Households' willingness to reduce pollution threats in the Poyang Lake region, southern China

Environmental threats to wetland ecosystems are increasing, and these ecosystems are becoming increasingly sensitive to human impacts, leading to deterioration of these already fragile ecosystems. Poyang Lake is the largest freshwater lake in China and one of the most important wetlands in the world. However, water pollution and related environmental changes have increasingly drawn the scientific community's attention. The goal of this paper is to provide insights into the environmental threats to the Poyang Lake region as perceived from the households' perspective, and to investigate their willingness to pay for conservation of the lake's environment. We collected both primary and secondary data through a questionnaire delivered to 270 households and analysis of existing water monitoring data. The major threat confronting the Poyang lake region is water pollution: water quality, as represented by the total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) concentrations and by chemical oxygen demand (COD), suggests a moderate to severe degree of eutrophication. The situation has worsened in recent years, particularly due to high TN and TP in agricultural drainage water caused by increasingly intensive use of chemical fertilizers by local farmers. Most households were willing to pay to mitigate these threats, but the magnitude of the payment was related to a farmer's dependence on the lake for their production and daily life. The results of our analysis will help managers develop more effective environmental management policies. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.