A Study On The Effects Of Social Capital On The Willingness To Pay For Heihe River Basin Ecological System Restoration

Ecosystem plays an important role in providing energy for mankind, recycling material and transmitting information. Due to excessive exploitation of ecosystem and the gradual loss of its function, affect living and social status of production, combined with social and economic development capacity, the state launched the ecological restoration project to improve the welfare of society as a whole. However, relying solely on government forces has been proved that it still cannot effectively achieve a comprehensive ecological restoration; and that ecological restoration project coordination and efficient system require the government, citizens and communities and relevant organizations to participate together; ecological restoration project are often overlooked because of the heterogeneity of the residents preference and neglecting residents’ enthusiasm to participate; social capital play an increasingly important role in the restoration process to resolve coordination between individuals, groups and individuals have contradictory interests; in view of the ecological restoration, social capital affects residents’ willingness to pay thereby affecting public participation, and ultimately affects the national ecological restoration project; this paper divided urban and rural residents in two population-based study of individuals’ willingness to pay to restore the social capital impact on the ecology.Based on the summarization the social capital of citizens and peasants, willingness to pay for restoration and their relationship, using contingent valuation method and choice experiment, constructed ordered Probit model and Mixed logit model, designed questionnaire survey, the distinguished difference between cities and rural residents, measured social capital, estimated the Heihe River Basin residents’ willingness to pay. Social capital and its overall dimensions affect willingness to pay for the restoration of ecological attributes and coordinate the conflicts of interest in consideration of urban and rural residents’ contradictory interests caused by ecological preference heterogeneity coordinating role. This paper concluded the following four conclusions:(1) Urban and rural residents’ social capital and the dimensions of the overall ecological restoration vary. Urban and rural social capital has a significant positive effect on willingness to pay for ecological overall recovery, but the ecological restoration of rural social capital ’willingness to pay were not significant; social norms residents ecological overall recovery willingness to pay a significant negative effect; social networks and social Reputation on the residents’ willingness to pay restoration ecology as a whole has a significant positive impact; community involvement and social trust urban residents’ willingness to pay a significant positive impact, but the impact on rural residents’ willingness to pay is not significant.(2) Urban and rural residents social capital dimension of restoration have differences on the ecological properties. Urban residents and norms of individual social capital, trust, participation, prestige did not significantly affect the ecological restoration of each attribute willingness to pay, however, the impact of social networks on the irrigation of urban residents’ willingness to pay to protect rate; rural residents and their individual social capital dimension of social Reputation failed to significantly affect the ecological restoration of each attribute willingness to pay, however, social norms, networking, participation, trust dimension significantly affect the ecological restoration willingness to pay for each property.(3) Social capital dimension especially social networks to coordinate urban and rural residents in two ecological properties of a recovery willingness to pay the difference. mixed logit model and the implicit price calculation results show that urban residents unproductive ecological properties of a recovery demand than rural residents; in contrast, rural residents of the productive ecological properties of a recovery demand than urban residents; social networks to promote urban residents’ preference for more productive attributes such as farmland irrigation assurance rate, increased rural residents to improve water quality and a higher number of days of non-productive investment, reflecting the interests of residents’ preference is coordinated by social capital especially it’s dimension social networks.(4) The dimensions of residents’ social capital reduce the cost of ecological restoration project, coordinating urban and rural residents’ preference and reducing government management cost. Ordered Probit model shows the dimensions of social capital contribute to produce eco-friendly behavior, constraints, ecological vandalism residents; Mixed logit model shows social networks coordinates urban and rural ecological restoration differentiated preferences; both models indicate social capital and its ‘dimensions reduce cost of government and community management and the ecological project costs.