Community Participation and Preferences Regarding Conservation and Development Policies in China’s Giant Panda Nature Reserves

Ben Ma and Yali Wen
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Ben Ma: School of Economics and Management, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China
Yali Wen: School of Economics and Management, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 18, 1-17

Abstract: Community participation in conservation activities is an important mechanism to coordinate the conflicts between conservation and local development. Hence, it is necessary to understand farmers’ preferences for different conservation and development policies. By surveying households residing inside and outside the four giant panda nature reserves in the Qinling Mountains, China, in 2018, this study uses a choice experiment model to evaluate participation willingness and stated preferences regarding the establishment of national parks (NPs), ecotourism development, ecological public welfare forest compensation, and provision of ecological jobs. Our results suggest that these conservation and development policies all have a positive impact on community participation in conservation. Among the different conservation and development policies, farmers seem to prefer the government developing ecotourism most, followed by providing ecological jobs, establishing NPs, and finally the compensation amount and period of ecological public welfare forests. Moreover, farmers with different characteristics have different preferences regarding conservation and development policies. Age, education level, whether the respondent is a village cadre, family forestland area, family income, and whether the respondent lives in a nature reserve are relevant socio-economic characteristics of the affected farmers.

Keywords: choice model; compensation; ecotourism; farmers’ preference; Giant Panda National Park (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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