Value of Conserving Endangered Species
Attributes
Medium: Animals, Plants and/or Others
Country: Thailand
Analytical Framework(s): Contingent Valuation
Unit(s): Mean WTP
Study Date: 2004
Publication Date: 2008
Major Result(s)
| Resource/Environmental Good | THB, per household (2004) |
THB, per household (2014)1 |
USD, per household (2014)2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mean WTP for the protection and conservation of wildlife (parametric)3 | 586.00 | 763.89 | 23.21 |
| Mean WTP for the protection and conservation of wildlife4 | 250.00 | 325.89 | 9.90 |
About the Inflation Adjustment: Prices in Thailand (THB) changed by 30.36% from 2004 to 2014 (aggregated from annual CPI data), so the study values were multiplied by 1.30 to express them in 2014 prices. The study values could be expressed in any desired year (for example, to 2025) by following the same inflation calculation and being sensitive to directional (forward/backward) aggregations using your own CPI/inflation data.
Study Note: This paper looks at why people in Bangkok give money to wildlife charities, estimates how much people would be willing to pay for the conservation of some of Thailand's endangered animals and assesses what would be the best way to collect money for wildlife protection.
Study Details
Summary: The study explored the issue of private contributions towards the provision of public goods. The Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) was employed to determine the economic value of a group of Thailand's endangered animal species with 955 face-to-face interviews conducted in Bangkok. The study explored the differences between mandatory and voluntary payment mechanisms and examined responses to fundraising campaign incentives such as seed money and refund options. The results indicated that there was a higher probability of positive responses to the Willingness to Pay (WTP) question under the mandatory rather than the voluntary payment mechanism. However, seed money and refund features did not increase the probability of willingness to pay.
Site Characteristics: Donors, based on 155 in-person interviews, were, in comparison to the general respondents, older and more educated. Income-wise, they belonged to the affluent middle to higher income group. Their mean income of 536,112 Baht/year was more than five times the average per capita income of 92,960 Baht/year and more than twice the average income of those belonging to the general respondents group. The majority of the general respondents tended to fit into the lower income and the lower to middle income group with over 70% reportedly earning between 5,000 Baht/month to 30,000 Baht/month, with mean income of 19,502 Baht/month.Apart from significant differences in age and income, donors also tended to have higher levels of education while a higher percentage of them were women, a lower percentage were married and on average, they had fewer children.
Comments: This study explored the profiles of people who were already making private contributions to environmental and wildliferelated causes and examined differences between them and samples drawn from the general public in terms of motives, knowledge and awareness of risks, and causes of extinction of a selected group of Thailand's endangered animal species. CVM was employed to estimate the economic benefits of endangered species conservation. The study also explored payment vehicle effects for mandatory and voluntary payment mechanisms as well as responses to various incentives incorporated into fundraising campaigns such as seed money and the option of receiving refunds from contributions in the event that the conservation program in question was not launched.