Coastal SEES Collaborative Research: Non-Market Value Meta-Data on Willingness to Pay for Coastal Marsh Habitat Change

These data represent a meta-dataset of observations on per household economic value - represented by per household willingness-to-pay (WTP) - for improvements in coastal marsh habitat, drawn from stated-preference studies in the research literature. The metadata allow estimation of benefit transfer functions via meta-regression modeling. Within these econometric functions, the dependent variable is a comparable estimate of economic value (e.g., WTP) drawn from extant primary valuation studies. Independent variables represent observable factors hypothesized to explain variation in this value measure across observations. These functions can be used to produce out-of-sample predictions of WTP for coastal marsh habitat improvements at sites for which no primary valuation studies have been conducted. They can also be used to understand the factors associated with systematic variations in marsh habitat values across different sites and studies. These data are described in Vedogbeton, H. and R.J. Johnston. 2020. Commodity Consistent Meta-Analysis of Wetland Values: An Illustration for Coastal Marsh Habitat. Environmental and Resource Economics 75(4), 835-865, and allow replication of the results presented therein. The metadata are extracted from primary studies that estimate total (use and nonuse) per household WTP for changes in the quantity or quality of coastal marsh wildlife habitats or their services, in US and Canada. These studies were identified via a systematic review of the literature. The metadata combine information provided by these primary non-market valuation studies with publicly available external data extracted from sources such as the US Census, US National Historical GIS (https://www.nhgis.org/), and US Fish and Wildlife Service National Wetlands Inventory (https://www.fws.gov/wetlands/Data/Mapper.html). Studies included in the metadata are restricted to those that estimate total per household WTP for coastal wetland habitat changes using generally acce