| According to the classified forestry theory, forest are divided into commercial forest and ecological forest. In China forest manangement practice,52.41% of the forest has been divided into ecological forest. Based on the externality of forest and opportunity cost of ecological forest, China implemented the compensation system of ecological forest since 1998. At the end of 2010, ecological forest has reached 159 million hm2, in which 105.2 million hm2 are state-level ecological forest, the rest are provincial-level ecological forest. The total funds of compensation reached 45430 million yuan until 2010, of which 29600 million yuan are central government funds, 15830 million yuan are the local's. The compensation standard of state-level ecological forest is 75 yuan per hm2 per year for state-owned, the collective and individual owned forest is 150 yuan. The compensation standard of provincial and municipal ecological forests are different with the local government financial strength. For example, its compensation has reached 600 yuan per hm2 per year in Beijing, but Qinghai, Xinjiang and so on have not arrangeded financial compensation for their. Therefor,compensation standard become the focus of scholars. they mainly studied it from the production cost, opportunity cost and forest ecological value. This reaseach adopted contingent valuation method(CVM) to analysis the compensation standard based on the consumer demand, a perspective which is different with the existing literature, The arcitle made an investigation on urban residents's willingness to pay for ecological forest in Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Kunming, assessed the value of ecological benefits of its, analyzed and compared the residents's willingness to pay and the factors which affected it.On the basis of investigation,the article structure an informarginal economics frame for compensation of ecological forest which provide a scientific theory and method for the development of compensation standards.According to the basic principles of economics, the amount of willingness to pay is directly related to the utility of people.So study willingness to pay of residents for ecological benefit must consider the effectiveness of the forest ecosystem. The article discussed the conditions that affecting the effectiveness of the forest in two ways,whitch was named conditions of designing in using CVM. On the one hand is the description of the effectiveness of forest ecosystems. Existing research on the ecological functions of forests are described from the perspective of natural science, such as water conservation, water and soil protection, wind-averting,sand-fixing, fixing carbon and releasing oxygen, lacking of the elaboration of viewing angle from consumer's demand. Therefore, this article described the ecological functions of forests from clothing, food, housing and acting,making the residents have a direct effect on forest ecology and objective understanding. On the other hand, through studying the institutions of ecological forest compensation in Guangdong, Fujian, Kunming provinces, summarized the supply model of the ecological forest, and then selected the three logic which was method of payment, using of payment and effect of payment to format the conditions of CVM.The investigation of willingness to pay for benefits of ecological forests in urban residents carried out around four main aspects.First is to select the location of investigation. According to the National Main disposable income of urban residents, the city is divided into three categories, each type of city was selected for investigation. The result of random selection are Guangzhou City (2009 per capita disposable income of 30,658.49 yuan), Fuzhou City(23,245.98 yuan), Kunming City (18,875.65 yuan). Second, the sample size determined. Three cities were selected the 1539 household to conduct interviews (489 in Guangzhou,535 in Fuzhou,506 in Kunming).The third, maked the survey methods sure. To determine the distribution of interviewees by the weight of the resident population in districts, using randomly assigned to interview the residents of the district. The last, the arrangements of the investigation. The research designed through questionnaires, pre-survey,improved questionnaire and a formal investigation, finally completed the 1469 formal investigation (480 in Guangzhou,506 in Fuzhou,483 in Kunming).The results show that:the average willingness to pay for ecological forests benefits of urban residents in Guangzhou is 238.38 yuan per household and per year, Fuzhou and Kunming city are 107.73 yuan and 102.18 yuan respectively. Calculated by the average willingness to pay, the city economic value of ecological forest benefits per year is 579 million in Guangzhou city,210 million in Fuzhou city and 192 million in Kunming city. Based on the overall analysis of the above, the paper classified interviewees by gender, age, income, residence, occupation, education, housing properties, degree of environmental concern, environmental satisfaction and the level of understanding ecological forests,then compared the distribution of willingness to pay of urban residents with three cities under the different characteristics,whitch established basis of analysing the impact factors of willingness to pay.The paper studied the factors affecting willingness to pay by logistic model in depth. The results showed that:income, education, outdoor exercise time, degree of environmental concern and the level of understanding ecological forests are the key factors affecting the willingness to pay of urban residents in three cities,and whitch is the positive correlation between willingness to pay, just that the higher income and level of education, the longer of outdoor exercise time, the higher degree of environmental concerns, the deeper level of understanding the ecological forests, the stronger of willingness to pay. Specific mechanisms are:â‘ If you have the higher income, the more consumption of other goods,then the number of marginal utility of these commodities diminished gradually, so you are willing to pay for obtaining the marginal utility of ecological forest;at the same time,the higher income levels, the outdoor exercise time is longer, the stronger sense of ecological forest benefits, which leads to the more willingness to pay;â‘¡If you have the higher level of education and degree of environmental concerns, the deeper level of understanding the ecological forests,you will get more information about forest ecology and environmental protection.the full Information will affect the payment configuration of urban residents significantly. the information is more fully, the higher willingness to pay.Based on the assessment of willingness to pay,the article based on the angle of division the work, structured an informarginal economics frame for compensation of ecological forest which provided the compensation budget constraints:the compensation standard should be between producer costs and the consumer willingness to pay for the ecological forest. The government can adjust the compensation standards between them by public finance conditions.On the mechanism of affecting factors of willingness to pay, the paper put forward four proposals:first is to increase people's income level and mobilize residents to participate the ecological forests; second, to improve the residents's educational level, increase environmental protection propaganda; the third, to increase the public facilities whitch centers on forest;the fourth, to strengthen the management capacity of forest management and increase the power of transparency.
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