Farmers’ willingness to pay for the environmental restoration of the critical land at North Kalimantan

Abstract

The agricultural sector is affected by climate change along with intensive farming. This thing causes land degradation and land productivity decline. This study aims to measure the level of willingness to pay (WTP) of farmer community for environmental improvements due to land degradation and to analyze the factors influencing the WTP. The research was conducted at Sempayang Village, Malinau District, North Kalimantan in March 2018. This location was chosen because it has the most critical land with an area 541.08ha, 77% of the total area of degraded land at North Kalimantan. By considering the limitation of time, cost and human resources, then in conducting the primary data collection it was only on 51 respondents using random sampling method. Contingent valuation method (CVM) used to determine the farmers’ willingness to pay (WTP), while ordinary least square analysis used to analyze the factors affecting the WTP. To suppress the damaging effects of the critical land, farmers of the farmer community willing to pay IDR.21,296 per one production period, where the highest WTP was IDR.50,000. The factors affecting the WTP are the age, education, length of stay, status of land ownership and plan to move. Meanwhile the income, marital status, number of family members, main profession and soil conservation had the negative effects on WTP.