The Use of Choice Experiments to Value Public Preferences for Cultivated Land Protection in China

Abstract

Effective programs and policies for cultivated land resource protection are often the focus of government policy-makers and researchers. Here we use survey data from Wuhan City, Hubei, China to attempt to apply a choice experiment for assessing main stakeholder preferences for cultivated land resource protection based on the hypothesis of market and policy. According to the basic principle of choice experiments, the area of cultivated land, quality of cultivated land, cost of cultivated land protection and cultivated land ecological landscape were included as attributes in the experimental design. Surveys were undertaken on two main stakeholders groups (farmers and urban residents). Our results show strong divergence between farmers and urban residents regarding protecting attributes. We then analyzed and compared welfare changes affected by different attribute combination programs. The result of this study provides theoretical and decision-making support for farmland protection funds and agricultural subsidy systems.