Sahan T. M. Dissanayake

Portland State University | PSU · Department of Economics

Most conservation reserve design models presented in the literature are static and ignore the dynamic economic aspects of site selection. Typically conservation programs operate under time-related (e.g. annual) budgets and purchase land over time in a sequential manner. The uncertainty of land development has been incorporated in a few dynamic rese...

We demonstrate how choice experiment survey methods can be used to guide ecosystem restoration efforts. We use a choice experiment survey to estimate willingness to pay (WTP) for different attributes of restored grassland ecosystems. We find that the presence of nearby grasslands increases a respondent’s WTP and that species richness, population de...

Sustainable seafood initiatives began with efforts to promote and certify seafood sourced from well-managed stocks caught with a reduced impact on the marine environment. More recently, social equity in fisheries has been the subject of increased concern with suggestions that seafood cannot be certified as sustainable if its production results in s...

We investigate local economic impacts of shale gas development using the natural experiment of the discontinuity in regulation caused by New York’s 2008 moratorium on fracking. Using county- and zip-code-level data for 2001–2013 to examine differences in New York and Pennsylvania counties before and after the moratorium, we find that shale gas deve...

World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 7326. Funded by the World Bank.

We conduct a discrete choice experiment with leaders of 164 Peruvian indigenous communities (ICs) to elicit their preferences about and valuation of land titles—to our knowledge, the first use of rigorous stated preference methods to analyze land titling. We find that: (i) on average, IC leaders are willing to pay US$35,000–45,000 for a title, roug...

Biodiversity continues to decline despite protected area expansion and global conservation commitments. Biodiversity losses occur within existing protected areas, yet common methods to select protected areas ignore post‐implementation threats that reduce effectiveness. We develop a framework for protected area planning with ongoing anthropogenic th...

The use of stated preference methods with monetary payments in developing countries can be problematic as barter and paying with labor are common in rural areas. In response, a growing number of stated preference studies explore using monetary and nonmonetary payment options. We contribute to this literature by exploring the impact of monetary vs....

The use of images in choice experiment surveys has been increasing over time. Research on the impact of complex graphical displays of information on respondent comprehension and the quality of preference estimates yields mixed results. We contribute to this literature by leveraging a split-sample design for a choice experiment concerning green roof...

This paper presents a pedagogical exercise to explore the economics of price-based fisheries bycatch. In the exercise students experience the economic incentives that lead to bycatch due to highgrading; the discarding of low-value fish. We first discuss existing fisheries economics pedagogical activities and how our exercise is distinct. We then id...

Green roofs are being incorporated into stormwater management programs around the world. While numerous studies have estimated the private benefits to the owners and residents of buildings with green roofs, the value of the multiple public benefits received by non-building residents are less well known. We use a choice experiment survey to estimate...

Small tank cascade systems (STCS) are clusters of hydrologically interconnected irrigation reservoirs with a 2500-year history located in the dry zone of Sri Lanka. They provide irrigation to about 40 percent of the irrigable land and a host of other benefits. The maintenance of STCS was neglected historically partly due to the low recognition of t...

Urbanization disrupts landscapes and ecosystem functions, which poses threats to biodiversity, social systems, and human health, particularly among vulnerable populations. Urban land-use planners are faced with competing demands for housing, safety, transportation, and economic development and often lack tools to integrate these with protecting env...

Small tank cascade systems (STCS) are clusters of hydrologically interconnected irrigation reservoirs with a 2500-year history located in the dryzones of Sri Lanka. They provide irrigation to 40 per cent of the irrigable land and a host of other benefits. The maintenance of STCS was neglected historically partly due to the low recognition of their...

Context Connections among ecosystems and their components are critical to maintaining ecological functions and benefits in human-modified landscapes, including urban areas. However, the literature on connectivity and ecosystem services has been limited by inconsistent terminology and methods, and largely omits human access to nature and its benefit...

In this paper, we introduce a framework for capturing the ecosystem services generated from cascade tank systems using detailed mapping of an ecosystem benefit. The cascading tank system in Sri Lanka, which has a history of over 2,000 years, captures Northeast monsoon rains and allows for agriculture in the dry season, prevents floods, and increase...

