The Influence of Place on the Willingness to Pay for Ecosystem Services

ABSTRACT

Sense of place, including an individual’s attitudes toward specific geographic settings, is generally predicted to influence willingness to engage in place-protective behaviors. Relatively little research, however, has empirically examined the influence of people’s attitudes toward a place on their willingness to pay for environmental protection. Using the example of a payment for ecosystem services (PES) initiative in the McKenzie River watershed, Oregon, USA, we found that place attitudes were a significant predictor of respondents’ willingness to pay for a program designed to benefit drinking water quality. These results suggest that connecting conservation actions to landscapes that are meaningful to people may increase their financial support for PES and other conservation programs. While program managers have little or no influence over stakeholders’ political ideology, gender, or income, managers may be able to influence prospective PES buyers’ awareness and attitudes through targeted communications, thereby potentially increasing support for place-based conservation efforts.

KEYWORDS:

• Conservation finance
• contingent valuation
• incentives
• payments for ecosystem services
• place attitudes
• political ideology
• sense of place
• watershed services
• WTP

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the 406 Eugene Water and Electric Board ratepayers whose contributions made this research possible, and the Unites States Department of Agriculture, National Institute for Food and Agriculture program for financial support through award number 2011-67023-30108. We also greatly appreciate the thoughtful comments, insights and feedback of Karl Morgenstern, Cassandra Moseley, Sue Lurie, Eric White, Anita Morzillo, Sally Duncan, and the four anonymous reviewers whose contributions helped to greatly improve this manuscript.

Notes

Census tracts are geographical subdivisions of a US county or equivalent geopolitical entity typically containing between 1,200 and 8,000 people.

A small value was added to non-users’ frequency score to compute the natural log.