TITLE:
Estimating Urban Households’ Willingness-to-Pay for Upland Forest Restoration in Vietnam
AUTHORS:
Quy Van Khuc, Mustapha Alhassan, John B. Loomis, Trung Duc Tran, Mark W. Paschke
KEYWORDS:
Willingness-to-Pay, Households, Forest Restoration, U Minh Thuong National Park, Vietnam
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Forestry,
Vol.6 No.3,
June
2,
2016
ABSTRACT: Increased
urbanization coupled with increased reliance of urban communities on rural
areas for ecosystem service provision is a challenge faced by many nations. The
ability of urban households to directly support restoration efforts in
surrounding rural regions represents an underappreciated funding stream for
ecological restoration. This study explored the willingness of urban households
to support forest restoration in Vietnam. We surveyed 211 households (HHs) in
the capital city Hanoi, Vietnam. A Maximum Likelihood Estimator (MLE) model
allowed us to obtain the parameters of our model and quantify mean
Willingness-to-Pay (WTP) for a program of forest restoration in addition to
identifying factors influencing the decision of WTP. Generally, over forty percent
of the households surveyed are willing to pay for forest restoration and the
mean value of WTP is 37,830 VND ($1.73) per household per month. WTP depends on
endogenous and exogenous factors including level of education, income,
female-to-male ratio in the household, attitude toward payment for monthly
electricity consumption, and awareness of payment for environmental service.
Our results suggest that urban household’s demand for forest restoration is
real, and represents an untapped source of restoration funding. Policy-makers
should take actions to apply charges on water bills to turn this potential into
reality for restoration projects in Vietnam if the benefits from restoration
outweigh the costs based on our findings.