Andie Creel

My research shows how natural capital underpins everyday economic activity, even when it does not appear in markets or national accounts. I study how people trade off money and time to access nature, and how businesses and governments, in turn, capture value from those choices. By combining large-scale behavioral data with environmental measures, I make nature’s contributions visible in statistics, businesses’ bottom lines, and fiscal systems. This agenda highlights not only the welfare value of ecosystem services, but also the financial mechanisms that rely on them.

I focus on publicly provisioned resources such as urban green space and public parks. In my work, I build and link novel datasets, such as credit card transactions, mobility datasets, and remote sensing, to show how people’s preferences for nature shape both individual welfare and business revenue. This approach also allows me to ask new questions about distribution: how environmental benefits vary across demographics, geographic space, and time.

Learn more about my research on my website: https://a5creel.github.io/