Pay the polluter or polluter pays? A preliminary assessment of public preferences for water quality policy

US agencies have long used the pay-the-polluter (PTP) approach in which government pays agricultural polluters to adopt conservation practices on a voluntary basis to address nutrient pollution. However, limited fiscal resources and continued poor water quality have led to calls for a new paradigm, the polluter-pays-principle (PPP), in which agricultural polluters must clean up their nutrient emissions. Whereas PTP relies on the public cost-sharing with farmers, PPP could induce food price increases that result from farm regulation. Little is known about the general public's preferences with respect to these paradigms. This paper addresses this gap using data from a randomized survey conducted in three US Corn Belt states that have significant agricultural nutrient pollution—Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa. We find that, overall, people favor the PPP approach over the existing PTP approach. Comparing PTP to PPP over a range of clean-up responsibilities, respondents are more likely to support PPP than PTP when given the choice of the most stringent PPP type. Examining specific PPP features, we find that assigning clean-up responsibilities equal to pollution source levels positively impacts support only PPP, while combining pollution trading with farm regulation has a negative impact on support for PPP.