Consumers’ willingness to pay for sustainable turfgrass attributes: The role of aesthetic preferences, water conservation policies, and climate risk perceptions

The first paper examines consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for sustainable turfgrass attributes—specifically low-input and stress-tolerant characteristics—while accounting for trade-offs with aesthetic qualities. A choice experiment is conducted, and two mixed logit models are estimated. The first model evaluates consumer preferences based on turfgrass traits such as input cost reduction, winter damage resistance, and shade tolerance. The second model adds interaction terms to investigate whether aesthetic appeal modifies the valuation of sustainability attributes. A separate choice experiment simulates consumer responses under alternative water policy scenarios, including varying water prices and irrigation restrictions. Results reveal that consumers prefer turfgrass requiring fewer inputs and exhibiting higher climate resilience, with strong direct preferences for aesthetics. However, interaction effects between aesthetic and sustainable traits are largely insignificant. Furthermore, water pricing is found to be more effective than usage restrictions in promoting the adoption of water-conserving turfgrass varieties. The second paper examines how climate change risk perception affects WTP for turfgrass with sustainability features, including low-input, climate-resilient, and stress-tolerant traits. A Hybrid Choice Model (HCM) is applied to capture the latent structure of climate concern and its influence on preferences, addressing endogeneity and measurement error inherent in standard models. This framework also enables simulations of how changes in climate perception alter WTP. The findings suggest that southern homeowners place greater value on traits like reduced water use and winter damage resistance, while showing less interest in attributes that reduce mowing or chemical use. WTP increases alongside greater climate risk perception. Simulation results indicate that if consumers adopted climate concern profiles typical of younger, suburban, and non-Republican individuals, the demand for climate-resilient turfgrass would significantly expand, allowing firms to justify higher prices. Together, these studies highlight the interplay between sustainability, behavioral perception, and policy instruments in shaping both consumer behavior and broader environmental outcomes.