Browsing by Author "Mohammed, Mahmud (Dr)"

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    Willingness to Pay for Amenity Values of Urban Forest: The Case of Addis Ababa
    (A.A.U, 2007-06) Gizaw, Solomon; Mohammed, Mahmud (Dr)
    The forest resource in Addis Ababa, particularly the mountainous areas to the north and western directions of the city was once covered with dense natural forests of diverse species. But now a day only few patches of natural forests are left in this area mainly due to development activities, agricultural expansions, over exploitations associated with rapid population growth and too little natural management of forest land. These events have resulted in serious environmental degradation. In view of these problems, a botanic garden is introduced in this area so as to give answer for the urgent need to conserve and sustain-ably utilize the remaining natural forest and restore degraded forest areas through expansion of forest plantations. Therefore, economic analysis is required for proper management of urban forests. Such analysis would help to make decisions on varieties of urban land use options and investments. Hence, this paper has examined the application of Contingent Valuation Method in measuring the households' willingness to pay (WTP) for Improved amenity service of urban forests and tries to identify the factors that may affect their WTP. The total WTP amount for improved amenity service of urban forests through executing the botanical garden is estimated to be Birr 4,265,211 per month. The mean WTP for the open-ended and dichotomous choice formats are Birr 6.07 and 9.30 per month per household respectively. In addition to this, above 87% of the respondents have the demand for further improvements. Here, the main values are related to non use values while use values are achieved distinctively low priority. Households income, above grade 6 level of education and respondents trust for the reliability of the project implementation are found to be the major determinant factors for households WTP. This study also indicated that households' welfare gains in changing from the current situation (poor environmental condition with no payment) to the improved service by subscribing some reasonable price can be huge. It also suggests that Contingent Valuation survey can measure amenity values of urban forests with theoretically consistent and sufficiently reliable results.