The Dalai Lake Protected Area, located in the northeast of Inner Mongolia, was once rich in wildlife resources and was important to the protection of the northern ecological environment. In recent years, development of the resources of the Dalai Lake Protected Area (DLPA) has destroyed the ecotourism potential of the DLPA, and conflict between protection and development persists. To resolve the conflict between protection and development, our first objective was to evaluate DLPA ecotourism resource non-use in monetary terms and to compare possible development and protection uses. The Contingent Valuation Method (CVM), which has been commonly applied in environmental analyses, was used. The CVM elicits people’s preferences, expressed in monetary terms, through survey questions; the elicited willingness to pay (WTP) values were contingent on a hypothetical market.
CVM has been criticized by many studies because its market is hypothetical. Thus, the second objective of the study was to explore the difference between the WTP in hypothetical and real settings by increasing the real setting in our survey design. In the hypothetical setting, respondents revealed only whether they would accept certain monetary bids, while in the real setting, respondents had to choose an environmental protection organization and were informed that the organization would contact them to ask for a donation. The respondents were considered to be willing to pay if they wrote down their name and address and chose an environmental protection organization; otherwise they were considered to have rejected donation.
We sent out questionnaires to 700 respondents, and received 551 effective responses. To establish the relationship between variables and WTP in hypothetical and real settings, two logit models on the probability of a positive WTP were constructed. Eight variables, including the respondent's age, gender, education, income, familiarity with the protected area, opinion about the impact of development on the DLPA, environmental attitudes and bids, were incorporated into the two models.
The results revealed: (1) Bid, income, opinion about the impact of development on the DLPA and environmental attitudes had significant impacts on WTP at the level of P=0.01. Familiarity with the protected area had a significant impact on WTP at the level of P=0.05. (2) WTP in the real setting (47 RMB/a) was smaller than in the hypothetical setting (59 RMB/a), indicating that the real-setting survey design reduced CVM hypothetical bias and improved effectiveness. (3) In 2010, the non-use value of the DLPA ecotourism resouce was 4634×10⁴-12765×10⁴ RMB/a, based on the population on Hulunbeier. If the conclusions were based on the national population, the value would increase immensely.
These findings indicate that conservation of the DLPA is important not only ecologically but also economically. The DLPA has great economic value, and development that is destructive to the environment will degrade both the ecosystem quality and the economic value of the DLPA. This study allowed us to contrast the costs of environmental protection and the value of resource exploitation. The results will help the government and decision makers to make reasonable decisions about the future of the DLPA and similar environmental resources.