The Value of Policies to Conserve Native Pollinating Bees in Northern Thailand – A Discrete Choice Experiment

This study attempts at estimating, with a discrete choice experiment, the preference of longan (Dimocarpus longan) farmers for changes in the population of native bees and for three (widely recognized) strategies to conserve them in Chiang Mai Province, Thailand. Thereby, the part-worth utilities of these policy attributes were estimated with a conditional logit model, indicating a positive contribution, ceteris paribus, of the analyzed policy elements to the probability of a conservation policy profile being chosen. The inclusion of a cost attribute allowed the calculation of willingness to pay estimates. Significant taste heterogeneity was also identified within a mixed logit model.