Choice modeling: assessing the non-market environmental values of the biodiversity conservation of swamp forest in Vietnam

Huynh Viet Khai 0 1 Mitsuyasu Yabe 0 1 0 M. Yabe Laboratory of Environmental Economics, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Faculty of Agriculture, Kyushu University , Hakozaki 6-10-1, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka 812-8581, Japan 1 H. V. Khai (&) Agricultural, Resource and Environmental Economics, School of Economics and Business Administration, Can Tho University , Can Tho, Vietnam The study investigated the economic value of biodiversity attributes that could provide policy makers reliable information to estimate welfare losses due to biodiversity reductions and analyze the trade-off between biodiversity and economics. To obtain the non-market benefits of biodiversity conservation, an indirect utility function and willingness to pay for biodiversity attributes were applied using the approach of choice modeling with the analysis of multinomial logit model. The study found that Mekong Delta residents accepted their willingness to pay of VND 913 monthly for a 1 % increase in healthy vegetation, VND 360 for an additional mammal species and VND 2,440 to avoid the welfare losses of 100 local farmers. - The wetlands in the Mekong Delta, the largest wetlands in Vietnam, have great biodiversity. They support a large number of herons, egrets, stocks, ibises and some rare species such as sarus cranes, black-necked storks, lesser adjutants and great adjutants. Especially, there are 14 globally threatened bird species among 194 bird species living in the mature semi-natural Melaleuca forest and seasonally inundated grasslands of the Mekong Delta. Conservation of Mekong Delta wetlands is beneficial not only for Vietnam, but also for the world. For instance, in the wetlands there are a lot of unknown flora and fauna, microorganisms and genetic resources that are expected to contribute to the future development of new medicines or coenzymes necessary for biochemical reaction. However, the Mekong Delta has faced problems of much environmental pollution and an increase in wetland destruction due to the rapid development of industries. Recently, the wetlands in the Mekong Delta have experienced serious biodiversity losses and degradation. For instance, the numbers of endangered species in Tram Chim National Park, one of the largest national wetland parks, have rapidly reduced from 1,057 in 1987 to 93 in 2005 [12]. In addition, the losses of wetland biodiversity also is due to an increase in shrimp farming, the conversion of wetlands to agriculture and construction land, war destruction and excessive fuel wood collection [12]. To prevent the biodiversity losses and degradation, the local authorities have proposed plans to use public funding to improve the protection of biodiversity. However, up to now there is little information on the values of biodiversity as well as studies on nature and biodiversity conservation in Vietnams literature. Thuy [24] conducted a study on the willingness to pay for the conservation of Vietnamese rhinoceros using contingent valuation method with five bid-level questionnaires and estimated the mean WTP of $2.5 per household. Environmental choice modeling was applied by Do and Bennett [12] to identify the biodiversity benefits of Tram Chim National Park. The study estimated the total benefits of wetland conservation program to be about $3.9 million. Due to this information gap among residents, farmers and policy makers, it is unclear to policymakers whether the change in current management practices would generate net social benefits. It is relatively easy to calculate the costs of biodiversity conservation program, but hard to estimate the benefits. The benefits or design of biodiversity policy could be estimated by studying public preferences on conservation program. However, this is complicated because of the generally low level of awareness and understanding of what biodiversity means on the part of the general public [9]. Moreover, although there are a lot of conservation activities especially in biosphere reserves of the Mekong Delta recognized by UNESCO, these are not strong or powerful enough to enlarge or improve the quantity and quality of biosphere reserves because of government budget constraint or the low level of support from local residents and authorities. Studies are needed to be done to answer the question of whether more financial investments are worthy for conserving biodiversity in these biosphere reserves. In this paper, using the approach of a choice modeling to estimate the economic values of the proposed biodiversity conservation program in U Minh Thuong National Park, one of the largest peat swamp forests in Vietnam, the study might partly seek to answer the question and also provide policy makers and concerned people more information about residents attitudes toward environment and natural resources as well as the benefits of biodiversity conservation. The paper is structured as follows. The next section describes the methodology and data collection including the parts of choice modeling technique; study area and conservation fund; survey and questionnaire design; and model specification. The following section reports the discussion results of a choice modeling analysis. The final section concludes the paper. Choice modeling technique Choice modeling (CM) technique has been recently paid much attention by economists. This approach was first developed by Louviere and Hensher [15] and then popularly applied in the fields of marketing, transportation and tourism [7, 21]. The CM method was originally developed from conjoint analysis, but differed from typical conjoint methods in terms of asking respondents to select one alternative from choice sets of attributes instead of ranking or rating them. Because of its consistency with random utility theory (RUT), CM has been used to estimate the passive use values of environmental goods [1]. Unlike the contingent valuation method that aims to value a specific trade-off, the CM technique needs respondents to select only one resource use option from each of some sets of multiple resource use options [5]. The method of CM identifies a function of the attributes and labels to predict respondents choice behavior [23]. The choice experiment method is developed from Lancasters theory of consumer choice based on the behavioral framework of RUT [17, 18]. RUT describes discrete choices in a maximum utility and its function (Uij) is assumed to form: Uij Vij eij V Zij; Si e Zij; Si where Vij is the systematic and deterministic component of the latent utility for conservation management scenario alternative j in choice set C; eij is the random and error component [16]. The systematic component Vij could be specified as a function of the vectors of conservation management attributes Z which illustrate the alternative j and social, economic and attitudinal characteristics S of the respondent i. Since the component is random, choices cannot be predicted certainly and perfectly. This leads (...truncated)