The Cognition,Attitude And Willingness To Pay Or Accept For The Environment Protection And Poverty Alleviation

Since the reform and opening up,the work of poverty alleviation in China has made remarkable achievements and has opened up a road of poverty alleviation and development with Chinese characteristics.However,because of the large population base in China,the poverty situation is still very severe.One of the most important reason is because the relationship between poverty and ecological environment has not been timely coordination,and the traditional mode of development pay more attention to the economic benefits,while less attention to the ecological environment,which leading to some relevant measures in the process of poverty alleviation and development causing serious damage to the local ecological environment.In recent years,scholars at home and abroad have begun to turn from the research of poverty alleviation to the ecology,poverty alleviation and the relationship between them.The research shows that there is a high coincidence degree between the poor area and the ecological vulnerable area in the spatial distribution.Although scholars have extensively studied the relationship between ecological environment protection and poverty alleviation,unfortunately,little is known about the people’s cognition,attitude and willingness towards synergy between the two from the micro perspective,while the support and cooperation of the people is the prerequisite and foundation for the government departments to take cooperative ecological environment protection and poverty alleviation action.Under this context,this paper selects Changting County,a key poverty alleviation county in Fujian province as well as a typical ecological vulnerable area,as a case study of coordinated development of eco-environmental protection and poverty alleviation.Based on the samples of 480 valid questionnaires through random sampling of local people,this paper uses Descriptive Analysis,one-way ANOVA,Linear Regression Analysis,Correlation Analysis and Logistic Regression Analysis to comprehend the local people’s cognition and attitude on synergy between ecological environment protection and poverty alleviation and its differences.And the paper analyses the people’s willingness to pay or accept for synergy between ecological environment protection and poverty alleviation,including the willingness to pay(WTP)and willingness to accept(WTA),and dissects the influence factors of the WTA/WTP ratio non-symmetry,and then studies the correlation and its influence factors between people’s willingness to pay or accept and personal,family characteristics or cognitive experiences.The results show that:(1)The people’s cognition on synergy between environmental protection and poverty alleviation is relatively high,and their attitudes towards which are relatively positive,and there are some differences between social-economic characteristics and cognition or attitude.(2)The people have strong willingness to pay or accept towards the synergy between environmental protection and poverty alleviation,and they have diversified means of payment and reasons to pay or accept.(3)There have non-symmetry between WTA and WTP,which is impacted significantly by people’s age,family population,the attitude towards the synergy and whether to participate in environmental protection activities.(4)The people’s personal,family characteristics or cognitive experience have significant correlations between their willingness to pay or accept for the synergy between environmental protection and poverty alleviation.Meanwhile,these three sets of independent variables also have a certain degree of influence on willingness to pay or accept.This study will apply the people’s micro perspective to verify and fill the macro analysis,and broaden the research perspective of ecology and poverty by the analysis of people’s cognition,attitude and willingness to pay or accept for the synergy between environmental protection and poverty alleviation through questionnaires.Meanwhile,we will use for reference by the Contingent Valuation Method(CVM)in pplication of ecological compensation,and then apply this method to study the willingness to pay or accept for the synergy between environmental protection and poverty alleviation,which enrich the application of CVM.At the same time,we also will coordinate the contradiction and conflict between the government and the people according to the conclusion of this study,and then further put forward the improvement policy measures of the synergy between ecological environment protection and poverty alleviation.In the end,we will provide the scientific basis and policy suggestions for effective implementation of the synergy work between ecological environment protection and poverty alleviation for Changting county and similar areas.