Valuing cultivated land protection: A contingent valuation and choice experiment study in China

This study is to examine the public's preferences for cultivated land protection in Wenling City of China using a dichotomous choice contingent valuation method (CVM) and a choice experiment method. An empirical comparison of the welfare measures derived from the CVM and CE was conducted. We found that the valid response rate of the CVM was higher than that of the CE, while the CE data produced a higher percentage share of supporting votes for cultivated land protection than the CVM data. The estimation results show that the mean willingness to pay from the CVM is larger than that obtained from the CE, but they are not significantly different. Our results indicate that carefully designed CVM and CE were suitable to value cultivated land protection in China. The study results can contribute to the literature on comparing the willingness to pay estimates derived from the CVM and CE and can help improve our current understandings of local public's preferences for cultivated land protection.