Andrew Plantinga
· ProfessorUniversity of California, Santa Barbara · Environmental Science and Management
Active 1990–2026
About
Andrew Plantinga’s research focuses on the economics of land use, climate change, and forests. Particular emphasis is given to the development of methods for econometrically modeling land-use decisions, the analysis of environmental policies that affect private land-use decisions, and the modeling of land development pressures. A current project, funded by the National Science Foundation, analyzes how risk salience affects decisions by public land management agencies to allocate wildfire management projects. Andrew Plantinga is also the director of the Productive Landscapes Group at the UCSB Environmental Market Solutions Lab (emLab). He has a background in agricultural and resource economics, with a PhD from UC Berkeley, an MS in Forestry from the University of Wisconsin, and a BA in English from Grinnell College.
Research topics
- Environmental science
- Political Science
- Natural resource economics
- Economics
- Ecology
- Computer Science
- Business
- Archaeology
- Geology
- Physical geography
- Fishery
- Geography
- Agricultural economics
- Microeconomics
- Water resource management
- Biology
Selected publications
The behavioral effects of index insurance in fisheries
arXiv (Cornell University) · 2026-01-14
preprintOpen accessSenior authorFisheries are vulnerable to environmental shocks that impact stock health and fisher income. Index insurance is a promising financial tool to protect fishers from environmental risk. However, insurance may change fisher's behavior. It is imperative to understand the direction fishers change their behavior before implementing new policies as fisheries are vulnerable to overfishing. We provide the first theoretical application of index insurance on fisher's behavior change to predict if index insurance will incentivize higher or lower harvests in unregulated settings. We find that using traditional fishery models with production variability only originating through stock abundance leads fishers to increase harvest with index insurance. However, fishers are adaptable and experience multiple sources of risk. Using a more flexible specification of production shows that index insurance could raise or lower harvest depending on the risk mitigation strategies available for fishers and the design of the insurance contract. We demonstrate the magnitude of potential change by simulating from parameters estimated for three Norwegian fisheries. Fisheries with index insurance contracts protecting extraction risks may increase harvest by 10% or decrease by 2% depending on the risk effects of inputs. Insurance contracts protecting stock risk will lead to 6-20% increases in harvest. Before widespread adoption, careful consideration must be given to how index insurance will incentivize or disincentivize overfishing.
The behavioral effects of index insurance in fisheries
ArXiv.org · 2026-01-14
articleOpen accessSenior authorFisheries are vulnerable to environmental shocks that impact stock health and fisher income. Index insurance is a promising financial tool to protect fishers from environmental risk. However, insurance may change fisher's behavior. It is imperative to understand the direction fishers change their behavior before implementing new policies as fisheries are vulnerable to overfishing. We provide the first theoretical application of index insurance on fisher's behavior change to predict if index insurance will incentivize higher or lower harvests in unregulated settings. We find that using traditional fishery models with production variability only originating through stock abundance leads fishers to increase harvest with index insurance. However, fishers are adaptable and experience multiple sources of risk. Using a more flexible specification of production shows that index insurance could raise or lower harvest depending on the risk mitigation strategies available for fishers and the design of the insurance contract. We demonstrate the magnitude of potential change by simulating from parameters estimated for three Norwegian fisheries. Fisheries with index insurance contracts protecting extraction risks may increase harvest by 10% or decrease by 2% depending on the risk effects of inputs. Insurance contracts protecting stock risk will lead to 6-20% increases in harvest. Before widespread adoption, careful consideration must be given to how index insurance will incentivize or disincentivize overfishing.
NEW ESTIMATES OF THE COSTS OF MANAGING FORESTS TO INCREASE CARBON STORAGE
Climate Change Economics · 2025-01-10
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingNatural climate solutions offer the promise of low-cost carbon mitigation together with the provision of additional ecosystem services. We provide new estimates of the cost of increasing carbon storage in the forests of Western Oregon and Washington using forest management. Relative to previous studies that focus on lengthening timber rotations, we emphasize the importance of silvicultural treatments, in particular, pre-commercial and commercial thinning. We find the lowest average costs — in the range of $13–18/MT CO 2 e — when commercial thinning is combined with longer rotations and discount rates are relatively low. Across the ranges of management scenarios and discount rates we consider, the majority of forest lands in the region can generate carbon offsets at prices below $40/MT CO 2 e, the current allowance price in California’s carbon market. When carbon flows are valued at the Social Cost of Carbon, benefits from forest management greatly exceed the costs.
Journal of Wine Economics · 2025-04-29
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingSSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01
preprintOpen accessDynamic Investment in Ecosystem Restoration
SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01
preprintOpen accessSenior authorLong-term trends in wildfire damages in California
UNC Libraries · 2025-06-10
articleOpen accessIn 2017 and 2018, wildfires in California burned millions of hectares and caused billions of dollars in structure damages. This paper puts these recent fires in a long-term historical context by assembling four decades of data on wildfires in California. We combine administrative data of structure loss due to wildfire with economic data on replacement costs and spatial data on fire locations and sizes. We find that over the period 1979–2018, wildfires in California have been getting larger and that the trend is accelerating. This same trend is seen in the wildland–urban interface. As well, total structure damage from wildfires has grown steadily during the past four decades. Our conclusion is that the recent California fires are not an anomaly, but rather part of a trend towards larger and increasingly destructive wildfires.
The Value of Terroir: Hedonic Estimation of Vineyard Sale Prices
WORLD SCIENTIFIC eBooks · 2025-05-01
book-chapterTerroir in the New World: Hedonic Estimation of Vineyard Sale Prices in California
WORLD SCIENTIFIC eBooks · 2025-05-01
book-chapterLocal effects of stranded public lands
2024-01-01 · 1 citations
report
Recent grants
Frequent coauthors
- 51 shared
Robert N. Stavins
Harvard University Press
- 28 shared
David J. Lewis
Oregon State University
- 18 shared
Ruben N. Lubowski
Environmental Defense Fund
- 15 shared
Stephen Polasky
University of Minnesota
- 14 shared
Erik Nelson
- 14 shared
Volker C. Radeloff
University of Wisconsin–Madison
- 14 shared
Junjie Wu
People's Hospital of Yangzhong
- 14 shared
Sebastián Martinuzzi
Goddard Space Flight Center
Labs
- Resume-aware match score
- Save to shortlist
- AI-drafted outreach
See your match with Andrew Plantinga
PhdFit ranks faculty by your research interests, methods, and publications — grounded in their actual work, not templates.
- Free to start
- No credit card
- 30-second signup