تجزیه و تحلیل اقتصاد سنجی از تمایل به پرداخت برای توسعه پایدار: مطالعه موردی منطقه چشم انداز Volčji Potok

When the market for a certain good is competitive enough, economic activities can be studied by the market pricing mechanism. Because this is usually not feasible in case of environmental goods with embodied natural and cultural heritage, particular methods for economic valuation of such goods have to be applied. The present article represents the economic valuation of the Landscape Development and Protection Area of Volčji Potok, which is an important Slovenian cultural landscape area with internationally recognized qualities. For this purpose we combined classical contingent valuation with a closed-version of discrete choice method, where the protest responses have been removed. By using econometric analysis we obtained the value of willingness-to-pay and established its determinants. We also made an attempt to control for different biases that arise in such analyses. At last, we used the adjusted average individual value of willingness-to-pay to calculate the aggregate willingness-to-pay. The present analysis represents one of the very few applications of the method to Central and Eastern European countries.

Local communities often find themselves in a position where they have to decide on what spatial changes and development guidelines to implement within the scope of nationally or regionally adopted spatial and development planning documents. Their decisions must address not only operating costs, but also the positive and negative spatial impact of the development programmes on people's welfare. As the former are expressed in monetary terms and the latter usually only in terms of quantity or by way of description, it can happen that the spatial impact is under- or overrated in the intuitive decision-making process. Ensuring that spatial and environmental impacts are given appropriate weight in the decision-making process, it is imperative to determine their monetary value. In the case described in this article, the spatial impact of targeted development of the Landscape Development and Protection Area (LDPA) of Volčji Potok is evaluated, together with its natural and cultural goods. This is a landscape area with distinct qualities of international importance. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the overall value of environmental goods, i.e. the use value and the non-use value for residents and visitors to the area. For this purpose, the contingent valuation method was selected; mainly due to significant non-use values in the area, the total value for residents and visitors, and the varying selection of goods in this area. Only stated preference methods, such as contingent valuation method (cf. Whittington, 1998 and Garrod and Willis, 1999, pp. 125–126; Nunes et al., 2003, pp. 94–95; Verbič, 2006) can be used to estimate environmental values such as biotic diversity, landscape appearance, preservation of cultural and art collections, artefacts and monuments, and features of old towns and villages. Contingent valuation surveys were first proposed in theory by Ciriacy-Wantrup (1947) as a method for eliciting market valuation of a non-market good. The first practical application of the technique was done by Davis (1963) on the economic value of recreation in the Maine woods. Numerous applications of the method to various public goods and studies of its methodological properties were conducted worldwide in the 1970s and 1980s. A review of the theoretical and empirical basis of contingent valuation is presented in Mitchell and Carson (1989), Arrow et al. (1993) and, more recently, in Moons (2003), Venkatachalam (2004) and Schläpfer (2006). Nowadays, the method is widely used in cost–benefit analysis and environmental impact assessment. Recent applications that are relevant for our study include Hadker et al. (1997), Cicia and Scarpa (2000), Lette and de Boo (2002), Navrud and Ready (2002), Laitila and Paulrud (2006) and Bateman et al. (2006). The main concept of the contingent valuation method is to model individuals' responses in terms of their reactions in specific hypothetical situations. In the ex ante analysis in the case of environmental evaluation, questions relate to the highest sum that individuals are prepared to pay for a change (improvement or purchase) at the environmental goods level (willingness-to-pay — WTP). Changes in the level of environmental goods can then be described by a number of different development scenarios. Two development scenarios were drawn up for the purpose of this evaluation. The form of the contingent valuation method was defined on the basis of scenarios and research objectives. In this article we combine classical contingent valuation with a closed-version of discrete choice method, where the protest responses are removed. The present analysis represents one of the relatively few applications of the method to cultural landscapes, and certainly one of the very few applications of the method to Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) in general. Among the very scarce analyses available for CEECs one should consult Tošovská (1996), Fomenko et al. (1997), Kluvánková (1999), Markowska and Żylicz (1999), Visintin (2004), De Groot (2006) and Marangon and Visintin (2007). The outline of the article is as follows. In Section 2, the Landscape Development and Protection Area of Volčji Potok is presented in brief. A description of the scenarios and questionnaire formation process follows in Section 3. In 4 and 5 the article then offers an analysis of the stated willingness-to-pay and an analysis of the “true” willingness-to-pay, respectively. In Section 6 the aggregate value of willingness-to-pay is being calculated. Subsequently, in Section 7 the results are compared, as much as possible, with those from similar studies in CEECs. The article concludes in Section 8 with the key findings regarding the potential development policy for the relevant area.

The article represents economic valuation of the Landscape Development and Protection Area of Volčji Potok, which is an important Slovenian cultural landscape area with internationally recognized qualities, by the use of classical contingent valuation method and a closed-version of discrete choice method. Within this framework we have performed an econometric analysis of stated and “true” willingness-to-pay. Stated value of willingness-to-pay was positively affected by the respondent's income, his consciousness, his concern about unplanned development in the area, his perception of probable damage to the area, his perception of natural and cultural heritage in general, and the number of values embodied in the area's environmental goods. Respondents' protest responses, on the other hand, lowered the stated willingness-to-pay value. Starting point bias and part-whole bias substantially reduced the value of stated willingness-to-pay as well. After the elimination of protest responses from the sample, which has so far not been a standard practice in closed-form discrete choice valuation, the “true” willingness-to-pay has been estimated. The values obtained were slightly lower than the non-adjusted willingness-to-pay from the stated willingness-to-pay analysis. Respondents' decision to contribute towards the realisation of the targeted development scenario was positively affected by his income, his consciousness, the visitation rate of environmental goods in the area, level of respondents' concern about unplanned development in the area, his perception of potential damage in the area, his preferences for particular environmental goods in the area, and the number of values of environmental goods that the respondents deemed important. At last, the adjusted average individual value of willingness-to-pay was used in order to calculate the aggregate willingness-to-pay. The aggregate value obtained seems to provide a relatively good reflection of the inhabitants and visitors' perception of the use value, and above all the non-use value of the Volčji Potok landscape area. However, since the willingness-to-pay among those who are neither visitors nor residents is not taken into account, the calculated economic worth of the area is an under-estimate of the actual value due to the “existence value” of the area. With this in mind, it makes sense with regard to potential future spatial policy in this area to compare the value obtained for the area with current total allocated expenditure in order to be able to plan and achieve the optimal development policy for the LDPA Volčji Potok.