addition, the paper makes several novel contributions: first, our empirical strategy allows us to exploit time variation to recover e↵ects fire has on views along with a full set of site-level fixed e↵ects to control for omitted variables; second, we replicate the novel method of Von Haefen (2015) to estimate a zonal travel cost model within the rich substitution structure of a nested logit demand system, and third, we apply the model to value some of the e↵ects of California's largest modern wildfire.

American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2016

Despite the success of efforts to reduce phosphorus (P) pollution from point sources, P from non-... more Despite the success of efforts to reduce phosphorus (P) pollution from point sources, P from non-point agricultural sources remains a vexing problem with many U.S. water bodies having impairments. Key to solving the P pollution puzzle is to take stock of progress to date, the puzzle pieces available, and the gaps to be filled. In this paper, we synthesize the state of knowledge on P pollution, discuss the state of existing public programs, and review economists' contributions to informing P pollution policies. We review the water quality valuation literature, identifying limitations in the linkages to policy-relevant environmental quality metrics. We examine how and why P is used agriculturally, along with recent advances in market-based policy design and field testing. We survey new knowledge in biology and engineering, including improved understanding of the fate and transport of P. In light of recent learning and persistent knowledge gaps, we recommend directions for economic research to add needed pieces to the puzzle of how to protect our water bodies. Puzzle gaps meriting attention include mechanisms to target public funds more effectively in voluntary abatement programs, policy design for emerging mitigation technologies, new ways to implement performance-based policies, means to leverage social norms and behavioral cues, changes in the "pay-the-polluter" paradigm, and application of state-of-the-art evaluation methods to conservation programs. Beyond the realm of public policy lies that of private supply chains, where establishment of environmental standards holds additional promise. Rich research opportunities exist for economists in tandem with biologists, engineers, and others.

A choice experiment is used to estimate preferences for environmental attributes of recreation si... more A choice experiment is used to estimate preferences for environmental attributes of recreation sites. Respondents were randomly intercepted at national forest sites near Los Angeles. Because of the increasing threats of wildfires, the main attribute of interest is fire history, where fire history is given by distinct categories in relation to the dominant vegetation at the site. Using various conditional logit and random parameters logit models, we find that tree cover, compared to shrubs or barren areas, and water are highly desirable attributes, while evidence of past fires decreases the value of a site. Forest fires that reach the crowns of trees are least desirable, while older forest fires and shrub fires have less of a negative effect. We find evidence of significant preference heterogeneity over the vegetation and fire attributes. We find strong evidence of preferences for sites with water nearby or farther away, yet there is little significant evidence of heterogeneity for water suggesting continued pressure on sites with water in the face of demographic and climate changes.

Journal of Great Lakes Research, 2019

This paper presents research on the economic damages from a hypothetical worst-case oil spill at ... more This paper presents research on the economic damages from a hypothetical worst-case oil spill at the Straits of Mackinac between Lakes Huron and Michigan. This spill could occur because the Enbridge Line 5 oil pipeline traverses the Straits between Michigan's Upper and Lower Peninsula. We quantify potential economic damages to outdoor recreation, commercial fishing, shipping, residential properties, and energy and water supplies. Damages are estimated for two spill scenarios occurring at the onset of the summer tourism season with extensive shoreline oiling. Using evidence from past spills, economic damages would last for between one and two years and would affect locations on the periphery of the spill area, depending on the activity. We project the loss from the worst-case scenario would be at least $1.3 billion.

Pandas and People, 2016

Hull, li an, thomas dietz, ken frank, frank lupi, and Jianguo liu

Land Economics, 2021

We use a multi-site general population demand model to assess welfare and distributional impacts ... more We use a multi-site general population demand model to assess welfare and distributional impacts of entrance pricing and taxation to finance Great Lakes beach management. We compare revenue resulting from uniform entry (i.e., gate) fees across sites to additional state income tax generating equivalent revenues. We present empirical demand elasticities with respect to total prices inclusive of entry fees and elasticities with respect only to fees. We find demand is price elastic for total trips and individual sites, with individual sites being significantly more elastic. Over a broad range of entry fees, total trip and site demands are fee elastic.

