Willingness to pay for increasing river water quality in Aksu River, Turkey
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Willingness to pay for increasing river water quality in Aksu River, Turkey Emine Ikıkat Tumer1 Received: 18 December 2018 / Accepted: 3 October 2019 © Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract In large part of the world, rivers are polluted with sewage, industrial and agricultural wastes. The objective of this study is to determine farmers’ willingness to pay to improve the water quality of the Aksu River in Kahramanmaras Province. For this purpose, a survey was conducted with 236 farmers in the study area and the contingent valuation method and binomial probit model were used to evaluate river quality. As a result of the analysis, it is determined that average farm size was 188.2 decares, average annual income was $ 40377.56 and 87.3% of the respondents want to do good agricultural practices, which is a form of production that does not harm the environment, human and animal health. Model results showed that the region (polluted and not polluted area) and the use of fertilizers according to soil analysis results affect farmers’ willingness to pay positively. On the other hand, the education level of farmers and bid price have a negative effect on the willingness to pay. As a result of the analysis, it is determined that the farmers wanted to pay $8.03 per decare to improve the river water quality. Keywords River pollution · Surface water · Contingent valuation · Willingness to pay
1 Introduction Rivers which are public or semipublic goods in undeveloped and developing countries are used as drinking water resources and as an ideal discharge site for most wastes (Xu and Liu 2013). The rivers have been turned into the ecosystems that are first affected by environmental pollution because of the lack of sufficient water resource recovery facility of more than one-third of the world’s population (Tan 2015). The reasons are rapid and uncontrolled industrialization due to population growth (Karaer and Gürlük 2003), the intensive use of agricultural fertilizer inputs (Kara and Çömlekçioğlu 2004; Çınar 2013), erosion and destruction of forests (Batak 1997; Imandoust and Gadam 2007). River pollution is a negative externality that reduces economic well-being or consumer benefit. For this reason, pollution brings an additional cost to the beneficiaries of the rivers. * Emine Ikıkat Tumer [email protected] 1
Department of Agricultural Economics, Faculty of Agriculture, Kahramanmaras Sutcu Imam University, 46100 Kahramanmaras, Turkey
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It is quite difficult to calculate this cost because there is no market for environmental goods. Studies on the calculation of willingness to pay have been done to improve water quality in the world. To increase the quality of groundwater in the Mid-Atlantic region, the amount that corn and soybean producers were willing to pay was calculated using the random utility model. In the result of the analysis, it was determined that the corn and soya bean producers were willing to pay between $3.65 and $8.42 (Lichtenberg and Zimmerman 1999). Contingent valuatio
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