Farmers' willingness to pay for rehabilitation of degraded natural resources under watershed development in Ethiopia (case study in Dejen Woreda)

Abstract

This study goes to identify factors that affect farmers' WTP and estimating the TEV. The Bivarite Probit model is used for the estimation of the parameters using 185 sample size. The mean WTP from DBDCV is 28.48 ETH Birr per annum; is higher than the open ended CVM (i.e., 24.8 Birr). The TEV is estimated to be 105,148.16 ETH Birr. Education, fertiliser expenditure and land per capita are statistically significant and positively affecting farmers' WTP. Age is negatively affecting farmers' WTP due to longer time horizon of the returns of soil and water conservation works. The policy should consider farmers' age, fertiliser expenditure and land per capita for proper design of watershed development guidelines. Government should encompass adults' education which has an effect on farmers demand for natural resource conservation in terms of the higher possibility of accepting new technologies and family planning (implicit effects on land per capita.).