Ecology and Society, 2016

Urban areas such as megacities (those with populations greater than 10 million) are hotspots of g... more Urban areas such as megacities (those with populations greater than 10 million) are hotspots of global water use and thus face intense water management challenges. Urban areas are influenced by local interactions between human and natural systems and interact with distant systems through flows of water, food, energy, people, information, and capital. However, analyses of water sustainability and the management of water flows in urban areas are often fragmented. There is a strong need to apply integrated frameworks to systematically analyze urban water dynamics and factors that influence these dynamics. We apply the framework of telecoupling (socioeconomic and environmental interactions over distances) to analyze urban water issues, using Beijing as a demonstration megacity. Beijing exemplifies the global water sustainability challenge for urban settings. Like many other cities, Beijing has experienced drastic reductions in quantity and quality of both surface water and groundwater over the past several decades; it relies on the import of real and virtual water from sending systems to meet its demand for clean water, and releases polluted water to other systems (spillover systems). The integrative framework we present demonstrates the importance of considering socioeconomic and environmental interactions across telecoupled human and natural systems, which include not only Beijing (the water-receiving system) but also water-sending systems and spillover systems. This framework helps integrate important components of local and distant human-nature interactions and incorporates a wide range of local couplings and telecouplings that affect water dynamics, which in turn generate significant socioeconomic and environmental consequences, including feedback effects. The application of the framework to Beijing reveals many research gaps and management needs. We also provide a foundation to apply the telecoupling framework to better understand and manage water sustainability in other cities around the world.

Conservation Biology, 2010

Ecosystem services are being protected and restored worldwide through payments for ecosystem serv... more Ecosystem services are being protected and restored worldwide through payments for ecosystem services in which participants are paid to alter their land-management approaches to benefit the environment. The efficiency of such investments depends on the design of the payment scheme. Land features have been used to measure the environmental benefits of and amount of payment for land enrollment in payment for ecosystem services schemes. Household characteristics of program participants, however, may also be important in the targeting of land for enrollment. We used the characteristics of households participating in China's Grain-to-Green program, and features of enrolled land to examine the targeting of land enrollment in that program in Wolong Nature Reserve. We compared levels of environmental benefits that can be obtained through cost-effective targeting of land enrollment for different types of benefits under different payment schemes. The efficiency of investments in a discriminative payment scheme (payments differ according to opportunity costs, i.e., landholders' costs of forgoing alternative uses of land) was substantially higher than in a flat payment scheme (same price paid to all participants). Both optimal targeting and suboptimal targeting of land enrollment for environmental benefits achieved substantially more environmental benefits than random selection of land for enrollment. Our results suggest that cost-effective targeting of land through the use of discriminative conservation payments can substantially improve the efficiency of investments in the Grain-to-Green program and other payment for ecosystem services programs.

North American Journal of Fisheries Management, 2015

Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 2015

Nature-based tourism in protected areas is increasing worldwide and has strong potential to enhan... more Nature-based tourism in protected areas is increasing worldwide and has strong potential to enhance biodiversity conservation, poverty alleviation, and ultimately sustainable development. Understanding the evolution of protected areas as tourism destinations and the causes and consequences of changing supply and demand elements is essential toward sustainably managing tourism in these critical ecosystems. This research applied the Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC) model to illustrate and analyze the 30-year evolution of tourism in Wolong Nature Reserve. Being inscribed in UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and World Heritage programmes, Wolong is a flagship protected area in China. We showed that the Reserve experienced exploration, involvement, and development stages of TALC before tourism growth was completely halted by the Wenchuan Earthquake in 2008. We systematically investigated the changes related to the evolution of tourism and identified various internal and external driving forces. We examined the dynamics among politics, economy, and tourism growth that might propel the Reserve through the life cycle and identified significant tourism governance structural changes through the stages. The results have implications for sustainable tourism development in China's protected areas and also contributes to a broader and general understanding of the complex relationships among tourism, protected areas, and community development.

A stated choice model is used to estimate wetland mitigation preferences. In a split sample mail ... more A stated choice model is used to estimate wetland mitigation preferences. In a split sample mail survey, a main effects design is compared to a randomized design. Although randomized designs estimate main effects less efficiently, several policy relevant interactions were found to be significant, suggesting some merits of randomized designs.

Global Social Policy, 2016

As conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs spread in African countries, there is a need for well... more As conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs spread in African countries, there is a need for well-designed programs that reflect their economic, institutional, political, and sociocultural circumstances. Using both qualitative and quantitative data analysis, this article examines the perspectives of beneficiaries, program managers, and community leaders regarding Ghana’s CCT program. It addresses sociocultural attitudes toward poverty, perceptions of CCT as a poverty reduction strategy, and experiences with CCT implementation. Findings indicate favorable views of CCT but little support for giving money to the poor as a long-term poverty-alleviation strategy. Ghana’s CCT program is seen as fair and popular, but current payment levels are viewed as inadequate, impractical, and unreliable.

