Chronic Wasting Disease In Deer And Elk PDF Download

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is a prion disease that impacts deer and elk across the US and other countries. Deer and elk are largely valuable natural resources in terms of hunting and wildlife viewing in the US and are at risk of population declines due to CWD. In my first chapter, I review current CWD literature related to economic analyses, human dimensions of wildlife, and ecological modeling. I also identify gaps in the literature related to the effectiveness of non-selective hunting for eradicating CWD from elk and deer populations. In the following chapter, I add to the identified literature gaps by examining two bioeconomic models that have non-selective hunting as a control method for CWD, while focusing on environmental transmission. I use an optimal control method such that the cumulative net present value of social welfare is maximized by choosing elk and deer hunting rates. The first model analyzed is an annual model in which reproduction and hunting co-occur, which is the most common model when analyzing similar situations. The second model is a seasonal model such that there is a hunting season where hunting occurs, and a non-hunting season where reproduction occurs. An important factor in this model is that disease transmission occurs in both seasons, giving the populations of infected animals the chance to grow back throughout the year. I also conduct multiple sensitivity analyses for parameters that are not well-established from the literature that show these results are robust. In my final paper, I significantly switch gears to examine willingness to pay for expert advice when gender (i.e., male, female) and language style (i.e., assertive, tentative) of the expert vary. I conducted two incentivized surveys, where the first survey analyzed participants’ perceptions for how the participants in the second experiment would value the advice from each of the four treatments (tentative female expert, assertive female expert, tentative male expert, assertive female expert). I then use these results to inform my \hypotheses for the second survey, in which participants pay for expert advice from the expert they are matched with in order to predict an economic outcome.