Abstract

The existence of some degree of regional heterogeneity in willingness-to-pay estimates for environmental goods is commonly acknowledged. The benefit stream from policies impacting threatened and endangered species may differ locally, regionally, or among particular population segments, making spatial variation in threatened and endangered species values vital to analyse in a policy setting. In this study, we report WTP estimates based on a choice experiment with stated preferences for eight different marine species that are threatened or endangered. WTP is calculated at two different spatial scales using a spatially embedded sample of nine U.S. Census areas and a random sample of more than 5000 U.S. households. We compare species values between regions and between each region and the entire United States statistically to see if there are any differences. Our findings just three of the eight species exhibit differences, and there is little spatial variation between national values and values computed from regionally embedded samples. There is more variety between regions, and all species show a substantial difference in at least one comparison between regions. Our findings should be of great importance to the marine management community given that policy analyses involving vulnerable and endangered marine species might frequently be regional in scope or may disparately influence different regions.