Kenkel, Norris
Real-Time Weather Information 359
can determine the amount of irrigation which is needed based on past rainfall and irrigations.
Other examples include the Peanut Leafspot Advisory Index which advises growers when
sufficient hours of temperature and humidity have accumulated to warrant spraying for
peanut leafspot and the Alfalfa Weevil Advisory Index which forecasts the weevil’s
development based on degree-day accumulation. If, as the Mesonet developers anticipate,
the use of this information eliminates one pesticide application, it should save producers
$8—$12/acre.
Other value-added products serve to interpret the basic weather data. For example, the
Cotton Planting and Growth Stage Advisory interprets soil temperatures in terms of
acceptability for planting and uses accumulated degree days to project the growth stage.
Similarly, the Chemical Application Advisory provides a spraying condition index which is
based on ground level and 1 О-meter wind speed, temperature, and relative humidity; the Fire
Danger Rating System calculates the spread component and the energy release component
(Deeming, Burgan, and Cohen) based on the local wind speed and direction, temperature,
and relative humidity data.
Due to the high cost of maintaining and operating the network, identifying interested
subscribers and determining the level of user fees or subscription which they would be
willing to pay are critical to the success of the Oklahoma program. It is also essential that
the potential demand for value-added products be accurately determined since much of the
development and implementation costs must be recouped from user fees.
Analytical Framework
The contingent valuation (CV) method was used to estimate agricultural producers’ will-
ingness to pay for Mesonet weather information. The CV method, which elicits consumers’
willingness to pay for a specific good or service, is most often used to assess the value of
nonpriced environmental amenities. However, the CV method can be used to ascertain the
demand for a good when a market for the good does not exist or when a test market
experiment would be time consuming, costly, or otherwise difficult to develop.
A growing body of survey experiments has shown that, generally speaking, CV is as
accurate as other available methods for assessing what people are willing to pay for specific
goods. These results have held for public goods such as outdoor recreation and environ-
mental quality (Brookshire and Coursey; Brookshire et al.; Sellar, Stoll, and Chavas), for
extramarket commodities such as hunting permits (Bishop and Heberlein 1979, 1980), and
for specific privately provided products (Dickie, Fisher, and Gerking).
Developers of the Mesonet system hope to market the system’s products, establishing a
price for the products based on individual buyers’ demand for the products. The CV method
can determine the extent to which individual buyers could be expected to purchase access
to the Mesonet products and the prices they would be willing to pay. For this study,
producers’ willingness to pay was elicited using a series of price categories (also called the
payment card or checklist approach) (Mitchell and Carson; Jordan and Elnagheeb). With
this approach, respondents select, from a series of payment values, the maximum amount
they would be willing to pay for the good or service being valued. Eliciting willingness to
pay in this way is simpler than the sequential bidding approach and avoids the nonresponse
problem which has been found with the open-ended format (Cameron and Huppert).