The coast of Louisiana, with more than three million wetland acres, accounts for about 40 percent of the nations total wetlands. Louisiana is estimated to have lost more than 1.2 million acres of its coastal wetland in the last century. Although 75% of Louisianas coastal wetlands are privately owned, little has been done to encourage private landowners to undertake wetland restoration projects. This dissertation examines the factors that influence the decisions of the landowners to undertake wetland restoration projects. We develop a theoretical framework for understanding the landowners decision-making process in the presence of high uncertainty and increasing restoration costs. The condition under which landowners will invest in wetland restoration and maintenance is derived under the assumptions of risk aversion and relatively high restoration costs. The validity of the theoretical model is tested using data from a mail survey of private wetland landowners in coastal Louisiana that was conducted in Fall of 2009. Two econometric (Tobit and double hurdle) models are estimated to determine the importance of various factors including risk aversion on the probability and the level of private coastal wetland investments.
The Likelihood ratio (LR) test shows that the double hurdle model statistically outperforms the Tobit model. The results suggest that the decision to invest in wetland restoration and how much to invest appear to be determined by different processes. The results of the double hurdle model show that risk plays an important role in landowners decisions to invest in wetland restoration and maintenance activities. Landowners who are risk averse make less investment in wetland restoration and maintenance projects than other landowners, and landowners who own properties that are located in risk prone areas are less likely to invest in wetland restoration than other landowners. In addition, the results show that landowners attitudes toward conservation, income related to the property, participation in government wetland programs, ownership structure, and wetland property size are all important determinants of the landowners investment decisions. The analysis emphasizes the need to incorporate risk into the design of wetland incentive programs to encourage private landowners to undertake wetland restoration projects in coastal Louisiana.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-11182010-115637 |
| Date | 18 November 2010 |
| Creators | Ould Dedah, cheikhna |
| Contributors | Keithly, Walter R, Kazmierczak, Richard F, Gillespie, Jeffrey M, Westra, John, Pardue, John, Caffey, Rex H |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-11182010-115637/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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