Resources Science ›› 2016, Vol. 38 ›› Issue (9): 1810-1819.doi: 10.18402/resci.2016.09.18

• Orginal Article • Previous Articles    

Valuing the willingness to restore mangrove wetlands in Guangxi based on improved choice experiments

SU Hongyan(), LI Jingmei()   

  1. School of Economics,Ocean University of China,Qingdao 266100,China
  • Received:2016-03-16 Revised:2016-07-04 Online:2016-09-25 Published:2016-09-22

Abstract:

The restoration and compensation of mangrove wetland is an important way to avoid service degradation. Based on the assumption that there is no loss of welfare,valuing residents’ marginal willingness to pay for each restoration attribute of mangrove wetland is an essential prerequisite to assess the scale of restoration and compensation. This strategy will also aid policymakers to identify the most important wetland attribute and formulate efficient restoration measures,significant for sustainable ecosystem services. To assess residents’ preference and willingness to pay for restoration of mangrove wetlands in Guangxi,we present a choice experiment with respondent-specific status quo alternatives. The restoration attributes are divided into four parts:mangrove area,landscape integrity,water quality and biodiversity. Each attribute has its own corresponding levels. The number of residents who are sampled at random in Beihai,Qinzhou,Fangchenggang is 297. Based on real survey data,the random parameter Logit model is used to quantify residents’ willingness to pay. The results demonstrate that the willingness of local residents to pay for improving water quality is 48.44 CNY per person per year,which is the highest among the four restoration attributes,followed by increasing mangrove area and biodiversity. In addition,to make the level of each mangrove attribute achieve the highest in history,residents whose specific status quo alternatives are all lowest want to pay 153.56 CNY per person per year for the restoration of wetlands. Heterogeneous and asymmetric preferences were detected. These findings will provide a reference for mangrove wetland scientific restoration scheme in China.

Key words: choice experiments, specific status quo assessment, random parameter Logit Model, willingness to pay, asymmetric preference, Guangxi Province