Estimating the eco-environmental value of damages caused by groundwater over drafting

Abstract

Groundwater provides a lot of services to the environment as one of the components of the ecosystem, but its over drafting has led to a lot of environmental damage. Estimating the economic value of these damages is one of the important issues in the environmental economics. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the economic value of environmental damages to the landscape, nature, biodiversity and habitat of wildlife (natural ecosystem) in Qazvin plain. Given the lack of real market for environmental goods and services, the stated preference method and choice experiment was used to determine the value of the external effects of groundwater shortage. The conditional and nested logic model has been used to achieve the research objectives. The results showed that the income, educational level, environmental ethics and household size have a positive and significant effect on the level of willingness to pay for groundwater ecosystem services. Attaining the optimal level of biodiversity conservation, wildlife habitat and landscape were in the next places of households willing to pay. The protective value of groundwater was estimated at 879.18 Rials per cubic meter.