Social preferences for invasive plant management: A case Study from the interior Northwest of the United States

Improved understanding of the benefits of invasive species management is necessary to inform economically efficient invasive species management and policy. Motivated by this need in the Interior Northwest of the United States, a choice experiment was designed to estimate society’s marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) to avoid damage costs of invasive plants. Five ecosystem services at risk were included in the experiment: wildlife habitat; stream water quality; working landscapes and traditional means of livelihood in rural communities; occurrences of rare and threatened plants; and outdoor recreation. Multinomial logit (MNL) and latent class (LC) models were fitted to the data. Results allow two important conclusions to be made. First, the MNL models revealed that residents have a statistically significant MWTP to improve management of invasive plants and protect all ecosystem services examined. The MWTP estimates are suitable for integration within bioeconomic models that support development of economically efficient invasive plant control strategies. Second, the LC models highlighted heterogeneity in preferences about which impacts of invasive plants management should address. This suggests it may be challenging to gain and maintain broad political support for invasive plant management without a suite of public awareness campaigns tailored to specific segments of the population