Modelling the Multiple Attributes Preference to Estimate Willingness-to-Pay for Natural Reserves

• Main Authors: Wei-Lin Chang, 章維麟
• Other Authors: Chun-Hung Lee
• Format: Others
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/dbas5e

碩士 === 國立東華大學 === 自然資源與環境學系 === 100 === Nature reserves are known to not only have larger forest coverage, diversified landscapes, biodiversity, and endangered species conservation, but also provide certain type of ecosystem service functions, such as supply (food, drinking water, driftwood, etc.), adjustment (climate regulation, carbon storage, purification, etc.), support (providing habitat, maintaining genetic diversity, etc.), culture (e.g. environmental education), leisure and recreation, searching to the root of indigenous cultures, and so on. In light of that, this study was conducted in Dawushan Nature Reserve (DNR), the largest nature reserve in Taiwan featuring the most complete low-to-mid-altitude natural forests in order to firstly collect and archive concepts of eco-compensation and conservation bank, secondly probe into both the economic theories and real-world practices of ecosystem services, thirdly review the importance and previous studies on forest ecosystem, and finally establish a set of indices to assess DNR’s ecosystem service functions, a model to assess the conservation willingness to pay (WTP) of ecosystem service functions, and a model to assess the multi-attribute preference of nature reserves. As far as the actual analysis is concerned, firstly 647 local residents of Taitung County were selected based on the proportion of population within the administrative region and successfully interviewed face-to-face. Factor analysis (FA) was then employed to identify the cognitive factors of DNR’s ecosystem service functions while cluster analysis (CA) was used to categorize DNR’s different ecosystem service function clusters, and both crosstabulation analysis and Chi-Square Test were carried out to explore differences of the abovementioned clusters in terms of the general public’s conservation recognition as well as behaviors, and their social as well as economic background. Secondly, the double-bounded dichotomous choice model of the contingent valuation method (CVM) was employed to analyze the factors affecting the general public’s conservation WTP regarding DNR’s different ecosystem service functions while both ‘DNR’s Ecosystem Service Function Recognition Clusters ’ and “Administrative Region Covered by Dawushan) were incorporated to explore conservation WTP differences. Lastly, choice model (CM) was used to create a multi-attribute preference model for DNR to acquire the effectiveness of different attributes, the factors affecting different attribute preferences, and the assessment of WTP upon each and every attribute. This study has discovered that (1) the general public consider ‘Adjustment and Maintenance’ as the most important function of DNR’s ecosystem service functions followed by ‘Culture’ and‘Supply’, (2) DNR’s ecosystem service function recognition clusters consider ‘Conservation Recognition and Behaviors’ and ‘Social and Economic Backgrounds’ significantly different, (3) interviewees with higher incomes, younger ages, joining conservation groups, and coming from Han ethnic groups propose higher conservation WTP regarding DNR’s ecosystem service functions,(4) the interviewees has the highest WTP toward ‘Culture’ followed by ‘Support’, ‘Adjustment’, and ‘Supply’, (5) different ecosystem service function clusters show significant differences regarding conservation values, in which ‘Adjustment and Culture’ has the highest conservation WTP among all DNR’s ecosystem service functions followed by ‘Multi-Variate Recognition’ and‘Substantial Maintenance’, (6) DNR’s residents give higher conservation WTP upon ecosystem service functions, (7) the factors affecting DNR’s multi-attribute effectiveness are the square measure, landscape diversity, and conservation trust funds, (8) interviewees show the tendency to maintain DNR’s current ‘Superficial Measure of Protected Area’, ‘Forest Coverage’, ‘Landscape Diversity’, and ‘Species Diversity’. In addition, they also wish to improve the condition of‘Threatened Species’ from endangered to least-concerned. The major contribution of this study is to construct a multi-attribute preference assessment model for nature reserves, and to identify accordingly the WTP of different nature reserve attributes as well as different ecosystem service functions so that the WTP as well as the influential factors regarding different nature reserve attributes as well as ecosystem service functions can be estimated. In short, the result will provide the authorities concerned with references for understanding the cognitive factors affecting people’s preferences for nature reserves, and drafting related management and ecosystem protection strategies.