RESEARCH ON RURAL RESIDENTS’ WILLINGNESS TO PAY FOR SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT SERVICE:

Cleanness and tidiness are one of the basic requirements in constructing new villages,but when agricultural economics is developing very fast, rural residents’ living environmentshares less attention and is being overlooked; solid waste pollution is more and more seriouslyaffecting rural people’s living quality. One reason that causes this problem is the inadequatesupplication system and mechanism of solid waste management (SWM) service in rural area.Under the dual system, many policies and resources lean to cities, to the second and thirdindustries, rather than rural villages, or first industry. Lacking financial support, many ruralpublic environmental facilities are under supply and at present more than half villages in ourcountry have no access to solid waste management services.Against this background, this paper aims at giving a look into the solid wastemanagement problem in a micro view point of rural households, understanding the situationthrough questionnaire survey and gaining rural residents’ willingness to pay (WTP) for solidwaste management services; a discussion on how the solid waste management system is to beestablished is given at the final part.This paper referred a lot of other academic achievement at home and abroad in the areaof solid waste management. Firstly, current status and charging mechanism in other developedand developing countries are reviewed to give a comparison within, problems that exist incurrent rural rubbish cleaning system are discussed and thorough analysis on its intrinsicreasons are given in the view of economics. Secondly, Contingent Valuation Method wasemployed to set a hypothetical market of solid waste clearing service and a close-endeddichotomous questionnaire survey was conducted in Weixian, in which200households werechosen randomly as sample. This empirical study reveals the current situation of solid wastemanagement in rural places and its relevant problems; econometric model is also employed tocheck the significance on how the factors affect rural households’ willingness to pay for solidwaste management.Results are as follows:(1) Given the supply of hypothetical solid waste managementservices,72%rural households are willing to pay for it, and the payments mostly locate at therange of5-10yuan;(2) households who enjoy higher income and who consider living environment pollution more serious tend to pay more for this service, while education leveland family size have negative effect on this willingness. Compared with men, women aremore likely to pay for a clean living environment, and so are elder people to the young;(3)farmers have the demand to improve the living condition, they are also willing and able toprovide some money for the solid waste management service; as their income increases, thepayment can be higher. However, it is important to point out that in this management thegovernment should also function well in providing some financial support and give someguidance in establishing the real rural solid management system.