Estimating public willingness to fund nongame conservation through state tax initiatives

Abstract

Nongame conservation is insufficiently funded at local, national, and global levels. Despite campaigns and reforms over the past 30 years in the United States, adequate and consistent federal funding has failed to materialize and shifted the focus to state-level initiatives. We surveyed North Carolina residents during April-May 2010, to assess public willingness to fund nongame conservation, preferred nongame conservation funding mechanisms, and key predictors of support for nongame funding. We estimated a model of willingness-to-pay (WTP) using interval-censored data modeling and compared models using the Akaike Information Criterion. The mean WTP was US$98.80/year/household when respon..