Conference Agenda
Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
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Daily Overview |
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Local Air Pollution and Enforcement Location: B131 Session Chair: Roger von Haefen, NC State University | |
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The Welfare Effects of Air Pollution on Outdoor Recreation: An Application to Shoreline Fishing Along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts 1: North Carolina State University; 2: Meredith College Over the past two decades, coastal areas in the United States have experienced significant improvements in air quality, driven by stricter federal PM2.5 standards and cleaner fuel requirements for maritime shipping. However, the impact of these improvements on outdoor recreation, a major and growing sector of many coastal economies, remains unclear. Our study examines how changes in air pollution along the East and Gulf Coasts affected shoreline recreational fishing from 2004 to 2018, using one of the largest outdoor recreation datasets ever assembled. Through a linked model of angler participation and site choice, we found a strong negative and statistically significant relationship between PM2.5 levels and shoreline recreational fishing. This relationship suggests substantial welfare gains from recent air quality improvements. Our results also show significant regional variations across the U.S., with anglers in the Southeast and New England/Mid-Atlantic regions benefiting the most economically. Sensitivity analyses confirm that our baseline estimates remain robust when accounting for factors such as changes in local recreation patterns, income effects, nonlinear air pollution effects, heat effects, and alternative distributional assumptions. | |