Behavioral-externalities-in-natural-resource-production-possibility-frontiers-integrating-biology-and-economics-to-model-human–wildlife-interactions.Image.Marked.pdf

Journal of Environmental Management 69 (2003) 105–113 /locate/jenvman Behavioral externalities in natural resource production possibility frontiers: integrating biology and economics to model human–wildlife interactions N.H. McCoy* Department of Environment and Society, Utah State University, Logan, UT 84322 5215, USA Received 14 October 2002; revised 21 May 2003; accepted 27 May 2003 Abstract Production possibility modeling has been applied to a variety of wildlife management issues. Although it has seen only limited employment in modeling human–wildlife output decisions, it can be expected that the theory’s use in this area will increase as human interactions with and impacts on wildlife become more frequent. At present, most models applying production possibility theory to wildlife production can be characterized in that wildlife output quantities are determined by physically quantifiable functions representing rivalrous resources. When the theory is applied to human–wildlife interactions, it may not be sufficient to model the production tradeoffs using only physical constraints. As wildlife are known to respond to human presence, it could be expected that human activity may appear in wildlife production functions as an externality. Behavioral externalities are revealed by an output’s response to the presence of another output and can result in a loss of concavity of the production possibilities frontier. Ignoring the potential of a behavioral externality can result in an unexpected and inefficient output allocation that