Abstract
Willingness to pay (WTP) is a foundation of payment for environmental services (PES) and varies according to different stakeholders. Because of its high-quality environment, numerous inns have appeared around Erhai Lake, which has become the inn sector leader in China. Declining water quality of the lake contrasts sharply with the increasing number of inns, thus a policy that balances economic development and water protection is needed desperately. The Erhai Lake Resource Protection Fee (ELRPF) is a form of PES, constructed on the basis of the contingent value method (CVM) involving the relationship between perceived benefits, institutional trust, awareness, and supportive attitude. Using relevant data obtained from a survey questionnaire, SmartPls 3.0 software was used to analyze the factors influencing inn operators’ WTP. The results of the analysis of 307 questionnaires showed that institutional trust, PES cognition, and attitudes toward support significantly affected inn operators’ WTP, while perceived benefit did not. This result differs from results of research on other tourism stakeholders. The reasons for this difference might be the specific identity of operators, their cultural and place identity, ability and professional education, and complexities of the broker of ecosystem services.
Highlights
Fornell and Larcker state that a way to indicate discriminant validity is to take the square root of the average variance extracted (AVE) value and determine whether it is larger than the correlations [73]
We carried out research on operators aimed at obtaining information for improving Willingness to pay (WTP) of small tourism operators for a payment for environmental services (PES)
The operators are dependent on natural resources resulting in certain economic and lifestyle benefits so they should be responsible for PES and Erhai Lake sustainability
Summary
Markets for Ecological or Environmental Services refers to the market mechanism of environmental service transactions (e.g., polluting emission rights, water rights, fishing rights transactions, etc.), by “forcing” ecosystem services into the market model enabling individual environmental elements or nature resource types to be capitalized or financed. This market construction is highly selective and targets only economic efficiency. Some scholars believe that PES differs from a narrow MES in that it opposes efficiency as a single goal [6,7]
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