MONETARY INCENTIVES AND ECO-FRIENDLY RESIDENTIAL LANDSCAPE PREFERENCES FOR FLORIDA FRIENDLY LANDSCAPING

Abstract

To mitigate potential impacts from the increasing maintained residential landscapes to the environment, state and local governments and water management organizations are interested in policies that promote resource-efficient landscaping practices by individual homeowners. Incentives including rebates, tax returns, and low rate financing, are common monetary instruments used to promote the adoption of eco-friendly equipment or practices (e.g., water-saving appliances). However, the effects of monetary incentives on homeowners’ preferences for alternative landscapes are less understood. Using discrete choice experimentation, this study investigated homeowners’ preferences for rebate incentive programs and willingness to pay (WTP) for alternative landscape attributes. The results reveal that homeowners are willing to pay a premium for rebate programs, and that the environmental benefit information improves homeowners’ preference and WTP for alternative landscape attributes. Also, we clustered homeowners into low, medium, and high rebate preference groups, which allowed investigating the difference in WTP estimates for alternative landscape attributes. Results estimated by mixed logit in WTP space model revealed that homeowners in high rebate preference group assign higher weights to economic attributes, such as rebate and maintenance, while homeowners in the low rebate preference group give more importance to environmental friendly attributes such as smart irrigation or pollinator friendly habitat. The results offer implications for policy makers as they develop water conservation programs.