Global Social Policy, 2016

As conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs spread in African countries, there is a need for well... more As conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs spread in African countries, there is a need for well-designed programs that reflect their economic, institutional, political, and sociocultural circumstances. Using both qualitative and quantitative data analysis, this article examines the perspectives of beneficiaries, program managers, and community leaders regarding Ghana’s CCT program. It addresses sociocultural attitudes toward poverty, perceptions of CCT as a poverty reduction strategy, and experiences with CCT implementation. Findings indicate favorable views of CCT but little support for giving money to the poor as a long-term poverty-alleviation strategy. Ghana’s CCT program is seen as fair and popular, but current payment levels are viewed as inadequate, impractical, and unreliable.

Land Use Policy, 2015

Non point source (NPS) pollution remains a challenge to communities meeting watershed management ... more Non point source (NPS) pollution remains a challenge to communities meeting watershed management objectives around the world. Installing agricultural best management practices (BMPs) such as filter strips is a widely accepted mechanism to control NPS pollution and agricultural runoff. Government programs in the form of payment for environmental services (PES) have been introduced to encourage BMP adoption for watershed protection. However, the voluntary nature of these programs makes landowners’ decision to participate in them critical to achieving program goals. Understanding the drivers behind landowners’ decisions to participate in watershed protection programs is essential for designing effective and efficient programs. This study examines agricultural landowners’ decisions to participate in a conservation program involving filter strips. Using responses from a survey of agricultural landowners in Michigan's Saginaw Bay watershed, the study examines key programmatic, socio-psychological, and demographic determinants of landowners’ participation decisions. The study results suggest that making contract durations shorter with enhanced rental payments, and educating landowners about program efficacy as well as on- and off-farm benefits of the conservation practice would enhance participation.

Land Use Policy, 2015

Non point source (NPS) pollution remains a challenge to communities meeting watershed management ... more Non point source (NPS) pollution remains a challenge to communities meeting watershed management objectives around the world. Installing agricultural best management practices (BMPs) such as filter strips is a widely accepted mechanism to control NPS pollution and agricultural runoff. Government programs in the form of payment for environmental services (PES) have been introduced to encourage BMP adoption for watershed protection. However, the voluntary nature of these programs makes landowners’ decision to participate in them critical to achieving program goals. Understanding the drivers behind landowners’ decisions to participate in watershed protection programs is essential for designing effective and efficient programs. This study examines agricultural landowners’ decisions to participate in a conservation program involving filter strips. Using responses from a survey of agricultural landowners in Michigan's Saginaw Bay watershed, the study examines key programmatic, socio-psychological, and demographic determinants of landowners’ participation decisions. The study results suggest that making contract durations shorter with enhanced rental payments, and educating landowners about program efficacy as well as on- and off-farm benefits of the conservation practice would enhance participation.

Land Economics, 2009

Researchers using questionnaires to elicit preferences must decide whether to include response op... more Researchers using questionnaires to elicit preferences must decide whether to include response options that allow respondents to express ''no opinion.'' Using a split-sample design, we explore the implications of alternative answer formats including and not including no-opinion responses in an attribute-based choice experiment. The results indicate that using multiple no-opinion responses may enable researchers to differentiate between respondents who choose no-opinion options due to satisficing and those expressing utility indifference. Existing literature suggesting no-opinion responses may be treated as ''no,'' but our results show treating no-opinion responses as no yields substantially disparate preference estimates. (JEL C25, Q24, Q25, Q51)

Journal of Natural Resources Policy Research, 2009

The long-term success of payment for environmental services (PES) schemes depends on adequate dem... more The long-term success of payment for environmental services (PES) schemes depends on adequate demand for services and sustainable financing. We examine the viability of using locally financed payments to protect watershed services in rural eastern Costa Rica. Using dichotomous choice contingent valuation, we measure households' willingness to pay higher water bills for a local PES programme to adjust upstream land use practices to protect downstream water quality. We found that every income segment of the local population of water-users exhibited significant demand and willingness to finance the PES programme to protect local water quality.

