Estimating Non-Market Environmental Benefits of the Conversion of Cropland to Forest and Grassland Program: a choice modeling approach

The non-use values of the environmental benefits derived from the Conversion of Cropland to Forest and Grassland Program in the Loess Plateau region were estimated using a choice modeling survey both on-site in Xi’an and Ansai and off-site in Beijing. Separate choice models were estimated for the three sites and the results compared. No significant differences were found for the implicit price estimates derived from the multinomial logit (MNL) model, the nested logit (NL) model and the random parameter logit (RPL) model for each data set and across all the samples. Based on the results from the MNL models, the estimates of values for the environmental improvements provided by the Program among the sampled urban households are statistically the same across the three places.