Leif Anderson, Ph.D.

Background

Leif attended graduate school at the University of Washington's Department of Economics, receiving a M.S. in 2004 and a Ph.D. in 2009. Leif began working for the NWFSC as an intern through the NMFS-Sea Grant Fellowship in marine resource economics before joining the NWFSC in October of 2009. Leif is broadly interested in modeling trade-offs and accounting for human behavior in natural resource management. He is a member of NOAA Fisheries' Ecosystem Services Valuation Working Group, the Social Science Advisory Committee of the Puget Sound Partnership, and an associate editor at Coastal Management.  

Current Research

Most of Leif's current research uses survey methods to elicit the economic values of goods and services not traded in formal markets (nonmarket values). He primarily uses stated preference techniques such as discrete choice experiments and contingent behavior to estimate models of human behavior that quantify societal trade-offs among the attributes of ecosystem goods and services. A primary focus of his current research is the characterization and valuation of recreational goods, such as recreational fishing or shellfish harvesting.