Private Provision of a Public Good: Willingness to Pay for Privately Stocked Trout

Abstract

Governments may fail to adequately supply public goods, due, in part, to declining budgets and entrenched methods of provision. This undersupply provides opportunities for private organizations to supplement governmental efforts in the provision of goods with positive externalities. This study examines a case where a local, nongovernmental organization conducts a fish stocking program on a restored public waterway in West Virginia. Results show that anglers are generally supportive of the program. Estimated average willingness to pay for fish stocking is about $29 per angler per year, based on results from a grouped data Tobit model. Annual stated willingness to pay is affected by distance to the site, knowledge of the program, demographics, and fishing preferences, each of which has implications for promoting and marketing the trout stocking program. Knowledge of the program helps mitigate the distance decay of spillover benefits.

Keywords:

• distance decay
• grouped data Tobit
• spillover benefits
• trout

Acknowledgments

Partial support for this project provided by West Virginia University Extension Service and the Aquaculture, Food, and Marketing Development Project funded by the USDA CSREES. We thank Dr. Kenneth Semmens for his valuable insights and Chad Elza and members of the Committee for distributing the questionnaires. We also thank John Loomis and three anonymous referees of this journal for their insightful comments that directly led to improvements in the article. Any remaining errors are the sole responsibility of the authors.

Notes

^a Estimates include five respondents that were not willing to donate money for the program, i.e., WTP = 0.

^b Significant at .01 level.

^c Significant at .05 level.

^d Significant at .10 level.

^a Mean and median WTP values reported are averages of the individual fitted measures including zero bids (n = 92).

^b High demographics are based on a 55-year-old person with a college education and $70,000 annual income.

^c 95% Confidence intervals for average values reported in parentheses.

^d Low demographics are based on a 35-year-old person with a high school education and $30,000 annual income.

Trout stocked by a private organization in a public waterway is not a pure public good because it is rival in consumption (with the possible exception of catch-and-release fishing). It is, however, nonexcludable for the private group conducting the stocking—once the fish are released into public waterways, anyone with a valid fishing license can legally catch the fish. Therefore, private stocking of trout in a public waterway is a public good that generates a positive externality for local anglers.

For example, private stocking of public waterways is illegal in Alaska (M. Doxey 2003, personal communication) and is allowed only with written permission in Delaware, where only one stream is privately stocked (R. Miller 2003, personal communication). The only example of private stocking found in the literature was in New South Wales, Australia, where local private organizations (such as angling clubs and local councils) stock high-priority, native recreational species. They receive financial support from the government with matching funds (Watson 2001).

All estimates reported in this paper are in 2002 base year dollars. Estimates were either based on data collected in 2002 or were adjusted using the Consumer Price Index.

The sign of the statistically significant coefficient is in parentheses.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires state governments to compile a list of impaired water bodies, called 303(d) lists, whose pollution levels are above those deemed acceptable for each water body's designated water use.

The name of this group changed to “Trout for Cheat, Inc.” during 2003.

Over the summer of 2002 West Virginia had near record high temperatures with normal water flow rates. At the end of the summer, only one trout downstream of the stocking site was found dead due to unknown causes.

On March 5, 2003, West Virginia's legislature passed an amendment to Article 2, Wildlife Resources, by adding §20-2-64. Section 64 regulates the release of fish, water animals, and other aquatic organisms by requiring a permit. This legislation should have little impact on the Cheat River Restoration Committee's efforts, given that the section exempts the stocking of trout from the permitting process provided the fish originate from a source within the state or have a disease-free certification.

A modified payment card is a WTP elicitation technique in which respondents are provided with several contribution levels and asked to circle the highest amount they are willing to pay. For this survey, the modified payment card included the amounts listed in Table 2 with an option to write in a different amount.

Data from the two delivery modes can be pooled based on likelihood ratio tests of the fully specified model. Differences between the two groups are accounted for in the distance and support of the program variables.

In 2004, the committee (aka Trout for Cheat, Inc.) received nonprofit status and was soliciting individual donations from local anglers to provide supplemental funding for future trout stocking efforts.

We purposely did not name the specific organization that was responsible for the trout stocking program in an attempt to avoid bias associated with individuals’ personal feelings toward the organization. However, given that most respondents were familiar with the stocking program and somewhat familiar with the actual organization, the effect of lower (but positive) WTP of less supportive individuals may be a function of who was doing the stocking and not their value of the good provided.