Does ecological restoration meet the public's demand for proximity to the ocean? A nonmarket value evaluation based on choice experiment in China

Ecological restoration effectively improves the quality of the marine ecological environment and subsequently enhances the public's sense of enjoyment and well-being. The main objective of this paper is to assess the public's preferences regarding ecological restoration attributes and quantify the extent to which ecological restoration meets the public's needs for coastal enjoyment in Jiaozhou Bay, China. The choice experiment (CE) method was used to obtain the public preferences. To correct for the potential bias caused by non-compensatory choice behavior in CE, the study utilizes an independent availability logit (IAL) model. The results indicate that the attributes of bay ecological restoration, including nearshore water quality, coastal landscape, coastal space, and marine biodiversity, significantly and positively influence residents' utility levels. The public's willingness to pay (WTP) for improving water quality, restoring marine biological resources, increasing coastal space, and enhancing coastal landscapes in bay ecological restoration is 92.02 Chinese Yuan (CNY), 51.80 CNY, 36.60 CNY, and 31.89 CNY per household, respectively. Based on these findings, the total WTP for ecological restoration in Jiaozhou Bay is 1.54 billion CNY annually. Through comparative analysis of the estimation results between the IAL model and traditional choice models, it is found that the IAL model helps correct non-compensatory choice bias in CE. The conclusions of this study can provide data support for the formulation of policies on bay ecological restoration and governance as well as a reference for improving the accuracy and validity of CE valuation.