The Will Of The Urban River Ecosystem Services Valuation

Contingent valuation method adopts hypothetical market to measure the efficiency of large-scale change of eco-product or environmental product by investigating consumer's WTP(willingness to pay).It has been extensively used in western developed countries.However,large amount of case studies revealed quite a few economic "anomalies" phenomena,i.e.,WTP is content dependent,which shows that CVM can't reflect the interviewees' stable preferences to environmental product. It is against the core assumption of the neo-classis economics,which dues to the wide questioning of CVM's validity and reliability.China has had case studies using CVM around 2000,but the studies on the validity and reliability are in bad shortage.Based on theoretical expectation and current case results,the empirical research in China has appeared to be much complicated because of sharp distinction of social structures between China and developed countries.Learning from the related research achievements home and abroad,the dissertation studies Caohejing,the urban inner river in Shanghai,and tends to construct the hypothetical market of its ecological restoration based on CVM.Six CVM situational investigations have been made from Feb.2006 to Mar.2008, collecting 2700 questionnaires.Relied on the questionnaires,theoretical analysis, questionnaire investigation and quantitative analysis are employed to study the issues including China's special influential factors on WTP,the content dependency and temporal reliability of CVM's research results,both from the perspective of the validity and reliability of CVM's application.Based on the systematic review of the domestic and international case studies and theoretical controversy on the validity and reliability of CVM,the dissertation carries out the following research:Firstly,CVM was applied to evaluate the ecological restoration value of Caohejing port,a landscape inner river in Shanghai.After the pre-investigation,the non-parameter estimation was made by 496 paying cards' formal questionnaires in the first phase.The average WTP is 168.12 Yuan per household per year,and totals 21.4×10~6 Yuan in three years.Secondly,Chinese special influential factors of WTP are studied on the basis of case analysis.Founded on theoretical analysis,variables of special features at the stage of economic transformation are innovatively selected.They are income gap, Huji arrangement,interaction of income and Huji,differences of residential period, trust for the management offices.Applying linear logarithm model and probability model of Logit to regress WTP and positive probability of WTP with influential factors,the results indicate that the more the income gap,the lower the WTP;WTP of non-Huji resident is low,but with the growth of the income,the influence of Huji drops;the lower the trust for the government,the lower the WTP;living duration has negative effect to the demand.The study also tells the main reason for zero WTP is that it is considered as a "governmental responsibility",the factors such as low income,non-Shanghai Huji,long residential duration and distrust to the related government departments also add points to the probability.The result proves the expectancy of general economic theories and the nature of ecosystem or environment. It is as well in accordance with the social structure,system arrangement and characteristics of economic development pattern in China,which illustrates that CVM has validity in the present case study.Thirdly,four optional schemes and parallel questionnaire investigations are designed.Based on 720 questionnaires,the existence of scope insensitivity, sequencing effects,part-whole effect,embedding effect of WTP in CVM studies is proved.WTP differs greatly according to the amount,range and sequence of the public goods provided to the interviewees.The same questionnaire is to investigate their WTP and WTA(willingness to accept) which suggests that average differential ratio is 10.4.Compared to the result of the international investigation,it is higher.The influential factors reveal Chinese particularities.Compared with the results obtained by method of dichotomy and payment-card,the result of dichotomy method is higher than that of payment-card method.The ratio between two methods is about 4.69-6.02, which matches with domestic research achievements and falls within the data reported in western literatures.Fourthly,the empirical study on the temporal reliability of CVM is carried out by comparing two CVM investigations accomplished in two sequent months.The results indicate that the distributions of the two WTP match with each other,the difference of average value between two investigations is only 0.1Yuan,and the median value is same.The influence of income,education,trust for the government on WTP and its probability of the two investigations repeat well.The pool data is not of statistic significance on the dummy variable of time.It demonstrates that the CVM result of the case primarily keeps good temporal reliability in the one month interval.Lastly,the application of CVM in China combined with empirical study has come to conclusions as follows: The special factors at the economic transformation stage in China makes the statement of WTP badly deviate from the true preference.It should be fully considered to convert such a deviation when making decisions or policies;the apparent CVM's content dependency directs that policy makers should take the CVM study's specific solution and practical situation into consideration when putting its results into application;it should be careful for developed areas to use the data of CVM;less developed areas could apply the sequence information on the significance degree of the environmental goods achieved from CVM.The qualitative information of whose WTP is more than zero could be recognized as focal points of the public, providing important necessities for the correspondent public policy making and applying;the demand information on ecosystem service gained from individual investigation constructs a scientific bridge in realizing micro demand information and macro environmental policy,which a must technical technique to study the interaction between socioeconomic system and ecosystem,define the process variables and key factors in policy intervening,and manage the ecosystem service efficiently.The dissertation has made initiative discussions on the following aspects.First of all,it systematically studies the key issues of CVM's validity and reliability in China's application,complete with domestic case.Learnt from the overseas experiences,the four parallel questionnaires employed to carry out the pilot study of CVM's "content dependency" is the first of its kind in China.Second,the analysis of influential factors on WTP discovers the apparent influence on CVM sourcing from the social structure elements such as income gap,Huji arrangement,interactions between income and Huji,development pattern of environment pollution(manifested by the riverside residential duration) and the trust for the government,esp.at China's economic transformation phase.Questionnaires are made to expose the reason and influential factors of zero WTP.Third,in terms of temporal reliability,the temporal pool data is constructed,temporal dummy variable is set up,and temporal reliability thus is proved statistically.Lastly,with the consideration of regional differences and development characteristics of China,applicable principles of CVM's absolute value, relative magnitude and data above zero in different regions are proposed.