Abstract:

Taking biological resource conservation of the Wuyi Mountains as an example,we analyzed public protection preferences for biological resource protection from the angle of public participation. We first applied choice experiment methods to look at biological resource conservation in China and draw two main conclusions. First,the ratio of public participation in biological resource protection in the Wuyi Mountains was about 60%,which was a good signal for protection in this area in terms of public participation. Second,the research calculated marginal WTP for the attributes of biological resources,thus public protection priority was followed by protecting Chinese-specific biological resources,then protecting biological resources with immature breeding technology,then protecting vulnerable biological resources,then protecting endangered biological resources,then protecting biological resources with immature but unpopular applied breeding technology,and then protecting near threatened biological resources. According to these findings,there are two policy implications. First,government and relevant protection organizations should take advantage of the power of the public and guide the public to participate more actively in the protection as an important supplement for biological resource conservation in the Wuyi Mountains. Second,the protection priority of government and protection organizations indicated by their protection policy is partially different from the protection priority of the public according to their protection preference of biological resources. It is of great significance for the government and protection organizations to pay attention to such differences and take measures to encourage the public to participate in biological resource conservation.

Key words: public participation, biological resource, protection preference, choice experiment, Wuyi Mountains area