Green Energy and Water Resource Management: A Case Study of Fishery and Solar Power Symbiosis in Taiwan

Abstract

Renewable energy development is a key pathway for mitigating climate change. The Taiwan government has been actively developing low carbon green energy with solar photovoltaic technology and wind power as their primary development projects. Cigu Taiwan provides an ideal research site to examine tradeoffs between ecological conservation, marine fisheries, and green power development, and the factors affect commitments to ecological conservation in the face of these tradeoffs. This research investigates the fishery and electricity symbiosis project in Cigu through a novel combination of the theory of planned behavior and the contingent valuation method to analyze the factors influencing the local residents’ behavioral intentions to safeguard ecological achievements in ecologically fragile areas through conservation trust funds. Analysis of survey responses from a convenience sample of 715 residents and resource users in the Cigu area reports that attitudes (ATT), subjective norms (SN), perceived behavioral control (PBC), environmental concern (EC), and environmental risk (ER) significantly influence the behavioral intention to pay eco-compensation fees; the local residents’ willingness to pay for the conservation trust funds was NTD 621.4/year (USD 21.9/year), and decreased to NTD 545.9/year (USD 19.2/year) after the implementation of fishery and electricity symbiosis. The discussion section argues that the drivers of ATT, SN, PBC, EC, and ER can be used by policy makers to direct local residents’ intentions and behavior toward conserving ecological achievements in fragile eco-environmental areas through payments for ecosystem services. Thus, this strategy can improve the sustainability of ecological and environmental restoration programs.

Policy Cognition, Household Income and Farmers’ Satisfaction: Evidence from a Wetland Ecological Compensation Project in the Poyang Lake Area at the Micro Level

“…Recent studies [24,25] have shown that farmers vary widely in terms of preferred compensation rates, compensation expectations and policy preferences due to cognitive heterogeneity. In addition, several studies suggest that economic, social and psychological features are related to satisfaction with the policy [26,27]. A study by Li et al (2022) on grassland ecological compensation programs found significant differences in herders' policy satisfaction influenced by factors such as household income, payment cognition, and the size of household-owned grasslands [13].…”

Optimizing the Fishery and Solar Power Symbiosis Model for Sustainable Marine Resource Management: Evaluating the Effects of Solar Shading on the Growth and Water Quality of Litopenaeus vannamei and Chanos chanos

“…Solar power generation is a zero-carbon, noise-free mode of producing electricity that can effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions [30]. However, substantial amounts of land are required to achieve a certain level of power generation [31,32]. In Taiwan, where the land is narrow and densely populated, suitable land for the development of solar power is limited [33,34].…”

Consumer Attitudes and Preferences for Healthy Boxed Meal Attributes in Taiwan: Evidence from a Choice Experiment

“…In exploring consumers’ WTP for green products, the choice experiment method (CE), with its ability to evaluate multiple attributes and levels, can combine different alternatives for important characteristics related to nonmarket goods or services, and enables respondents to state their preferences for hypothetical alternative scenarios. This method has been widely used in the fields of consumer behavior [ 42 , 43 ], sharing economy [ 44 , 45 ], green energy [ 46 , 47 ], tourism, and leisure [ 48 , 49 ]. In recent years, it has been gradually applied in the food industry [ 6 , 50 , 51 , 52 ].…”