Comment:

Policy-relevant WTP as related to beach closures.

Comment:

Using this model, we estimated the consumer surplus of a beach visit for our study area as $21.99 (with $7.87 and $61.44 as the lower and upper bounds of a 68% prediction interval), conditional on the variables for our policy application (see Supplementary Materials for details on how the policy-relevant WTP was calculated for each model). In 2016$. Our case study beaches in Barnstable were all closed for at least one day between 2011 and 2015 due to bacterial contamination (see Figure 2). As a result, the estimated net WTP for these beaches, presented above, is $21.99 per day. However, if all other variables were held constant using values for the Barnstable beaches, the consumer surplus of a beach day in Barnstable with no closures in the last five years would be $47.58 (see Supplementary Materials). Thus, the consumer surplus of a beach day with no closure history is more than double that of a beach that has had closures in the past. This comparison indicates the possibly significant gain in value when beaches are unaffected by poor water quality and maintain a “pristine” reputation.