The River Basin Ecological Compensation Mechanism Based On The WTP And WTA

Rapid economic growth in China has overloaded the environment, with an apparent conflict between supply and demand. The ecological environment is experiencing serious problems. What’s more, ecological environmental damages and poverty are twins. The "cost-paying area" of protecting the environmental resources and the "ecological-beneficial area" of environmental benefits are not the same one geographically. The public nature of the ecological environment results in free-rider problems because people hold the wrong belief that the ecological environment is free. Therefore, it is not only reasonable but also necessary to establish an ecological compensation system. The basin ecological benefit is a special good without the nature of private good. That is to say, it cannot realize compensation by market exchange. In order to sustain its use value of public interests, the law and regulations on environmental resources must be further improved; environmental compensation fund should be established as well.Based on analysis of the ecological compensation theory, we take Yangtze River Basin as the research object, assess the value of ecosystem service and measure willingness to accept (WTA) and willingness to pay (WTP) of the residents. After building the calculation model of Yangtze River Basin ecological compensation, the conclusions we get are as follows:Other things being equal, WTP is 388.06 Yuan/person-year and WTA is 627.55 Yuan/person-year if we use the non-parametric estimation. When considering other factors, WTP is 146.892Yua/person-year and WTA is 376.584 Yuan/person-year if we use the Parametric estimation. Then we focus the analysis and empirical testing on the influencial factors of WTA/WTP and the differences between WTP and WTA. The Results show that the living period of the respondents in the Yangtze River basin, the living distance from the Yangtze river basin and the annual family income affect the respondents’ WTA and WTP. The age and understanding degree of river basin ecological compensation of the respondents have a significant impact only on the respondents’ WTA. The more understanding of ecological compensation of respondents have, the higher their environmental awareness is. They realize the importance of environmental protection, so they need a higher compensation. Income has influence on the WTP and WTA, but the impact degree is different. According to the income variable coefficient of the two models, the influence degree of the income to the WTP is greater than that to the WTA. The understanding degree of river basin ecological compensation only has an effect on the WTA. They have deeper understanding of watershed protection. The more important they believe river basin ecological environment is, the higher the amount of compensation is.Finally, suggestions are raised about constructing the ecological compensation mechanism in the Yangtze River basin water resources. First, define the subject and object of river basin ecological compensation. Second, deal with the difference of the residents’ WTP and WTA effectively. Third, promote the reform of the mode of WTA and WTP.