Empirical Review on Determinants of Willingness to Pay for Natural and Environmental Resource Valuation: Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Even if natural and environmental resource plays detrimental role prosperity of nations, measuring their value is highly problematic. Lack of realistic markets data to estimate its value for the goods and services necessitates the use of nonmarket valuation techniques. The meta-analysis was carried out to see the mean size effect of certain demographic, socioeconomic and institutional factors on willingness to pay of natural resources conservation and improvement. The empirical analysis review was done on about 57 published articles for total of 116 observations. The data synthesis was done from published articles include coefficients of explanatory variable and standard error, model used, value measured, study region, sample size and publication from the year of 2002 up to 2019 year. The data analyzed in excel sheet and SPSS software. The study countries were Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Guinea, Nigeria, Malaysia, USA, Iraq, China and India. The result confirmed that measurement errors and heterogeneity of case studies, interviewed resulted difference in willingness to pay estimate. The result implied inverse relationship between willingness estimate and environmental resource valued and study destination [Eat Africa]. The meta-analysis indicated mean size effect of willingness to pay defined as function of income, age, bid value, occupation, sex, knowledge, and education level of respondents. The empirical analysis result showed that increasing awareness, enabling to expand income earning believed to increase the willingness to pay value.