This paper focuses on the e↵ect of wildfires on the value of recreation in four national forests ... more This paper focuses on the e↵ect of wildfires on the value of recreation in four national forests surrounding the Los Angeles metropolitan area, namely, the Angeles, Cleveland, Los Padres, and San Bernardino. These forests are unique for multiple reasons. First, they represent the primary outdoor recreation opportunity to many urban residents due to their proximity to the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Second, because they share similar characteristics and are accessible for day trips from Los Angeles, they are substitutes. Third, their vegetation, which consists of shrubs and oak woods in the low lands and conifers at high elevation, is highly prone to wildfire. Last, they are under great levels of stress due to severe droughts, increased frequency and intensity of wildfires, and their heavy use by the public. For example, California recently experienced its largest wildfire in contemporary records, the Thomas fire which burned over 280,000 acres including large portions of the Los Padres National Forest. The recreation value of these sites and an understanding of how these values change as a result of increased wildfire is thus policy-relevant. In addition, the paper makes several novel contributions: first, our empirical strategy allows us to exploit time variation to recover e↵ects fire has on views along with a full set of site-level fixed e↵ects to control for omitted variables; second, we replicate the novel method of Von Haefen (2015) to estimate a zonal travel cost model within the rich substitution structure of a nested logit demand system, and third, we apply the model to value some of the e↵ects of California's largest modern wildfire.

American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2016

Despite the success of efforts to reduce phosphorus (P) pollution from point sources, P from non-... more Despite the success of efforts to reduce phosphorus (P) pollution from point sources, P from non-point agricultural sources remains a vexing problem with many U.S. water bodies having impairments. Key to solving the P pollution puzzle is to take stock of progress to date, the puzzle pieces available, and the gaps to be filled. In this paper, we synthesize the state of knowledge on P pollution, discuss the state of existing public programs, and review economists' contributions to informing P pollution policies. We review the water quality valuation literature, identifying limitations in the linkages to policy-relevant environmental quality metrics. We examine how and why P is used agriculturally, along with recent advances in market-based policy design and field testing. We survey new knowledge in biology and engineering, including improved understanding of the fate and transport of P. In light of recent learning and persistent knowledge gaps, we recommend directions for economic research to add needed pieces to the puzzle of how to protect our water bodies. Puzzle gaps meriting attention include mechanisms to target public funds more effectively in voluntary abatement programs, policy design for emerging mitigation technologies, new ways to implement performance-based policies, means to leverage social norms and behavioral cues, changes in the "pay-the-polluter" paradigm, and application of state-of-the-art evaluation methods to conservation programs. Beyond the realm of public policy lies that of private supply chains, where establishment of environmental standards holds additional promise. Rich research opportunities exist for economists in tandem with biologists, engineers, and others.

A choice experiment is used to estimate preferences for environmental attributes of recreation si... more A choice experiment is used to estimate preferences for environmental attributes of recreation sites. Respondents were randomly intercepted at national forest sites near Los Angeles. Because of the increasing threats of wildfires, the main attribute of interest is fire history, where fire history is given by distinct categories in relation to the dominant vegetation at the site. Using various conditional logit and random parameters logit models, we find that tree cover, compared to shrubs or barren areas, and water are highly desirable attributes, while evidence of past fires decreases the value of a site. Forest fires that reach the crowns of trees are least desirable, while older forest fires and shrub fires have less of a negative effect. We find evidence of significant preference heterogeneity over the vegetation and fire attributes. We find strong evidence of preferences for sites with water nearby or farther away, yet there is little significant evidence of heterogeneity for water suggesting continued pressure on sites with water in the face of demographic and climate changes.

Journal of Great Lakes Research, 2019

This paper presents research on the economic damages from a hypothetical worst-case oil spill at ... more This paper presents research on the economic damages from a hypothetical worst-case oil spill at the Straits of Mackinac between Lakes Huron and Michigan. This spill could occur because the Enbridge Line 5 oil pipeline traverses the Straits between Michigan's Upper and Lower Peninsula. We quantify potential economic damages to outdoor recreation, commercial fishing, shipping, residential properties, and energy and water supplies. Damages are estimated for two spill scenarios occurring at the onset of the summer tourism season with extensive shoreline oiling. Using evidence from past spills, economic damages would last for between one and two years and would affect locations on the periphery of the spill area, depending on the activity. We project the loss from the worst-case scenario would be at least $1.3 billion.

