Willingness to Pay Survey to Evaluate Recreational Benefits of Nutrient Reductions in Coastal New England Waters (Revision)

New England’s coastal social-ecological systems are subject to chronic environmental problems, including water quality degradation that results in important social and ecological impacts. Researchers at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are piloting an effort to better understand how reduced water quality due to nutrient enrichment affects the economic prosperity, social capacity, and ecological integrity of coastal New England communities. EPA is conducting a survey that will allow us to estimate changes in recreation demand and values due to changes in nutrients in northeastern U.S. coastal waters. The initial geographic focus for these efforts will be Cape Cod, Massachusetts (“the Cape”; Barnstable County), and New England residents within 100 miles of the Cape. One of the key water quality concerns on Cape Cod, and throughout New England, is nonpoint sources of nitrogen, which lead to ecological impairments in estuaries with resultant socio-economic impacts. The towns on the Cape are currently in the process of creating plans to address their total maximum daily load (TMDL) thresholds for nitrogen-impaired coastal embayments. There are over 40 coastal embayments and subembayments on the Cape. To date, the EPA has approved 12 TMDLs for embayments on Cape Cod with others pending review. Because Cape Cod’s wastewater is primarily handled by onsite septic systems (85% of total Cape wastewater flows), the main sources are spread across the Cape and are affected by individual household-level decisions as well as community-level decisions. Coordinated through the Cape Cod Commission and based on the Cape’s Clean Water Act Section 208 Plan, communities across the Cape have been tasked with developing a watershed-based approach for addressing water quality to improve valued socio-economic and ecological conditions. The decisions needed to meet water quality standards are highly complex and involve significant cross-disciplinary challenges in identifying, implementing, and monitoring social and ecological management ecosystem services on the Cape (including beachgoing, swimming, fishing, shellfishing, and boating). As part of these efforts, EPA will conduct a revealed preference survey to collect data on people’s saltwater recreational activities; how recreational values are related to water quality; how perceptions of water quality relate to objective measures; the connections between perceptions of water quality, recreational choices and values, and sense of place; and demographic information. The survey will be administered using a mixed-mode approach that includes a mailed invitation to a web survey with an optional paper survey for people who are unable or unwilling to answer the web survey. EPA will use the survey responses to estimate willingness to pay for changes related to reductions in nutrient and pathogen loadings to coastal New England waters.

The latest form for Willingness to Pay Survey to Evaluate Recreational Benefits of Nutrient Reductions in Coastal New England Waters (Revision) expires 2021-07-31 and can be found here.