Abstract
This thesis contains two chapters investigating vastly different economic topics: one on consumer preferences for bioplastics, and one on rainfall insurance for forage producers. Chapter 1 contains a bioplastic study that uses a discrete choice experiment to gather US consumer stated preferences on which attributes for organic material-based plastics are most important. Consumer survey results are processed using a conditional logit model to estimate economic utility values and willingness-to-pay estimates for the different attributes. Findings from the bioplastic study indicate a concern for the environmental impacts of plastics among US consumers due to high utilities and willingness-to-pay for products that biodegrade relatively quickly and concern for all types of single use plastics, and lower concern for the source material of the bioplastic between agricultural, animal, or wood products. Chapter 2 contains a rainfall insurance study that uses a fixed effects regression model to examine the impact of variables of interest on enrollment in the USDA rainfall index insurance product under the Pasture, Rangeland, and Forage program (PRF) for western US states. This rainfall study suggests that some factors influencing enrollment in PRF include potential payments from other land use options as well as historical rainfall amounts. More investigation with the inclusion of additional alternative drought risk management and income alternatives is necessary to gain a greater understanding of the factors impacting enrollment in the PRF program.