Public Willingness to Pay for Farmer Adoption of Best Management Practices

This paper analyzes public willingness to support farmer adoption of best management practices in Oklahoma's Fort Cobb Watershed, a multiuse area for agriculture, residential water provision, and recreation. The study uses Oklahoma's Meso-Scale Integrated Sociogeographic Network survey to conduct a contingent valuation analysis of a hypothetical, one-time tax that would support farmer adoption of pasture and riparian buffer management practices. Respondent heterogeneity is modeled using betabinomial regression. Public support for the hypothetical program is stronger for the tandem implementation of riparian buffer establishment and pasture expansion (willingness to pay [WTP] = $290) and riparian buffer establishment (WTP = $317).