WILLINGNESS TO PAY FOR DESERT PROTECTION

This paper uses a referendum-style survey approach known as dichotomous-choice contingent valuation to estimate the benefits of restricting the uses of 6.9 million acres of desert land. Statistical techniques estimate the value to California residents of creating three new national parks and 76 new wilderness areas in the high and low deserts of eastern California. The total amount that California residents would be willing to pay to enact desert protection legislation ranges from $177 million to $448 million per year. This estimate hinges on the assumptions that (i) the residents who did not complete and return the survey questionnaire ("nonrespondents") would receive no benefits from desert protection and (ii) the estimate of willingness to pay for the "respondents" is unbiased.     

Micro-computers and decision making

The micro-computer is claimed to have lost its designation "Hobbyist" and to provide a real computing facility for professionals at low cost and high convenience. The authors have taken a number of decision-making and forecasting systems and "translated" them to operate on a variety of micro-computers including the Texas TI 59, the Sinclair ZX 81, the Commodore PET and VIC and the Apple II. Experience in operating the "translated" programs on the small machines has shown perhaps surprising advantages over the main-frame versions from which they were devised.
The paper is in two parts. In the first part the use of micro-computers is discussed in the light of our experience and in the second part the operation of the programs is explained. The use of standard software packages in R & D is not discussed. The programs which are discussed with examples of their use are:
MAUDE derived from the main-frame decision analysis program AIDA
RELEVANCE a resource allocation ANALYSIS algorithm
MARKOV CHAIN a stochastic ANALYSIS approach to forecasting
CROSS IMPACT a policy analysis tool based on KISM Cross-impact language
LINKAGE an extension to ANALYSIS Cross Impact