Research by CARD faculty and staff, including Assistant Professor Hongli Feng, Associate Scientist Yonjie Ji, Postdoctoral Researcher Jian Chen, Professor David Hennessy, and PhD Student Zhushan Du, was presented at the Association of Environmental and Research Economists (AERE) 2025 Summer Conference, which was held in Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico, May 28-30.
Dr. Feng made three presentations:
"Agriculture and Solar Farms: Exploring Stakeholder Perspectives, Regional Heterogeneity, and the Effects of Information Treatments." Co-authored with Jian Chen, this presentation explores public and stakeholder attitudes toward utility-scale solar development, focusing on the effects of different information framings. Through a large-scale survey and discrete choice experiments across six Great Lakes states, the study evaluates how positive, negative, and peer information influences preferences for solar energy projects, especially on agricultural land. Findings reveal high overall support but notable variation across stakeholder groups and regions. The study highlights the importance of tailoring outreach strategies and understanding localized concerns to improve solar adoption and zoning acceptance, particularly in rural and farming communities.
"Efficiency and Coordination of Tile Drainage Investments for Climate Adaptation in the US Corn Belt." Co-authored with Rwit Chakravorty and David Hennessy, this presentation analyzes the efficiency and coordination challenges of tile drainage investments in the US Corn Belt, highlighting their critical role in boosting crop yields and resilience amid increasing precipitation extremes. Using a two-farmer theoretical model, econometric analysis, and climate simulations, the study finds that while tile drainage enhances productivity and reduces yield variability, investment levels often fall short due to coordination barriers among farmers. Institutional quality plays a key role in reducing these barriers and improving surplus. The findings suggest that strategic, coordinated investments in drainage infrastructure will be increasingly important under future climate scenarios.
"Evaluating the Cost-Effectiveness of Carbon Payment Systems: Incorporating Farmers' Behavioral Factors and Environmental Uncertainties." Co-authored with Zhushan Du, Crystal Lu, and Pei Cao, this presentation examines the tradeoff between accountability and cost-effectiveness in agricultural carbon payment schemes under uncertainty. Using cover crops as a case study, the authors simulate outcomes with a biogeochemical model and show that while performance-based payments offer stronger accountability, they become less cost-effective when farmers' risk and ambiguity aversion are considered. Practice-based payments, though less precise, result in greater participation and carbon sequestration in such contexts. The findings challenge prevailing market preferences for outcome-based payments and highlight the need to better align carbon program design with farmers’ behavioral responses to uncertainty.
Ji presented "Incorporating Large Number of Fixed effects in RUM Recreation Models," which highlights recent progress in how researchers model people’s recreation choices, such as visiting lakes. The study addresses long-standing challenges in complex statistical modeling—particularly in accounting for individual- and location-specific differences—by applying a recently proposed and efficient method known as Minorization-Maximization (MM), along with a technique to reduce estimation bias. Using survey data from the center’s Iowa Lakes Project (https://lakes.card.iastate.edu), the research shows that it is possible to manage large-scale individual effects in recreation models while properly accounting for personal-level influences that are often overlooked. This work reflects the center’s ongoing commitment to advancing analytical tools that support more informed environmental and public policy decisions.