Research On Public Participation In Biological Resource Conservation

Nowadays,China is advancing its Ecological Civilization Construction.However,Chinese biological resource conservation,one of the important contents in Ecological Civilization Construction,is short of funds from the governments.Guiding the public to participate in biological resource conservation is a feasible route to solve the problem.Taking the biological resource conservation in Wuyi Mountains area as an example,this study aims to explore the public status in participating in biological resource,find the factors that influence public willingness and willingness to pay in biological resource conservation,and analyze public protection preferences in biological resource conservation.The study used the data of 627 effective observations from a field research in October in 2015,which was about public willingness to pay in biological resource conservation in Wuyi Mountains area.To take advantage of the data,the study first analyzed public status in participating in biological resource in Wuyi Mountains area.Second,the study applied binary probit model to find the factors that effected public willingness in participating in the protection.Thirdly,the study used uncertainty method to calculate public willingness to pay in biological resource conservation,and further applied quantile regression to analyze the factors which had impacts on public willingness to pay in biological resource conservation.Finally,the study adopted choice experiment method and multiple logit model to analyze public protection preferences for biological resource conservation.After doing these work,the study drew following conclusions:First,the ratio of public participation in biological resource protection in Wuyi Mountains area was about 60%,which was a good signal for biological resource conservation in terms of public participation.Second,public were more willing to participate in biological resource conservation if they had higher income.Public who hold the view that governments should be responsible for biological resource conservation were less likely to protect biological resource.And those who had better knowledge of biological resource and higher recognition of the importance of biological resource conservation were more willing to participate in the protection.Thirdly,whether public trusted governments had significant impact on their willingness to pay in biological resource conservation.If public willingness to pay was in the middle or higher place,those trusted governments had higher willingness to pay than those did not trust government,and the impact of public trust in governments on their willingness to pay went higher as willingness to pay itself rose.Finally,public protection priority was followed by protecting Chinese-specific biological resource,then protecting biological resource with immature breeding technology,then protecting vulnerable biological resource,then protecting endangered biological resources then protecting biological resource with immature but unpopular applied breeding technology,and then protecting near threatened biological resource.Based on the conclusions above,the study got three policy implications in terms of encouraging public to take part in biological resource conservation and advancing Ecological Civilization Construction.First,governments should enhance the propaganda of biological resource protection and make more efforts in popularizing relevant knowledge to promote public recognition of biological resource and its protection and create a good atmosphere for public protection.Second,governments should improve the transparency of its capital management and strengthen the legislative work of the fund management system of biological resources protection to make public trust governments and participate more actively in the protection.Thirdly,government and conservation organization should set special public funds to encourage public participation,which should be used to protect biological resource in public protection priority.