The Impact of Environmental Preferences on Public Supporting for the River Ecosystem Restoration Program in China

Restoration of the urban river system is urgently needed as urban river pollution is becoming an important environmental problem in China. Apart from the technical challenge, explicitly including the local residents’ preferences toward ecosystem management and restoration often is critical for municipal planners and policy implementation. This study used a contingent valuation method to estimate the public preferences for supporting urban river restoration in Hangzhou and Nanjing, China. The results show that environmental preferences including perception, beliefs and past behavior were better explanatory variables than socio-demographic characteristics for explaining people’s support for ecosystem restoration actions. But the respondents’ demand and supply on environment goods are mismatch. People want better environments goods but they are unwilling to make an effort to build the environments. We also find that the average conjectural payment for the restoration project is only 36 Yuan RMB per capital. Efforts to assess and foster support for urban ecosystem restoration should be pay more attentions to the public’s perception, beliefs and past behavior.