Military installations are valuable in global biodiversity conservation as they secure representative ecosystems from land conversion and protect many threatened or endangered species. Selecting suitable areas for biodiversity conservation within military installations is a challenging problem as this must not impede military training activities. T...

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs use an incentive-based approach to pursue environmental goals. While they are common policy tools, key concepts determining their efficacy are nuanced and hard to grasp. This article presents a new interactive game that explores the functioning and implications of PES programs. Participants play the ro...

We present the three-year impacts of an improved biomass cookstove on child and adult health in rural Ethiopia. The Mirt stove is designed to cook injera, the staple bread of Ethiopia estimated to consume 60 percent of household cooking energy and about half of all energy in the country. Though it would not be considered a fully “clean” cooking tec...

Conservation planning often involves multiple species occupying large areas including habitat sites with varying characteristics. For a given amount of financial resources, designing a spatially coherent nature reserve system that provides the best possible protection to targeted species is an important ecological and economic problem. In this pape...

We show that respondents' beliefs about future outcomes and prior recreational experiences affect policy recommendations from choice experiments. For New England residents, we find that willingness to pay for a new national park in Maine differs based on respondents' stated beliefs about the status quo long‐term land use. We also find that responde...

In this presentation, we discuss an innovative public private biodiversity/ecosystem finance partnership between the HSBC Global Water Program and IUCN-Sri Lanka to finance an ecosystem/landscape level restoration of cascading tanks aimed at enhancing biodiversity and ecosystem services and improving rural livelihoods.

Extended cost benefit analysis of restoration of small tank cascade system in Sri Lanka using Pihimbiyagollewa cascade as a case

Assessment of impact of Kapiriggama small tank cascade restoration using a control site - Pihimbiyagollewa cascade with Difference in Difference approach.

There is a growing impetus to increase marine protected areas coverage globally from 6% to 30% in 2030. Successfully establishing and maintaining marine protected areas require incorporating public preferences into their establishment and management. We investigate the role of alternate management regimes (top-down and bottom-up) on preferences for...

Survey Questionnaire (centrally-managed MPA management regime) in Japanese. This pdf file shows the actual online survey document that was used by Nikkei Research Inc. to collect data from residents in Okinawa over the age of 18. The survey in this pdf represents the centrally-managed MPA regime. (PDF)

Survey Questionnaire (community-based MPA management regime) in Japanese. This pdf file shows the actual online survey document that was used by Nikkei Research Inc. to collect data from residents in Okinawa over the age of 18. The survey in this pdf represents the community-managed MPA regime. (PDF)

English Translation of Survey Questionnaire (centrally-managed MPA management regime). This pdf file provides an English translation of the centrally-managed MPA management regime survey document. In the translated version, we only include one choice scorecard. However, in the actual survey each respondent was provided with seven choice scorecards....

English Translation of Survey Questionnaire (community-based MPA management regime). This pdf file provides an English translation of the community-based MPA management regime survey document. In the translated version, we only include one choice scorecard. However, in the actual survey each respondent was provided with seven choice scorecards. (PD...

Climate change will likely impact the ecosystem services and biodiversity generated from conserved land. Land conservation can also play a significant role in achieving cost-effective mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. In this special issue we feature seven papers from the 2017 NAREA Workshop, “ Climate Change and Land Conservation and Restora...

Valuing wetland attributes

A loss of memory of past environmental degradation has resulted in shifted baselines, which may result in conservation and restoration goals that are less ambitious than if stakeholders had a full knowledge of ecosystem potential. However, the link between perception of baseline states and support for conservation planning has not been tested empir...

We analyze the benefits of incorporating climate change into land conservation decisions using wetland migration under rising sea-levels as a case study. We use a simple and inexpensive decision method, a knapsack algorithm implemented in Excel, with (1) simulation data to show that ignoring sea-level rise predictions lead to suboptimal outcomes, a...

The trans-disciplinary thematic areas of oceans management and policy require stocktaking of the state of knowledge on ecosystem services being derived from coastal and marine areas. Recently adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) especially Goals 14 and 15 explicitly focus on this. This Handbook brings together a carefully chosen set of worl...

