Policy implications of willingness to pay for sustainable development of a world agricultural heritage site: The role of stakeholders' sustainable intelligence, support, and behavioral intention

Abstract

AbstractThe willingness to pay (WTP) for preservation of a Globally Important Agricultural System, Jeju Batdom, South Korea is estimated. To help control for hypothetical bias, two scenarios are used, hypothetical and real settings. Further, this study investigates how the concepts of sustainable intelligence, residents' support, and behavioral intention affect WTP in addition to demographic variables. Finally, three types of preservation values (bequest, option, and existence) are examined to identify how each value influences WTP. As expected, the results reveal that WTP of the hypothetical setting is larger than the real setting. The explanatory variables of sustainable intelligence, residents' support, and behavioral intention significantly increase the WTP for preservation of Batdam. Implications are clear for the preservation of agricultural heritage sites, developing programs to increase residents' sustainable intelligence, support, and behavioral intention will increase WTP for preservation. Furthermore, the Jeju residents place the highest weight on bequest value, followed by option and existence values. The findings provide researchers and practitioners with important implications when they implement sustainable development of agricultural heritage resources.