Pandas and People, 2016

Hull, li an, thomas dietz, ken frank, frank lupi, and Jianguo liu

Land Economics, 2021

We use a multi-site general population demand model to assess welfare and distributional impacts ... more We use a multi-site general population demand model to assess welfare and distributional impacts of entrance pricing and taxation to finance Great Lakes beach management. We compare revenue resulting from uniform entry (i.e., gate) fees across sites to additional state income tax generating equivalent revenues. We present empirical demand elasticities with respect to total prices inclusive of entry fees and elasticities with respect only to fees. We find demand is price elastic for total trips and individual sites, with individual sites being significantly more elastic. Over a broad range of entry fees, total trip and site demands are fee elastic.

Ecology and Society, 2016

Urban areas such as megacities (those with populations greater than 10 million) are hotspots of g... more Urban areas such as megacities (those with populations greater than 10 million) are hotspots of global water use and thus face intense water management challenges. Urban areas are influenced by local interactions between human and natural systems and interact with distant systems through flows of water, food, energy, people, information, and capital. However, analyses of water sustainability and the management of water flows in urban areas are often fragmented. There is a strong need to apply integrated frameworks to systematically analyze urban water dynamics and factors that influence these dynamics. We apply the framework of telecoupling (socioeconomic and environmental interactions over distances) to analyze urban water issues, using Beijing as a demonstration megacity. Beijing exemplifies the global water sustainability challenge for urban settings. Like many other cities, Beijing has experienced drastic reductions in quantity and quality of both surface water and groundwater over the past several decades; it relies on the import of real and virtual water from sending systems to meet its demand for clean water, and releases polluted water to other systems (spillover systems). The integrative framework we present demonstrates the importance of considering socioeconomic and environmental interactions across telecoupled human and natural systems, which include not only Beijing (the water-receiving system) but also water-sending systems and spillover systems. This framework helps integrate important components of local and distant human-nature interactions and incorporates a wide range of local couplings and telecouplings that affect water dynamics, which in turn generate significant socioeconomic and environmental consequences, including feedback effects. The application of the framework to Beijing reveals many research gaps and management needs. We also provide a foundation to apply the telecoupling framework to better understand and manage water sustainability in other cities around the world.

Conservation Biology, 2010

Ecosystem services are being protected and restored worldwide through payments for ecosystem serv... more Ecosystem services are being protected and restored worldwide through payments for ecosystem services in which participants are paid to alter their land-management approaches to benefit the environment. The efficiency of such investments depends on the design of the payment scheme. Land features have been used to measure the environmental benefits of and amount of payment for land enrollment in payment for ecosystem services schemes. Household characteristics of program participants, however, may also be important in the targeting of land for enrollment. We used the characteristics of households participating in China's Grain-to-Green program, and features of enrolled land to examine the targeting of land enrollment in that program in Wolong Nature Reserve. We compared levels of environmental benefits that can be obtained through cost-effective targeting of land enrollment for different types of benefits under different payment schemes. The efficiency of investments in a discriminative payment scheme (payments differ according to opportunity costs, i.e., landholders' costs of forgoing alternative uses of land) was substantially higher than in a flat payment scheme (same price paid to all participants). Both optimal targeting and suboptimal targeting of land enrollment for environmental benefits achieved substantially more environmental benefits than random selection of land for enrollment. Our results suggest that cost-effective targeting of land through the use of discriminative conservation payments can substantially improve the efficiency of investments in the Grain-to-Green program and other payment for ecosystem services programs.

North American Journal of Fisheries Management, 2015

Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 2015

Nature-based tourism in protected areas is increasing worldwide and has strong potential to enhan... more Nature-based tourism in protected areas is increasing worldwide and has strong potential to enhance biodiversity conservation, poverty alleviation, and ultimately sustainable development. Understanding the evolution of protected areas as tourism destinations and the causes and consequences of changing supply and demand elements is essential toward sustainably managing tourism in these critical ecosystems. This research applied the Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC) model to illustrate and analyze the 30-year evolution of tourism in Wolong Nature Reserve. Being inscribed in UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and World Heritage programmes, Wolong is a flagship protected area in China. We showed that the Reserve experienced exploration, involvement, and development stages of TALC before tourism growth was completely halted by the Wenchuan Earthquake in 2008. We systematically investigated the changes related to the evolution of tourism and identified various internal and external driving forces. We examined the dynamics among politics, economy, and tourism growth that might propel the Reserve through the life cycle and identified significant tourism governance structural changes through the stages. The results have implications for sustainable tourism development in China's protected areas and also contributes to a broader and general understanding of the complex relationships among tourism, protected areas, and community development.