Willingness to pay for ecosystem services of urban river in Shanghai

The contingent valuation method (CVM) is one of the most dominating and standard techniques for eliciting the willingness to pay (WTP) for the ecosystem services provided by environment and resources. Taking Zhangjiabang Creek, a model project in the comprehensive management of urban river in China, as a case study, 800 payment card CVM questionnaires were surveyed and 646 as useful questionnaires were feed back in August 2003, then, the mean WTP, 195.07 - 253.04 Yen per person every year in the future 3 years, to the ecosystem services of the urban river was got in the payment card CVM study, and the figure was compared to some other river CVM studies. Distribution shape and range of WTP were probed, and the regression relationship between respondents WTP and their socioeconomic information such as income, education level, donation experience, and environmental attitude was discussed, what's important, an environmental economics explanation was given to the regression results. Some biases which influence the mean WTP of payment card CVM are inspected and corresponding countermeasures were seriously noticed and implemented in the survey. Finally the critiques and controversies that CVM is faced with were advanced, but the reliability of CVM is also given based upon environmental decision-making theory.