Abstract:
Currently, soil erosion is one of the most serious environmental problems in Ethiopia which
are affecting the livelihood of the rural farmers. In order to combat this critical soil erosion
problem, active participation of the local communities through labor-day contribution is vital.
Cognizant of this fact, identifying the determinants of farmers’ willingness to pay (WTP) is an
important issue for policymakers in order to have an effective and sustainable conservation
programs. Therefore, this study was initiated with the objective of examining the determinants
of households’ willingness to pay for soil conservation practice on communal lands and to
estimate the aggregate welfare gain of the proposed program in Raya Kobo Woreda. A multistage
sampling technique was employed to select the target respondents. Double bounded
contingent valuation survey with an open-ended follow up question was conducted on 245
randomly selected rural households’ to elicit their preferences for communal land soil
conservation. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics and
econometric model. Inferential statistics such as t-test and chi-square test were used to see the
significant mean/percentage difference between willing and non-willing households in terms
of the hypothesized continuous and dummy variables, respectively. In the econometric part,
bivariate probit model was used to identify the determinants of households’ willingness to pay
for soil conservation on communal lands and to compute the mean willingness to pay. The
results of the bivariate probit model shows that size of total livestock holding, perception of
communal land soil erosion problem, credit utilization, frequency of extension contact and
farm size near to communal land have a positive and statistically significant effect on
households’ willingness to pay for communal land soil conservation, while dependency ratio,
migration, participation in off-farm activities and initial starting bid have a negative and
significant effect on WTP. Hence, overcoming those negative factors and encouraging the
positive factors can enhance farmers’ willingness to pay for communal land soil conservation
practice. For instance, the positive significant effect of frequency of extension contact infers
the need of intervention to enhance the frequency of farmers contact with development agents.
Besides, migration is found to be one of the hindering factors for willingness to pay. The mean
willingness to pay result from the double bounded format revealed that the sampled
households are willing to contribute a mean of 47.526 labor-days per year. Besides, the
aggregate benefit that results for the community of the study area by conserving the communal
lands soil was estimated to be 2,262,386 .83 labor days per year which is equivalent to
135,743,209.8 birr per year. The estimated values are indicative of the WTP potent
