Estimating Willingness to Pay of Local Communities for Preservation and Revitdiation of Deserts Areas (Case Study: Gosht Plain- Saravan)

Nowadays, the destructive factors of the environment and natural resources are so widespread that the alarm of destruction of these natural wonders is sounded all over the world. Due to the importance of this topic, the study was conducted to estimate the willingness to pay of local communities to conserve and restore desert areas of Gosht plain in Saravan in order to attract people's participation to finance projects for the preservation and rehabilitation of desert areas. The sampling process was conducted using Cochran's formula with 303 samples by simple random sampling method. Conditional valuation method and Logit model were used to estimate the people’s willingness to pay. The results showed that gender, education, participation in rural government institutions, employment of trusted executives, the history of participation in educational-developmental classes, being native, income and directly being beneficiaries from the environment of the region has a positive and significant effect on the willingness of people to pay for Gosht plain protection. The variable of age and suggested amount had a negative and significant effect on willingness to pay, but the size of household had no significant effect on willingness to pay. Moreover, the variables of existence of a management organization for participation, acquaintance with the environment, having environmental literacy, and government financial support of the projects had a positive and significant effect on the willingness to pay for the Gosht plain protection. The average of peoples’ willingness to pay monthly in 1398, was obtained 113890 Rials per each person.