The purpose of this study is to review existing literature of factors that influence farmers’ decision to participate in conservation programs. This study is also intended to collect county data and information on conservation programs and participation in the Kentucky River watershed region, which can be analyzed and used to draw differences in characteristics of the region that would suggest willingness to participate in a trading scheme for improvements in water quality. The results suggest that more participation in a trading scheme from some counties than others should be expected. Counties with more farms and larger farms will probably have higher rates of participation in conservation programs. The cost-share amounts being paid by current government programs must be considered as the minimum staring point to negotiate in a trading scheme. To target the impact of watersheds, such as the Kentucky River in the Mississippi system, that discharges significant amounts of pollutants into the Gulf of Mexico, policy makers and program administrators should be advising and stimulating the adoption of practices with the best abatement performance for such pollutants considering technical complementarity between practices.

Private forest land in Mississippi provides a wide range of ecosystem services. This study examined nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) landowner familiarity with ecosystem services and conservation programs and quantified the proportion of forest land they were interested in managing for ecosystem services as well as determined compensation levels required for implementing forest management strategies featuring management restriction to facilitate production of multiple ecosystem services. The data collection process was based on a structured questionnaire administered to 2,025 NIPF landowners in Mississippi. Findings indicated that landowner familiarity with conservation programs was low. However, they were familiar with ecosystem services found in Mississippi. Familiarity with conservation programs was positively associated with gender, household income, possession of a forest management plan, and membership in conservation organizations. The study also determined whether landowners were interested in managing their forests for ecosystem services and the quantified proportion of forest land they would manage for such services. Findings revealed that landowners were interested in managing for multiple ecosystem services and 62% of the forest land could be available for production of such activities in the form of pine and bottomland hardwoods. The proportion of forest land that landowners were interested in managing for ecosystem services was positively associated with the percentage proportion of natural pine and bottomland hardwoods as well as personal recreation goals while negatively related to a possession of a written forest management plan. The research also used a contingent valuation to quantify monetary compensation levels that landowners were willing to accept to adopt forest management restrictions to facilitate ecosystem services. The willingness to accept (WTA) compensation levels ranged from $190.22 to $595.23/ha/year. Higher compensation was required with a higher level of management restrictions. WTA compensation to implement forest management activities was positively associated with bid level and long-term investment goal. Findings will be useful in facilitating outreach activities in terms of identifying groups of interested landowners, forest land available for multiple ecosystem service production, and quantifying the total cost of implementing forest management facilitating an increased production of ecosystem services.

An awareness of the effect of agricultural production on the environment has led to the development of policies to mitigate its adverse effects. This dissertation provides analyses of agri-environmental policies designed to protect environmental assets, as well as analytical decision-making tools useful for conducting policy evaluations. The first essay employs propensity score matching techniques to estimate the additionality of federal agricultural conservation programs for six conservation practices for farmers in Ohio. Additionality is an important measure of the effectiveness of conservation programs in inducing an increase in the conservation effort of farmers. Results suggest that additionality is positive and statistically significant for all six conservation practices. However, while programs achieve positive additionality for all practice types, a comparison between conservation practices reveals that certain practice types achieve higher percent additionality than others. Such results, coupled with information on the environmental benefits obtained per practice, could prove useful to program managers for improving the effectiveness of conservation programs. The second essay develops a new methodology to decompose the additionality measure into the two effects induced by conservation programs: expansion versus the new adoption of conservation practices. To do so, the relative contributions of two types of farmers, prior-adopters and new-adopters, are estimated. Results of the decomposition reveal that the additionality for prior-adopters is not significant for all practice types. Instead, additional conservation effort comes from new-adopters adopting new practices. Second, decomposition estimates suggest that practice types with a greater fraction of enrolled farmers that are new-adopters achieve greater percent additionality than those with greater proportions of prior-adopters. This suggests that a farmers? history in conservation adoption has a significant influence on additionality levels. The final essay analyzes the effect of recent instream flow diversion-guidelines on agricultural water security and streamflows within a decentralized water management regime. Spatially-explicit economic and hydrologic models are integrated to evaluate the tradeoffs between salmon bypass-flows and agricultural water security for three different diversion-guidelines within a northern-California watershed. Results indicate that the most restrictive diversion-guideline provides the greatest protection of bypass-flow days within smaller watersheds; however, within larger watersheds protection is not as significant. Water security, however, decreases sharply under the strict and moderate diversion-guidelines, especially during dry years. Overall, results indicate that greater focus should be given to protecting streamflows in the smallest watersheds, and meeting human water needs during dry years, when agricultural water security is impacted the most.

"Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Business Administration from the Naval Postgraduate School, December 2009." / Advisor(s): King, Cynthia. ; Salem, Anita. "December 2009." "MBA Professional report"--Cover. Description based on title screen as viewed on April 12, 2010. Author(s) subject terms: Energy Conservation; Strategic Communication; U.S. Navy Energy Conservation Programs; Motivations; Incentives; Behavior Change Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-87). Also available in print.

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