In this research we use a choice experiment survey, conducted in a cascade tank system in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka, to understand rural villagers’ preferences and the willingness to pay/contribute to restore cascading tanks systems.

Human elephant conflict (HEC) is a critical socio economic issue in many areas of Sri Lanka. Villages adjacent to the boundaries of Uda Walawe National Park (UWNP) experience such wild elephant encounters regularly. This has resulted in life threats, crop losses, property damages and other hidden costs to villagers. Traditional and modern defence m...

p>A significant portion of the world’s forests that are eligible for Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) payments are community managed forests. At the same time, there is a little knowledge in the existing literature about the preferences of households in the communities with community managed forests for REDD+ cont...

The proposal to create a new National Park and National Recreation Area in northern Maine has met with much support and also much opposition from within Maine. Over 90% of overnight visitors to Maine recreation sites come from out of state but currently there is no information about out-of-state visitors’ preferences for the proposed park. Our rese...

Some policies try to maximize net benefits by targeting different individuals to participate. This is difficult when costs and benefits of participation vary independently, such as in land conservation. The authors share a classroom game that explores cases in which minimizing costs may not maximize benefits and vice versa. The game is a contextual...

Intensive use of military vehicles on Department of Defense training installations causes deterioration in ground surface quality. Degraded lands restrict the scheduled training activities and jeopardize personnel and equipment safety. We present a simulation-optimization approach and develop a discrete dynamic optimization model to determine an op...

In this article, the author discusses how graphical simulation models created using STELLA software can be used to present natural resource systems in an intuitive way in undergraduate natural resource economics classes based on his experiences at a leading research university, a state university, and a leading liberal arts college in the United St...

Risk aversion is generally found to decrease in income. Between countries, comparative findings with students suggest that people in poorer countries are more risk tolerant, potentially giving rise to a risk-income paradox. We test the robustness of this finding by measuring the risk preferences of 500 household heads in the highlands of Ethiopia....

Compactness and landscape connectivity are essential properties for effective functioning of conservation reserves. In this article we introduce a linear integer programming model to determine optimal configuration of a conservation reserve with such properties. Connectivity can be defined either as structural (physical) connectivity or functional...

Diversification has been defined as one goal of sustainable fisheries. However, the role of consumer choice in successfully achieving this goal is unknown. We use a choice experiment survey to quantify consumer preferences for locally abundant and underutilized fish relative to more familiar and overfished species, as well as in the context of othe...

Ecosystem services generated by lake watershed environments can be important drivers of local and regional economic activity. In this analysis we use expenditure data collected from a survey of 445 seasonal visitors and year-round residents in a unique lake watershed environment to estimate their impact on the region's economy. Our survey and resea...

A serious challenge to natural resource managers on Army installations is how to optimally maintain safety and training realism on maneuver lands using limited funding. We will report on the development of a rolling horizon approach that seeks to address the optimal scheduling of land restoration for a given long-term training schedule and availabi...

Given the increasing expansion of human dominated landscapes it often becomes necessary to relocate endangered and at-risk species from existing habitat areas. Further, there is growing research stating that climatic and atmospheric changes attributed to climate change are already affecting species distributions and geographic ranges, requiring end...

This report documents an application of linear integer programming for determining compact and ecologically valuable conservation management areas (CMAs) on a military installation with populations of at-risk animal species. Two models were developed and applied to the conservation efforts Fort Stewart, GA, involving the at-risk Gopher Tortoise (GT...

Military installations are required to protect remnants of suitable habitat areas for rare, threatened, or endangered species in the U.S. while simultaneously addressing land demands to support growing needs for new and conventional training requirements. This leads to an increased pressure to manage federal lands in optimal ways that balance compe...

This paper introduces a linear integer programming formulation for the spatial design of a conservation reserve incorporating compactness and contiguity considerations in habitat site selection. These two criteria are important for effective functioning of conservation areas particularly when ground-bound species are involved. Gopher Tortoise (GT),...

Optimum Land Allocation for Species Protection and Military Training on DoD Installations poster presented at the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association 2010 AAEA,CAES, & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting