Introduction
Compared to cropland, grassland has been reported to exhibit more environmentally friendly characteristics. For example, it was a less densely utilized land use system [1-2]; it has semi-natural succession yet cropland does not [3]. It has reduced negative environmental impacts and higher valued ecosystem services than cropland has in terms of better soil and water conservation [4], aesthetic value, etc. [5-6]. It also provides provisioning services mainly in terms of animal meat, which has better per capita value than traditional crops for local poverty farmers as well as for the local environment. Therefore, semi-natural grassland construction has been widely recommended as one of the important restoration strategies in karst regions where intensive land use was found to be a decisive factor that historically caused heavy environmental degradation in the fragile karst area of southern China [7-8]. To reduce the environmental pressure and to halt the serious spreading tendency of ecosystem degradation, the Chinese government and decision-makers have compensated local farmers or enterprises for grassland construction and to encourage them to withdraw from cropland in some karst regions since the last decade of the 20th century [2].
Yet, the area of grassland in southern China has never been recognizably changed [9], although many restoration programs have been launched to encourage semi-natural grassland construction and sustainable maintenance [10]. An important obstacle is that in southern China, including major karst regions, people traditionally eat pork rather than grass-fed meat [11- 13]. For example, in 2015, total production of pork in Guizhou province was 1.61 million tons which was nearly 10 times of beef of 168 thousand tons, and approximately 40 times of lamb of 42 thousand tons respectively [14]. Thus, the small size of the grass-fed meat market is hard to enlarge unless public preference changes. In fact, the feedback between grass-fed meat consumers and producers needs to be better activated [15]. The current situation has led to the information mismatch and then imposed the negative expectation of producers on the economic value of semi-natural grassland [16-19]. Consequently, poverty producers in the ecological degrading region of southern China are far more sensitive to giving up their inefficiently managed cropland for grass-fed meat production because crops could be their daily food at least in case they could not earn enough money for living.
Recently, public concerns over food safety have kept changing consumer’s preference for grassland based products under the context of rapid development of the industrialization and urbanization process. This is mainly due to two reasons [14-15]. On one hand, a high-energy diet in the animal-feeding industry system has significantly increased the productivity of pork products at the expense of food safety including issues of overusing agrochemicals like fertilizers, pesticides [20], food additives, antibiotics, or issues of transgenic [21-25]. On the other hand, grass-fed meat (mainly in terms of beef and lamb) has many positive safety attributes in terms of less fatty [26], less pollutants [27], and beneficial nutrient components including omega-3 fatty acids [28], conjugated linoleic acid isomers, and enhanced antioxidant components such as glutathione and superoxide dismutase [29].
Summarily, positive characteristics of grass-fed meat might have the potential to recover the linkage broken in the industrialization process between rural land use change and urban meat consumption. As declaimed by FAO, “food safety encompasses value chains from farm to plate” [30], an intensive food safety crisis could serve as catalyst for rural land use change [21]. Up to date, it has been reported that 60% of the sampled rural families have reduced the expectation on the product output from family gardens, including animal-feeding and vegetable plantation for their own safety when they realized the dangerous characteristics of agrochemical over-input [21]. The public seems to gradually believe that grassland based meat production provides a healthier procedure for animal feeding than factory farming, because it allows more physical practice to animals and requires fewer chemical inputs during the feeding period [31-32]. If the linkage between rural and urban becomes closer and valuable, the degrading rural ecosystem can be restored and sustained via the sustainable maintenance of grassland ecosystems with the concerns or support from urban citizens.
But there is little chance to change diets for swine because they lack enzymes to digest fiber in grasses [13]. Therefore, to what extent urban consumers in karst cities prefer to pay for the grass-fed products is a decisive signal for land use change in degrading karst region yet remain unknown.
Contingent valuation method (CVM) is a widely used and powerful tool to measure public preference in terms of willingness to pay (WTP) for hypothetical positive actions toward environmental goods or services via a stated preference survey [14] due to its flexibility in valuation process. In developed regions and countries like North America, Scottish, Italy, Spain, etc. [33-36], grassland was regarded as a renewable resource of high value to sustain by consumers in cities for their aesthetic value and non-use value [33]. Studies in Europe showed that urban citizens displayed their willingness to pay (WTP) not only for the conservation of grassland landscapes [3], but also for reducing grazing intensity in the context of integrated restoration management [33]. The citizens even showed high WTP for reconverting croplands into semi-natural grassland [34].
In developing countries, low WTP for environmental conservation has been regarded as a major puzzle for grassland conservation and utilization due to income shortage [35-37], and different social perceptions [38]. Before 2006, urban residents in China were reported indifferent about the overgrazing behavior of herders [37]. But after, the low WTP puzzle seems to change. In 2007, it was firstly found in China that urban consumers in 3 cities Ansai, Xi-an and national capital Beijing, have WTP for cropland-to-grassland conversion at RMB 343, 388, and 883 per capita per year [39], respectively. In 2016, it was reported that herder families’ concern for environmental changes and response to degrading sites had changed greatly for the better [40].
However, studies on consumers’ preferences or willingness to pay for products from grasslands are scarce [3]. Actually, the contingent valuation method has seldom been used for valuing grassland systems at consumers’ end [5]. This paper tries to measure the degree of consumers’ preference towards the grassland based production environment which can be a checkpoint to indicate the echo of the market for both policy-makers and rural farmers when land use decisions need to be made. To target specifically on the preference for grassland based feeding process, a new concept of willingness to pay extra (WTPe) for grass-fed meat has been used in this paper. To compare with the traditional way of WTP measurement, the WTP for general ecosystem services of grassland has also been surveyed.
Research Progress in Grassland Ecosystem Services
Mechanism Between Grass-fed Meat Purchase Incentive and Grassland Sustainability
With the industrialization development, modern industry systems have increased productivity for human society. Meanwhile it raised the food pollution issue during the production process in terms of chemical pollution including toxin heavy metals which resulted in poisoning consequences, and pathogens pollution that caused foodborne diseases even fatal illness [41]. Furthermore, it was reported that for the past 30 years, other food crises in terms of antibiotics, hormones, pesticide and agrochemicals have made food safety a more important public issue for consumers than hygiene standards and food poisoning [42]. Especially since the bovine spongiform encephalopathy issues raised, some consumers naturally choose to face the consequences of food safety problems and adjust their preference, attitude and behavior towards food products [42].
All these food safety concerns make a strong dynamic for consumers to change their eating habits [43- 47], or to pay more attention to the production process globally [48-49]. It is necessary to make a framework to state the rationale of consumer purchase incentive and sustainable ecosystem services of grassland.
Due to less agrochemical input and better taste, meat products from grass-fed or grazed process are well accepted as desired, especially with food safety attributes compared to meat produced from the industry system. In this context, products with desirable value and reasonable prices may create purchase incentives for consumers. Through the meat exchange and market information releasing, consumers’ preference of semi-wild animal rearing or the grass-fed meat indirectly encourage sustainable management or conservation practice for grassland or grazing ecosystem to provide sustainable ecosystem services and qualified environment for meat production. Details of the purchasing incentive analysis framework are shown in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1. addresses the purchase incentive of consumers towards grass-fed meat that is raised in semi-natural grassland. Semi-wild way of animal rearing is considered as a good way of production with fine environment to produce grass-fed meat with batter taste and safer attributes compared to confined rearing animal meat produced from concentrate fodder-fed. Which commonly constitute a desired meat product quality. Given a reasonable price was set, the desired value can drive consumers to raise the purchase incentive to buy the grass-fed products with extra willingness to pay for. With this possibility, a policy tool can be applied to set the WTPe aside and allow it to devote directly to sustain a better grassland ecosystem services in rural regions. In return, the better condition of grassland could further supply grass-fed products in a sustainable way.
Survey and Questionnaire
The survey was implemented from March to December 2015 with 314 respondents older than 18 years old. Considering China’s unemployment rate of 4.04% in 2015 and in order to save time, the majority of this survey was implemented during break time on working days of full time occupation sites including government offices, enterprises in central business districts, and on the street during the weekend. The main members of the survey groups were 10 faculties and master students of Guizhou Normal University. Finally, the accepted respondents turned out to be more male than female.
In-depth interviews were conducted within 20% of the surveyed respondents at random for further information about their perception, reasoning, decision-making and demographic behind the WTPe.
Four layers of information were collected using brief and simple questions. Firstly, a perception layer consisted of three answers related to food safety and ecosystem services including provisioning, supporting, regulation and cultural services. Secondly, a preference layer was formed of three questions about WTPe for grass-fed beef and lamb and WTP for 10 listed items on ecosystem services that were accepted in our pre-survey. Thirdly, information was collected about the possibility of individual actions towards supporting grassland and its ecosystem services. Finally, respondents’ demographics were collected, including gender, age, income, education and residence.
WTPe was measured using the question: ‘Assuming the current cattle price is 40RMB/500g for beef, or RMB 50/ 500g for lamb, how much will you specifically pay for the grass-fed way of meat production’. To match the accountable standard, WTPe was adjusted to RMB per kg. However, WTP for ES has no concrete measurement unit, it can only be presented according to respondents’ annual income.
The verification process was carried out with a different set of questions (all questions see the appendix table A) which commonly asked the respondents’ grass-fed preference from different angles to assess the seriousness level of the respondents.
Rationale for WTPe (Willingness to Pay Extra) and WTP
Contingent valuation method surveys the monetary value of environmental goods or services, or both, represented by means of contingent statement in a hypothetical market/scenarios. In this assumed condition of CVM, the demand for a preferred goods with conservation attribute could be measured by the total amount from other goods or benefits that one is willing to give up for the benefits gained through the conservation practice. Questions normally were asked by way of dichotomous choice (DC) in terms of “Yes” or “No”, while prices were surveyed in open-ended format (OE) allowing respondents to state their maximum WTP, or by card experiment (CE) which incorporates assumed choices for WTP written in cards.
WTPe for grass-fed production. In relation to the environmental-friendly products, traditional WTP measured via contingent valuation method (CVM) or choice experiment (CE) normally asked for the overall price of interested public goods or private goods with new environmental attributes. Then, through comparison between products with or without those environmental attributes, the prices of the public goods or environmental attributes can be elicited. However, the costs embedded in the surveyed WTP of products vary a lot due to the impacts from complicated external factors which make the embedded value of environmental attributes sometimes elicited inaccurately.
To solve this problem, we tried the direct survey approach for the grassland demand from consumers and named it as WTP extra (or WTPe) to mark the surveyed extra part of willingness to pay. Thus, regardless of costs, a direct linkage between urban consumer and rural producers hopefully could be built and reflect the consumer’s preference towards artificial grassland ecosystems that would be realized in the market.
Traditional WTP:
vt(P, Q, y) = vt(WTP, Qi, yi) = vt[(P0+Pg),
│Q0±ΔQi│, yi] = utility of meat + utility
of grass-fed attribute
Where, vt(P, Q, yi) is the utility function for grass-fed meat priced at “p” and sold at a quantity “q” for a person with income “y”; vt(WTP, Qi, yi) is the utility function for grass-fed meat priced at “WTP” and sold at a quantity “Qi” for a person with income “yi”. P0 and Q0 denote the current price and quantity of current industry-based meat, Pg is price for grass-fed attribute, ΔQi means Qi-Q0; vt (WTP, Qi, yi) is the utility function of non-grass-fed meat priced at “WTP” and sold at a quantity “Qi” for a person with income “yi”.
The major problem of traditional WTP is the difficulty to extract the price for the utility of the grass-fed attribute. However, only the part of the market price has relation with land use type decisions in the rural area.
WTP extra (WTPe):
ve(ΔP’, Qi’, yi’) = vt(WTPe, Qi’, yi’) = utility of
grass-fed attribute of meat product
ve(WTPe, Qi’, yi’) is the utility function of grass-fed attribute priced at “WTPe” and sold at a quantity of “Qi’” for a person with income “yi’”.
Since the assumed traditional WTP shares the same focus zone and target population with our WTP, some variables such as total consumption size of meat and personal income of respondents in Guizhou province, are relatively stable. We therefore consider that Qi equals to Qi’, and yi equals to yi’. Then, ve (ΔP’, Qi’, yi’) = vt (WTPe, Qi, yi) = utility of grass-fed attribute of meat product.
Pi = present price = Costs + consumer’s and supplier’s surplus.
Pi’ = P0 + WTPe i (or WTP extra i).
WTPe i = ΔPi = Pi’- Pi = consumer’s surplus.
In which, Pi’ is the new price indicating local people’s willingness to pay specifically for grass-fed or grassland attributes, which allows a direct linkage to be built between urban consumer’s preference and the rural grassland sustainable management including construction, maintenance, and management practice.
Fig. 2a) and Fig. 2b). further explains the relation between specific pay for grass-fed products and other types of feeding products. The differences between them are the WTP extra (WTPe). In another word, total willingness to pay for grass-fed beef product minus current price of non-grass-fed beef is the WTPe for grass-fed production. WTPe may have positive value which means respondent has willingness to pay for grass-fed production, otherwise, negative. Thus, total WTP can either be higher or lower than the current price of non-grass-fed meat.
WTP for ES. As to the WTP for overall services of grassland, because it is a pure ecosystem service not a visible product or a quantified service, it is impossible to price it in form of per unit or others. Thus, an income ratio was asked to detect the preference or intention of respondents towards such environmental services. The logical verification method was also applied to verify their reliability.
Materials and Methods
Study Sites
Guizhou province is located in the subtropical area of southern China (26.8430°N, 107.2903°E) covering an area of 170,000 km2 (detail see Fig. 3.). It has temperate a climate with an annual average temperature of 14~15ºC and annual precipitation ranging from 900 mm to 1,400 mm. Where karst grassland covers 24 686.74 km2, which is 67.57% of the total land cover in Guizhou province. Karst is known as a geographically fragile environment due to its unique soluble rock, significantly mountainous landform, shallow soil depth, and insufficient water-holding capacity in soil that made the ecosystem prone to degradation. Consequently, 39.77% of karst grassland is recognized as degrading grassland.
Fig. 2
a) Concept of willingness to pay for grass-fed meat (scenario 1 WTPe >0 ); b) Concept of willingness to pay for grass-fed meat (scenario 2, WTPe ≤0).
This province accommodates a population of 35.8 million; the rural population is about 18.7 million living in the mountainous region. Before 2012, there were more than 9 million populations under poverty in Guizhou province.
Traditionally, pork has been served as the dominant course of meat in Guizhou province, which leads to shortages of grass-fed meat production. For example, in 2015, the total production of pork was 1.61 million tons which was nearly 10 times the beef production of 168 thousand tons, and approximately 40 times the lamb consumption of 42 thousand tons. Yet swine feeding does not prefer grass-fed strategy of animal raising because swine is thought incapable of digesting raw fiber content of grasses [13].
As the most typical example of karst in southern China, Guizhou province was chosen for the study of consumers’ willingness to pay for the grass-fed attribute of meat in ecologically degraded area due to both ecological degradation and social threat, 35% of the provincial land has been endangered by rocky desertification (RD) at varying levels [50-51]. Four cities were selected out of the total eight cities in Guizhou province for conducting interviews with meat consumers. Land degradation was most severe in Anshun city (Dense-RD), followed by Bijie city (Middle-RD), Guiyang city (Mild-RD), and Qiandongnan city (Non-RD) - (Fig. 3.).
Survey Design
Yamane Formula was applied to calculate the minimum suggested sample size as shown below:
where n = the minimum suggested sample size; N refers to the population in the urban area of the four selected cities in 2015; e represents the margin of error.
According to Table 1., it is necessary to survey at least 400 respondents with 5% error, and 100 respondents with 10% error.
With regard to existing levels of RD (or degradation of the local ecosystem) in all 8 major cities in Guizhou province, a two-stage stratified random sampling method was applied in our survey. For the first stage, serious RD and non-serious RD were separated and each part weighted 50%. In the second stage, each column was further divided into 2 cities, each weighted 25% of the total. Accordingly, medium to dense RD was classified as a serious RD region, while the non-karst, non-RD and mild RD are classified as non-serious RD. Hence, 4 sampled cities were chosen along the geographic belt of karst rock as shown in Fig. 2. which are in the line through 107°E, 106°E to 105°E, separately.
Table 1.
Minimum suggested sample size.
| N (urban consumers in 2014) | e (margin of error) | N*e2 | n (suggested minimum sample size) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 14.8 million | 5% | 37063.3 | 399.98 |
| 10% | 148253.3 | 99.99 |
The survey was implemented from March to December 2015 with 314 respondents older than 18 years old. Considering China’s unemployment rate of 4.04% in 2015, which means the majority is employed people. Thus, in order to save time, a major survey was implemented during break time on working days of full-time occupation sites including government offices, enterprises in central business districts, and on the street during the weekend. Incidentally, the accepted respondents turned out to be more male than female.
The main members of the survey groups were 10 female faculties and master students of Guizhou Normal University.
In-depth interviews were conducted with 20% of the survey respondents for further information about their perception, reasoning, and decision making behind WTP.
Questions about consumers’ perception, preference, action, and individual demographic information were asked and answered with yes/no. With these, three layers of information were collected using a brief and simple tool, making the interview process easier and more effective than when using a longer questionnaire. First, a perception layer is comprised of three questions related to food safety, taste, and benefits to the environment. Secondly, a preference layer consisted of three questions in terms of WTPe for grass-fed beef and lamb, and the WTP for 10 listed items on ecosystem services that were accepted in our pre-survey. Third, the possibilities of individual actions towards supporting grassland and its ecosystem services to the society. Fourth, respondents’ demographics were collected such as gender, age, income, education, and residents.
At last, WTPe for grass-fed attribute and WTP for general ES of grassland were questioned in a free-talk way which allow respondents declare positive, negative or 0 RMB for the grass-fed attribute and any ratio per person per month for grassland to reduce embedded pressure through the words or scenarios implication from interviewers. WTPe was surveyed for RMB per kg of meat, thus the natural linkage between WTPe and meat products can be maintained. While WTP was stated based on monthly personal income because compared to meat there was no similar visible product, it is hard for respondents to evaluate their payment unless in regards to their monthly income.
The verification process was carried out with a different set of logical questions which commonly asked the respondents’ grass-fed preference from different angles to assess the seriousness level of the respondents.
Statistical Analysis
Mean of WTPe, standard deviation, frequency of dichotomous choices on perception, preference and action, WTPe for grass-fed meat, and WTP for ES were calculated to see the quantified preference and their distribution.
Correlation analysis and regression analysis were applied via R 20.0 to infer the relationship between independent variables and WTPe or WTP, as well as to identify the influencing factors for individual WTPe or WTP. The influencing factors include varying ecological degradation, local knowledge, personal perceptions, demographic information, and income levels.
In addition, the demand curve, demand aggregate, total value of WTPe for meat, and WTP for ES were calculated and visualized with modeling formula and R2 indication.
Arithmetic mean, standard deviation, frequency of DCs on perception, WTPe for grass-fed meat (compared to non-grass-fed meat) and WTP for ES were calculated to determine quantified individual preference and its distribution.
In line with O’Neil and Yadav [52], a dummy variable (WTPi* = X’wiβ+ Ɛwi) that determines surveyed WTPe being accounted or not was used. Where X’ wiβ is influenced by individuals’ demographics and Ɛwi is a distributed error term. In condition the WTP* lies between two thresholds Ƭwi-11and Ƭwi-1. For a payment at i level, the WTP is determined by the following formula:
Since both the positive and negative impacts of demographic factors has been reported, demographics are carefully designed and measured in line with questions related to perception, preference and ecological degradation to further understand the real relationships between consumers’ purchase activity and the WTPe for beef and lamb as well as the WTP for the overall ES in our selected region.
Among the formula, X’ wiβ is decided by the sub-variables of the individuals including residential cities sorted by degrading levels, personal income, age, educational degree, and gender.
The standard WTPe is then estimated using the OLS probit and Tobit model via R 15.0 language. Regression analysis was applied to infer the co-relationship between independent sub-variables and WTPe or WTP.
In addition, the demand curves were visualized with a modelling formula, demand aggregate, total value of WTPe for meat and WTP for ES were calculated and evaluated in the format of tables.
Factor Analysis. The number of consumers who have the WTPe for grass-fed attribute of beef/lamb, or WTP to pay for ecosystem services of grassland is defined as dependent variables YWTPe-B, YWTPe-L and YWTP-ES. The independent variables define the factors affecting the number of people who have the WTPe as X. Details are described as follows: X1 Cities with varying RD level Qiandongnan (N, non
RD); X11 = Bijie (M, middle RD); X12 = Guiyang (L);
X13 = Anshun (D). X2 Personal income level Low income; X21 = middle;
X22 = high. X3 Age Young age; X31 = middle; X32 = elders. X4 Education: Primary education; X41 = middle;
X42 = high. X5 Gender Female; X51 = male.
The demographic factors were reported as both influencing variables and irrelevant variables to WTP. Some experts insisted that income was the decisive factor that determines the WTP, while some regard education and age etc. were the major influencing variables. Some experts reported the importance of consumer preference or social perception on WTP elicitation.
Here, demographics factors related to, perception, preference, and ecological degradation are all involved.
Results
Profile of Respondents
96.8% of respondents have completed primary education, this is slightly higher than the provincial average of 90.3%. Results show that 72.3% of respondents are male whose gross income per person per year is approximately RMB 18,300 which is higher than the general average of RMB 11,083 (Table 2).
Table 3. shows that 59.6% of the respondents were between 30 and 49 years old; 72.4% were male; 57.0% have relatively high educational background (college-level and above); 79.9% were full-time staff; and 91.7% gained monthly income of more than 3,000 yuan, whose food supply is presumably sufficient. The sampling proportion among the four cities was nearly even, except for Anshun city which accounted for 34% of the sampled respondents.
Table 2.
The Basic Social Profile of the Respondents.
Table 3.
Distribution of the Demographic Variables for the Respondents (n = 314)
WTPe and WTP
The mean WTPe for beef and lamb per kg were 16.51±4.81 and 34.24±7.37 respectively at the range between -15~+50 for grass-fed beef and -30~+90 for grass-fed lamb via statistical analysis. Previous researchers agreed that the negative or the zero WTP should be removed or regarded as 0 to the overall calculation because it makes no sense to mix two different groups of respondents to display preference of those who are positively willing to pay. Thus, the adjusted mean values per kg are 22.26±11.12 and 42.31±24.50 for grass-fed meat and 5.3% of personal income for general ES value. Therefore, a clear tendency of increase in grassland valuation was observed on the degree of environmental degradation for the adjusted mean WTPe in relation to both grass-fed beef and lamb. This suggested that there might be a linkage among such factors as environmental crisis, personal preference, and food safety perception. Further research is needed to explore related possibilities.
Table 4. implies that the arithmetic mean of the sample is much lower than the adjusted mean (if WTPe≤0, take it as 0) which means some respondents remain non-WTP intention. The adjusted mean WTPe certainly reflected the positive attitude of respondents’ willingness to pay for grassland related goods or services. However, it is crucial to be aware of positive WTPe and WTP proportion to the total number of interviewees.
In Fig. 4., the x-axis is listed for the potential demand size (%), while the y-axis refers to the WTPe for grass-fed beef, lamb or WTP for ES (RMB per kg or income ratio %). This suggests what percentage of people has the desire for grass-fed meat production attribute or WTP for general ES at different WTPe.
ΔAB (WTPe,Q1) denotes the area of consumer’s surplus with which consumers are willing to pay or donate to grass-fed meat production, which links grassland sustainability to urban meat consumption. Among which, AB, AL refers to A point for beef or lamb, BB, BL refers to B point for beef or lamb. According to the principle of empirical WTP higher than family income by 5-10% should be excluded as marginal bid [53]. Therefore, reasonable WTP for ES were recalculated and presented in Fig. 4. without the values bigger than 10%. Consequently, reasonable WTP-ES followed linear regression with a significant R2 at 0.8931.
For both types of grass-fed meat in Fig. 4., the bottom curve (B, WTPe Q1) represented the WTPe for grass-fed production process or grassland related management which was collected through direct survey; The above one (A, P0Q0) was the assumed market price of grass-fed meat on the basis of current price of non-grass-fed meat plus WTPe. If WTPe >0, WTP for the overall meat product with grass-fed character should be higher than current price. Which suggests that consumers prefer to grass-fed production; vice versa, if WTPe ≤0, WTP would be lower than or equal to the current price of products which means that consumers tend to regard current price unacceptable and should be reduced.
Along each downwards demand curve, the size of consumer decreased in negative linear correlations with the WTPe. In Fig. 4., ΔAB (WTPeQ1) denotes the area of consumer’s surplus for both types of meat product.
Verification of WTPe and WTP. As shown in Table 5., up to 81.5% of respondents agreed that they may receive health benefits from grassland, mainly in terms of healthier meat consumption. As many as 86.3% of individuals declared to have grass-fed preference rather than the high-energy-diet-fed meat (or the industry system produced meat). Moreover, 74.8% are willing to pay specifically for grass-fed attributes of meat. And even 55.7% of respondents said they were ready to change meat eating habits from pork to grass-fed meat for health reasons.
Table 4.
WTPe per Kg for the Respondents.
Fig. 4.
Plotting the WTPe and demand for Grass-fed meat and WTP for Grassland ΔA,B,(WTPei,Qi) denotes the area of consumer surplus with which consumer is willing to pay or donate to grassland construction and maintenance for meat production. Among which, AB, AL refers A point for beef, BB, BL refers to B point for beef or lamb. According to principle of empirical, WTP higher than family income by 5-10% should be excluded as marginal bid. Therefore, reasonable WTP for ES were recalculated and presented in (d) without the values bigger than 10%. Consequently, reasonable WTP-ES followed linear regression with a significant R2 at 0.9552.
However, there was a higher ratio of respondents who gave a price of their WTPe or WTP and declared that they would prefer not to pay for the grass-fed attribute or grassland ES. As high as 94.6% of the respondents would leave a portion of their yearly income to express their WTP and 81.5% gave a price of WTP for lamb related grass-fed attributes. On the other hand, only 76.1% of the respondents wrote down the price of WTP. This percentage is closest to 74.8% of respondents who indicated their perception.
Comparing the ratios of WTPe and WTP towards grassland in terms of perception, preference and action, the level of agreement to the importance of the hidden value of grassland varied. It was clear that when directly asked for prices, the respondents tend to give the highest “agree” answer to the interviewers. When “agree-disagree” questions were asked, the respondents also had difficulty to say no to the person in a straightforward manner. Only the questions irrelevant to “agree-disagree” choices possibly got the most real answers.
Based on the above analysis, there could have been an element of boasting or pride when the respondents gave the price of WTPe and WTP which should be considered.
Factors Influencing Individual WTPe and WTP
It was found in Table 6. that, using OLS regression analysis, there was significance at the city level between cities affected by RD and willingness to pay extra for grass-fed beef (p< 0.0001). Yet, at the individual level, the income displayed the most significant coefficient (p<0,0001) with the WTPe the price of beef (p<0.0001). Then the important determining variables were identified for the maximum WTPe for grass-fed beef and lamb, as well as WTP for non-extractive utility of overall ecosystem services of grassland.
In this paper, yWTPe represents the outcome of the WTPe of individuals concerning two most affected variables namely Xcity and Xincome, yWTPe-ES refers to willingness-to-pay for general ecosystem services of grassland. For Xcity with Qiandongnan as a reference category, b11/L11/E11 indicates Bijie City, b12/L12/E12 refers to Guiyang City, and b13/L13/E13 refers to Anshun City. For the income variable Xincome with low-income class as the reference category, b21/L21/E21 represents middle-income class and b22/L22/E22 denotes the high-income class. The variables for age (Xage), education (Xeducation), and gender (Xgender) were also included. In detail, PWTPe-B refers to willingness-to-pay extra for beef and PWTPe-L refers to willingness-to-pay extra for lamb.
To validate the outcomes of the CVM method, the WTPe for two types of meat and WTP for ES were modeled to constitute a function of assumed determining variables related to environmental factors of the degree of degradation, economic factor of income, and demographic factors of age, gender, and education. According to the survey results, a small number of respondents gave negative or zero WTPe. The first strategy to solve this problem is to use a set of Tobit linear regression specifications applied to the whole sample. And the second way is to remove the data with WTPe lower than 0, and then apply Ordinary Least Square (OLS) model for regression analysis.
Table 5.
Dichotomous Choices for Perception, Preference and Action of WTPe and WTP.
Table 6.
Total Consumer Surplus in Meat Production in Guizhou Province.
[i] Notes: G-ESV, grassland ecosystem services valuation; * implied grass-fed meat consumption increased to 50% of the total grass-fed demand; **implied grass-fed meat consumption increased to 25% of the total current demand. Accordingly, the ratio between beef and lamb consults current ratio of (14.1: 3.1).
Demand Aggregate and Its Implications in Guizhou Province
As shown in Table 7, 75.9% of the respondents gave a concrete number for grass-fed beef and 81.5% for grass-fed lamb, and even 55.7% declared to change eating habits from non-grass-fed to grass-fed.
Based on above results and 1.65 x 107 (2018) urban population of Guizhou, assuming up to 50% or up to 25% of urban consumers changed their eating habit from pork to beef or lamb, the maximum demand of grass-fed meat would reach 6.29 x 105 t/year or 3.15 x 105 t/year for beef. Which suggests a direct value of 10.38 x 109 or 5.20 x 109 RMB to grass-fed beef production. If policy mechanism permits, these amounts of donations would have capacity to sustain as much as 1.15 x 107 (1000m2) or 0.57 x 107 (1000m2) per year for Guizhou province if 900RMB was invested for each ha which is twice of current compensation.
Similarly, in Table 8, on condition of 50% more or 25% more lamb consumers, the maximum demand for grass-fed lamb would be 1.65x 105 t/year or 0.83x 105 t/year for lamb in Guizhou market. This potentially provides a direct economic value of 5.65 x 109 or 2.98 x 109 RMB each year that potentially sustains 0.63 x 107 (1000 m2) or 0.32 x 107 (1000 m2) if 900RMB was given to farmers per 1000m2 which doubled current compensation from the government.
Discussion
Kahneman challenged the “purchase model” of the environment-related products and replaced it with “contribution model” and posited that it was the donation, not benefit acquisition, that motivated primarily the underlying positive WTP response [54-55].
In our case, the overall WTP for ES was regarded as an example that follows the donation principle because there was no visible beneficial relationship between respondents and the existing value of grassland. This was mentioned in relation to other ES of grassland instead of provisioning services for meat products. Differently, WTPe for grass-fed meat was targeted by asking the direct linkage between meat consumption and existing price of grassland. This possibly implied that compared with pure donation for environment well-being, the extra WTP added to the private price of grass-fed meat matched better with benefit acquisition. If the “state of the art” were applied to the survey design, public preference could be revealed in a less biased manner [56].
Table 7.
Factors Affecting the Individual Level WTPe for Grass-fed Attribute of Meat of karst ecosystem services.
[i] Note: Codes for significance: 0.000 ‘***’, 0.001 ‘**’, 0.01 ‘*’, 0.05 ‘..’, 0.1 ‘ ’; R2 of beef, and lamb for OLS regression analysis are 0.7961 and 0.5092; The censored variables in Tobit Analysis is 267 for beef, 309 for lamb, total df = N-1 equals to 313. Because our CVM was set to an open-ended WTP, the original price for both beef and lamb involve negative value and zero value. In the Tobit regression analysis, WTPe 0, excluded, WTPe> 0 was calculated.
Table 8.
Bi-variates Correlation Analysis
According to the theory of supply and demand, the economic surplus of a product consists of both consumer’s surplus and supply surplus in terms of revenue gained by consumers or suppliers when the real purchase price was lower than the consumer’s WTP or higher than the costs of producing the products. When a product costs only a small proportion of an individual’s expenditure or income, the consumer’s surplus, also called Marshallian’s consumer’s surplus [57-58], is postulated to be justified by a downward sloping demand [57].
In this study, the price of meat, the WTPe for grass-fed production process, and the WTP for general services value of grassland all suit the principle. Therefore, the demand curves of grassland services, based on the survey, are all downward sloping curves with very high R2.
It does not matter whether the WTPe constitutes a real payment or just a signal for demand of grassland ES. The most important thing is that a mechanism between market and environmental attributes with a natural linkage of demand-and-supply balance should be created. Which have the potential to ensure grassland provisioning and sustainable management as Fig. 5. describes. Referring to the demand for grassland services, consumers have the power to become a stakeholder to decide and manage rural grassland construction or conservation. Their WTPe combined with investment or compensation funds from government and other sources could be reasonable inputs to sustain grassland construction and management.
However, when the mode of payment is considered, we have to be doubly cautious on the survey results based on CVM, especially on the part of WTP to ES. With regards to the “prospective theory” and all the discussion over CVM, even if the majority of respondents declared that they have willingness to pay for environmental health or exchange for food safety, the psychological factors of the respondents cannot be ignored. Moreover, the indication from low R2 and weak correlation in the bi-variates analysis related to WTP-ES and WTPe-lamb should not be ignored. For our study, the value of WTPe for grass-fed beef is acceptable because of its high confidence value.
Nonetheless, excessive supply of grass-fed meat would come with negative consequences in terms of biodiversity reduction for the ecosystem [3]. It even results in a loss of habitats for animals [59-60]. The target of grassland management is to enlarge yields of beneficial grasses for grazing practice and to minimize the biomass of non-beneficial varieties of vegetation which equals to biodiversity reduction [61-63]. Yet, biodiversity plays an important role in the ecological process and provides supporting services to the productivity of the ecosystem. And it is regarded as a responsive variable to environmental changes and also a factor affecting both ecosystems and human livelihoods.
A previous report revealed that broadcasting, an internet source of information on ecological degradation, arose the WTP for environment products [40]. However, further research on a larger scale is required to reveal the impacts of consumer demographics and social perception on this strong positive WTPe and WTP in southern China karst area because the reasons are more complicated than expected.
Conclusion
Referring to the previous consumer size of 4.30 kg of beef and 1.10 kg of lamb per person per year on average, it certainly is not enough money to impose impacts to local land use, even the WTPe is possible to be collected via management strategies to invest in grassland maintenance directly.
However, it has never been seen in China as much as 83.6% of consumers acknowledge their preference for grass-fed meat instead of meat from industry system in the context of food safety concerns. Approximately 76.0% agree they would pay extra for grass-fed production process and declare a price higher than 0 yuan. Furthermore, 55.7% confirm that they would like to give up high-energy-diet meat for environment friendly meat such as beef or lamb to encourage grassland maintenance and their personal food safety. Given half of population the shifting to grass-fed meat, consumers in Guizhou province have WTP for construction or sustainable management of grassland that can raise 62.9 x 104 tons of beef or 16.5 x 104 tons of lamb. In return, the grassland value embedded in the private product would be as much as 1.04 x1010 yuan for cattle-fed grassland or 5.65 x109 yuan for sheep-fed grassland per year.
This means that the individual consumer is no longer trivial but has the potential to become an important stakeholder to participate in the construction decision-making or sustainable management of grassland or semi-natural grassland.
The survey results suggest that consumers are strongly willing to pay extra for grass-fed production process, which makes consumers a potentially important stakeholder to participate in grassland management and decision-making. Both the WTPe with intention to sustaining grassland for meat production process or WTP for general grassland ecosystem services conservation have the capacity to transfer food safety demand of urban consumers and urban to a guidance for rural land use action via their economic action. Through this mechanism, a control switch for ecological restoration can be built through the market to avoid over-producing or insufficient production of grass-fed meat or rural tourism.
