Willingness of residents to pay and motives for conservation of urban green spaces in the compact city of Hong Kong

Abstract

People attach multiple values to urban green spaces which play varied roles in cities. Properly designed monetary valuation surveys can ascertain their non-market value and underlying motives. This study investigates Hong Kong residents’ recreational use of urban green spaces and assesses the monetary value of these areas. A total of 495 urban residents from different neighbourhoods and socio-economic groups were interviewed. About 70% of the respondents visited urban green spaces at least weekly. Major companions during patronage were family members and then children. Exercises and clean air topped the list of visit purposes. The recreational pattern is associated with the cramped private living condition that pushes people to public open areas which are construed as extension of home space. The valuation question solicited overwhelming support, with over 80% of the respondents willing to pay to recover a possible loss of urban green spaces area by 20%. It yielded a monthly average payment of HK$77.43 (approx. 9.90 USD) per household for five years. Non-instrumental aspects played some role in the respondents’ bidding decision. The findings could assist green space planning and nature conservation, and hinted the need to consider the pluralistic community views and expectations in relevant public policies.

Introduction

Greenery plays a key role in urban ecosystems by supplying a wide range of services and amenities. Urban green spaces (UGS), consisting of greenery in open spaces, contribute notably to a healthy living environment. They provide residents with outdoor recreational opportunities and contacts with nature to nurture a harmonious people–environment relationship (Kaplan and Kaplan., 1989; Miller, 1997; Jim, 2004). Properly managed UGS can facilitate engagement in the neighbourhood and socially cohesive human encounters. By promoting a sense of place, UGS could confer social and cultural connotations (Burgess et al., 1988; Woolley, 2003; Benton, 2008). High quality UGS around residences have universal appeal. Estimating their value could help to match public expectations, and inform and rationalize relevant planning decisions.

The stated preference approach is an economic technique to estimate the monetary value of non-marketed goods such as UGS. It asks people directly the value they attach to these goods in a carefully designed experimental context. In this family of research techniques, the contingent valuation method (CVM) has been commonly used in environmental analysis. It uses survey questions to elicit people's preference expressed in monetary terms. An institutional context is created with a hypothetical change in the quality or quantity of environmental goods. The hypothetical scenario is presented to respondents who will state the maximum amount of money they are willing to pay to avoid the change (WTP), or the minimum amount they are willing to accept to compensate for the change (WTA). The estimated WTP or WTA could indicate the value of the environmental goods or services, as an input for cost-benefit analysis especially of public projects.

The stated preference approach and CVM in particular have been increasingly adopted due to its relatively simple implementation and applicability to a wide range of value categories, especially the non-use type (Mitchell and Carson, 1989; Bateman et al., 2002). Applications to the context of UGS did not emerge until recently, with variations in survey design depending on context and research aim (Breffle et al., 1998; Tyrväinen and Väänänen, 1998; Lorenzo et al., 2000; Kwak et al., 2003; Pepper et al., 2005; Jim and Chen, 2006; del Saz-Salazar and García Menéndez, 2007; Li and Cao, 2007; Nielsen et al., 2007; Vesely, 2007; Bullock, 2008; del Saz-Salazar and Rausell-Köster, 2008; Bernath and Roschewitz, 2008). Many of these studies focused on statistical robustness of the obtained monetary figures. Few gave adequate attention to the motives behind the intended behaviour of paying. To the best of our knowledge, no CVM study on an environmental topic has been done in Hong Kong.

In Hong Kong, environmental conservation is envisaged as a utilitarian pursuit (Lee, 2003). The planning and management of UGS has been dominated by city administrators and technical experts and undertaken in a technocratic manner. Overseas experiences suggested that the public psyche comprised moral and symbolic dispositions (Bernath and Roschewitz, 2008; Gelso and Peterson, 2005). These would hint a new role of public participation to enable an expressive type of policy communication (Sagoff, 1988; Renn et al., 1995). Environmental policy-making in Hong Kong rarely incorporated such perspectives. We therefore attempted to establish an alternative view by investigating the citizens’ motivations behind preservation of UGS. This study assessed the value of UGS in Hong Kong using CVM, explored the motives behind the intended behaviour of paying, and identified the residents’ recreational pattern in using UGS. We discuss the possible linkage between the urban form and park-visiting habits.