Public Perspective on Increasing the Numbers of an Endangered Species, Loggerhead Turtles in South Korea: A Contingent Valuation

Abstract

The loggerhead turtle is one of the representative endangered marine species in South Korea. Thus, the country’s government is trying to push ahead with a project to increase the number of loggerhead turtles through the research and development of technology to hatch them artificially and release them into the wild. This article attempts to investigate the public perspective on the project using contingent valuation (CV). To this end, a CV survey of one thousand households across the country was implemented using in-person interviews. They were asked whether they were willing to pay a specified amount presented for carrying out the project. As many households reported zero willingness to pay, a spike model was employed to analyze the response data. It was found that the yearly public value ensuing from accomplishing the project was statistically significantly computed to be KRW 2360 (USD 1.99) per household. When the value was expanded nationwide, it reached KRW 44.72 billion (USD 37.74 million) per year. This public value could be compared with the cost of carrying out the project to determine if the project is socially beneficial.

Forest Park Visitors Opinions and Willingness to Pay for Sustainable Development of the Germia Forest and Recreational Park

“…The parks offer leisure to inhabitants and serve as a traveler's destination for non-inhabitant visitors. Therefore, recreational parks and forests offer numerous benefits and services: psychological, physical, aesthetic, economic, environmental, social, as well as cultural, recreational, and historical [33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52].…”

“…Moreover, the study can be replicated elsewhere with some improvements as suggested in this study. Additionally, there are some studies necessary for the methodology support on forest ecosystems services valuation and conservation efforts [28,[44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60].…”

“…Recognition that the production and protection functions of forests must be sustained by sound management practice is essential [46]. Several investigations have been conducted on the services and benefits of forests and forest parks and water resources among other natural resources, and their contribution to the national economy in the light of non-market value [7,9,[34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50]. However, the sustainable development of the recreation park at Germia has received less attention.…”

Financial Analysis for Improving River Water Quality through Introduction of Organic Agriculture

“…Data were collected by an online survey. Commonly used survey methods include telephone surveys, mail surveys, face-to-face interviews, and online surveys [36]. Since some of them have limits to use such as difficulty in explanation without visible information for phone surveys, the low response rate for email surveys, and high costs for face-toface interviews, their uses have been decreasing.…”

“…Most of the respondents' monthly household income is less than CNY 5000, accounting for 68.7% of the sample. The data were selected randomly, which is necessary to verify the representativeness of the sample [36,38]. Table 2 shows a comparison of some substantial socio-economic characteristics of the sample and those of the population, and it is found that there is not much difference between them.…”