Design of an Almost Ideal Elicitation Method in Contingent Valuation: Scrutiny and Evaluation of the Benefit of Biodiversity

In order the test and examine the applicability of this method, a site with feature of biodiversity is selected. The Black-faced spoonbill Protected Area in Tainan county is qualified for this purpose. Besides the evaluation for the site, a normative basis for designing of environmental conservation policies and action foundation for policies implementation.

It is deemed that the applicability of conservation policy is the final and main purpose for policies design. As a result, conservation policies are inescapable from value judgment of human preference. Utilitarianism, the environmental ethics proposed by environmental economists in relating human being to nature is viewed too be provoked under self-interest to gain the greatest social benefit.

It is then believed that under motivation of self-interest change and adjustment of the components of social benefit is contemplated as norm and foundation for conservation of biodiversity resources. The empirical results have demonstrated that efficiency performance of estimated mean willingness to pay from various specification of empirical application, such as different distribution, different specification of functional form, and inclusion of characteristics of respondents, is lower than that from the theoretical derivation.