Abstract
River basins are key sources of ecosystem services, with a wide range of social and economic benefits and many effects on human well-being. However, intensified land use and other dramatic variations in river ecosystems can alter ecosystem functions and services. In this study, we explored the public awareness, attitude and perception regarding environmental and water resource issues and assessed the willingness to pay (WTP) for improving selected attributes of the Wei River basin. Various rankings, Likert scales and random parameter logit (RPL) models were used to analyze data obtained from 900 surveyed respondents. Most respondents were more concerned about environmental and water resource management issues rather than socioeconomic attributes. From a policy perspective, 83.32% and 50.50% of the residents ranked “improvement in water quality” and “improving irrigation conditions,” respectively, as their main priorities regarding ecological restoration. Moreover, the results obtained using RPL models showed that the coefficients were significant for all ecological attributes and monetary attributes, as expected. The positive and significant coefficient for the alternative specific constant demonstrated that the respondents preferred restoration alternatives to the status quo. Furthermore, the highest WTP was found for water quality (91.99 RMB), followed by erosion intensity (23.59 RMB) and water quantity (11.79 RMB). Our results are relevant to policy development and they indicate that ecological restoration is the favored option.
Highlights
From a social perspective, river basins are major sources of ecosystem services, with a wide range of economic benefits and they have diverse effects on human well-being [1,2]
The subjects were asked to rank the socioeconomic and ecological issues based on their relative importance and preferences, such as the ecological environment, water resource management, infrastructure, economic growth and employment, education and health care, where they assigned scores ranging from 1 denoting “most important” to 7 representing “least important.”
23% of the respondents considered the ecological environment as their main priority, followed by 17%
Summary
River basins are major sources of ecosystem services, with a wide range of economic benefits and they have diverse effects on human well-being [1,2]. Ecosystem services are the direct or indirect benefits provided by biodiversity and ecosystems to humans [3,4]. Ecosystems provide cultural, regulatory and support services that directly or indirectly promote human well-being through recreation, landscape values and fisheries maintenance [9,10,11]. Understanding the social and economic value of river ecosystem services can help to shape the priorities for river restoration projects [15,16,17,18].
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