Evaluating Household’s Willingness to Pay for Catfish Species Conservation in Lake Hawassa, Sidama National Region State, Ethiopia

Abstract

Lake Hawassa is one of the main freshwater shallow Lakes found in the central Ethiopian Rift Valley. The total of aquatic and terrestrial habitats adjoining the Lake facilitate the rich diversity of flora and fauna compared to other Ethiopian Rift valleys Lakes. However, the biomass of catfish species in this Lake is declined from time to time. So, the purpose of this study was to evaluate household’s willingness to pay and determine the factors affecting willingness to pay for catfish species conservation in Lake Hawassa, Sidama National Region state, Ethiopia. The survey was conducted through face-to-face interviews of 200 respondents. The elicitation method used to value is contingent valuation, through a single dichotomous choice and openended follow-up question. The probit model was used to identify the willingness to pay of the respondents. The descriptive result showed that the respondent’s average age was 28.82 years, the experience of respondent’s in fishing was 9.3 years, income from fish was 85.8 US$ per year, a distance of respondent’s home from Lake was 41.54 minutes and land size was 0.2313 hectares and from the total sampled respondents 75% were male and 25% were female. About 82.5% of the respondents were willing to pay and 17.5% were unwilling to pay for catfish species conservation in Lake Hawassa. The mean willingness to pay for catfish species conservation of respondents was found to be 3.62 US$ per year and aggregating the mean value of total respondents would give 954,090.23 US$ per year. The probit model result revealed that the total income, training on fish species conservation, and experience of respondents on fishing were positively affected the willingness to pay. On the other side, the distance of respondent’s home from Lake and land size of respondents have negatively affected willingness to pay. So, training and awareness creation is needed to fulfill the knowledge gap of communities on catfish species conservation.