Household Willingness to Pay for Forest Ecological Restoration in Giant Panda Habitats: A Discrete Choice Experiment

Abstract

Rural households have played an increasingly significant role in the conservation and restoration process of natural habitats. This paper explores rural households’ preference and willingness to pay for ecological restoration attributes in giant panda habitats using the discrete choice experiment (DCE). The DCE survey was conducted in and around giant panda habitats in Sichuan province with a sample size of 474. Using the mixed logit model, the results indicate that rural households have positive attitudes towards the improvement of ecological restoration functions, including forest vegetation restoration, biodiversity conservation, and giant panda corridor construction, but have a negative attitude towards payment, showing that rural households are inclined to pay less to gain better restoration outcomes. Among the ecological restoration attributes, forest vegetation restoration (4.44 RMB) wins the highest payment value, indicating households’ preferences and priorities of ecological restoration. In general, rural households’ willingness to pay could reach 34.28 RMB for the best choice option designed in DCE. This study emphasizes the awareness of payment among rural households to improve ecological restoration functions in giant panda habitats and indicates the importance of household participation in long-term adaptation and implementation of ecological conservation plans.

Challenges and Opportunities in Aligning Conservation with Development in China’s National Parks: A Narrative Literature Review

“…When traditional industries need to be scaled back in order to preserve each park's ecology and to conform to conservation guidelines, studies from all five parks show that it is important to offer local residents alternative, sustainable income streams, such as participating in the ecotourism industry [38,62,88] or serving as a park ranger [20,51,81,82,94,130]. Ecological compensation policies, which can offset lost profits and reduced incomes associated with conservation initiatives, have already been shown to be effective in SNP [45], WNP [59], and GPNP [90], but further research is needed to determine if they can be useful in the other parks (e.g., HTRNP and NTLNP).…”

“…Many studies (13 papers) also highlight the park's role in protecting other vulnerable species within its boundaries, such as the red panda and the golden snub-nosed monkey [85][86][87]. Willingness of locals to pay for conservation 5 [87,88,93,94,116] Policy recommendations Restrict grazing, planting, and construction in/around park 19 [86,91,92,95,98,[100][101][102][103][104][106][107][108][109]112,115,117,119,120] Invest in ecotourism and increase tourism regulation 9 [84,85,[88][89][90]92,95,96,113,116] Improve ecological compensation and migration schemes 8 [84,85,[88][89][90]94,96,97,121] Streamline local input in park management 6…”

“…Research shows that promoting ecotourism (8 papers) can increase the incomes and professional skills of local residents while mitigating damage from tourism on the environment [88]. Ma [90] also found that ecotourism increases the willingness of communities to participate in conservation by 154%. Furthermore, researchers have found that residents of GPNP tend to be willing to pay for conservation programs (4 papers).…”

“…In terms of mitigating the effects of tourists on the local environment, key regulations proposed by researchers include limiting road construction inside the park [91], raising fines for littering, increasing patrols of the park, and providing clear signage to prevent tourist incursion into vulnerable areas [116]. Finally, to further reduce the tension between wildlife and households, Ma [90] recommended improving existing ecological compensation structures to incentivize communities to maintain ecological public welfare forests. These compensation programs currently have some public support but require more consistency and oversight.…”

Valor económico de áreas naturales protegidas en climas semiáridos: el caso del Bosque de Cobos, Aguascalientes, México

“…La valoración de dichos beneficios ha contribuido a colocarlas en la agenda de los planificadores económicos y los responsables de tomar decisiones, y ha proporcionado un argumento sólido para la formulación de políticas públicas que ayuden a garantizar una gestión efectiva y constante, abordando los problemas que enfrentan algunas anp en la actualidad (icem, 2003;Worboys y Trzyna, 2015). Algunos ejemplos prácticos de cómo se han utilizado los ejercicios de valoración económica para diseñar soluciones en las anp son la evaluación de sus servicios ecosistémicos o recreacionales y su contribución a la economía (Daza y Noriega, 2009;Mohammadi Limaei et al, 2016;Oré Cierto et al, 2022;Sánchez Bocarando, 2020); la evaluación del impacto económico del turismo en anp y el respaldo de la toma de decisiones en el diseño de soluciones (Almendarez-Hernández et al, 2016;Machín Hernández et al, 2010;Melo-Guerrero et al, 2020) o bien, buscar financiamiento y recursos para su conservación (Baral et al, 2008;Kamri et al, 2017;Vilela et al, 2022;Zhang et al, 2021).…”