Theory of Planned Behavior and the Value-Belief-Norm Theory explaining willingness to pay for a suburban park

This paper analyses whether the environmental profile of park visitors as defined by the components of the Theory of Planned Behavior and the Value-Belief-Norm Theory, determines their willingness to pay for park conservation. The sample consists of 194 visitors to a suburban Spanish park. Under these theories, it is shown that positive attitudes, a strong orientation towards biospheric and altruistic values with strong pro-environmental and normative beliefs determine the visitors' willingness to pay. Various fit statistics and the proportion of explained variance reveal that Theory of Planned Behavior has a greater influence on willingness to pay. The managers of urban spaces should direct their efforts to obtaining greater knowledge of people's attitudes, beliefs and pro-environmental values given their importance in their decisions regarding economic valuation of this sort of resources.

► The estimation of the willingness to pay for the conservation of a suburban park. ► To compare the Theory of Planned Behavior and the Value-Belief-Norm Theory. ► The positive attitudes determine the willingness to pay. ► The Theory of Planned Behavior has more predictive power to explain WTP.