Water
Paper Session
Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM (EST)
- Chair: Sheila Olmstead, Cornell University
Decomposing Use and Non-Use Values of Water Quality at the National Scale: Evidence from Cellphone Mobility and Stated Preference Data
Abstract
Accurately valuing environmental improvements --- especially distinguishing between use and non-use benefits --- is critical for effective water quality policy and benefit-cost analysis. However, existing regulatory models, such as the EPA's BenSPLASH, rely on fixed spatial assumptions and lack empirical evidence on how willingness to pay (WTP) varies with distance. This paper addresses that gap by developing a national-scale framework to decompose household WTP for water quality improvements, using cellphone-based mobility data and microdata from a stated preference (SP) survey conducted by the EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE). We estimate a nationwide recreation demand model using anonymized mobility data from Advan, which tracks trips from over 200,000 Census block groups to nearly 70,000 water-based recreation sites. To quantify non-use values, we apply the structural approach of Kim and Lupi (2023) and Day et al. (2019), linking revealed and stated preference data to separate total WTP into its use and non-use components. For each survey respondent, we calculate expected use value based on recreation behavior and infer non-use value as the residual. This joint modeling framework allows us to estimate how both components of WTP vary with distance --- information that has been largely absent from regulatory benefit assessments. Preliminary results using regional SP data (Johnston et al., 2023; Vossler et al., 2023) show steep distance decay in use WTP but minimal decay in non-use WTP. Within 100 miles, over 90% of use value is captured, but only around 30\% of non-use value --- suggesting that current models may understate total benefits by more than 40%. Full national-level estimation using the NCEE data is underway and will be presented. This work offers critical improvements to integrated assessment models like BenSPLASH by providing empirically grounded spatial aggregation rules.Gendered and Distributional Impacts of Scaling Water Access: Evidence from Tap Water Policy in India
Abstract
Improving water access can reduce the burden of time spent on water collection and enhance child health. However, most evidence comes from interventions with limited scope, and it remains unclear how benefits are distributed between advantaged and disadvantaged groups when programs are scaled to fill regional or national coverage gaps. We examine whether scaled tap water access under the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), launched in August 2019, offers greater benefits to women and historically marginalized caste groups, including Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) populations, in terms of short-term savings of time and health improvement. For these analyses, we combine data from the 2019 Time Use Survey and the 2019-2021 National Family Health Survey with administrative JJM data. Exploiting temperature shocks that affect water demand, we find that the policy reduces water collection time, particularly for women and marginalized caste groups. At the same time, however, by examining district-level variation in tap water expansion and a DiD design, we identify an increase in child mortality, particularly among these marginalized groups. Our results suggest a quantity-quality tradeoff in scaling infrastructure and a need for more careful mitigation of potentially adverse behavioral responses. Thus, our findings suggest that scaling water programs can help reduce inequalities in water access but also introduce adverse health outcomes for those targeted, potentially due to poor infrastructure quality, or inattention to potentially quality-compromising behavioral responses. Scaling up water programs, therefore, requires a careful balance between the quantity and the quality of infrastructure and service delivery.Dam Thy Neighbor: International Relations and the Externalities of Impounding Rivers
Abstract
Using the global context of dams on transboundary rivers, this paper provides the first quantification of how international relations shape transboundary environmental externalities. I leverage a novel measure of dam exposure in a difference-in-differences framework and compile quantitative measures of bilateral relations motivated by theories of cross-country cooperation. When downstream countries have little economic leverage on or high coordination costs with upstream neighbors, I find that they face significant negative externalities from foreign upstream dams. The externalities are mitigated when bilateral relations swing more in the downstream country's favor. Among various measures of bilateral relations, joint membership in international institutions is especially predictive of averted transboundary externalities. As recent dams have chiefly been built in developing regions, these results uncover the role played by international relations in economic development, through the management of transboundary natural resources.Discussant(s)
Robyn Meeks
,
Duke University
Catherine Kling
,
Cornell University
Raymond Guiteras
,
North Carolina State University
Sheila Olmstead
,
Cornell University
JEL Classifications
- Q5 - Environmental Economics
- Q2 - Renewable Resources and Conservation