Living environment shaped residents’ willingness to pay for ecosystem services in Yangtze River Middle Reaches Megalopolis, China

Abstract

Profound understanding on the diversity of local residents’ willingness to pay (WTP) for ecosystem services (ESs) may aid evaluation of policy impacts by uncovering trade-offs and synergies for achieving sustainable environmental resource management. However, the reasons for the spatial preference heterogeneity of WTP are still unclear. In this study, an extensive survey with 4,580 residents in the Yangtze River Middle Reaches Megalopolis (YRMRM), central China, was carried out to investigate the public’s WTP to maintain and improve ESs. We identified key influencing factors and explored how they shaped the preference heterogeneity in WTP by random forest model and surface fitting method. Our results showed that 81.4% of residents reported WTP for ESs greater than zero. Water supply, waste treatment, food supply and raw material supply were the preferred ESs for residents. Living environment factors (i.e., extent of farmland, water and forest near the residence) were found as the key drivers of WTP. Proximity to farmland, water and forests resulted in high WTP values for a series of specific ESs. The reasons for the heterogeneity of WTP are (1) the difference in proximity to farmland, water and forest (i.e., the contributor to ESs), (2) the divergence of local residents’ preferences for ESs. This study disclosed the heterogeneity and causes of public preferences in YRMRM, which could help policy and decision makers to develop eco-compensation initiatives towards conservative and sustainable use of the environmental resources.

Keywords

Ecosystem services / Willingness to pay / Living environment / Spatial heterogeneity / Yangtze River Middle Reaches Megalopolis

Ethical statement

Ethical approval was not required for this study since human participants were ensured following local legislation and institutional requirements. All proceeds of this research were carried out following the Helsinki Declaration principles of human subject investigation. Participation in this survey was anonymous and voluntary, assuring consent of prospective respondents before participation. Data accumulated for this research was treated confidentially.

Declaration of Competing Interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This work is financially supported by the National Key Research and Development Plan, Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China (Grant No. 2020YFC1908704) and the Innovative Foundation of Huazhong University of Science and Technology (Grant No. 2018KFYYXJJ133).

Supplementary materials

Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi: 10.1016/j.geosus.2023.03.007.

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