Determinants of households’ willingness to pay for the conservation of church forests in northwestern Ethiopia: A contingent valuation study

Abstract Church forests provide secured habitat for plants and animals, seed banks for native plants, source of food and medicines, income source and reduce soil erosion. They are threatened by livestock grazing, harvesting of timber and non-timber forest products, conversion to farmlands and the replacement of indigenous trees by economically important tree species. So, this study aimed to estimate households’ willingness to pay for the conservation of church forests using double-bounded contingent valuation method followed by open-ended questions. The study specifically aimed to assess the households’ willingness to pay decision, to elicit households’ willingness to pay in terms of cash and labor and to analyze factors affecting households’ maximum willingness to pay. A total of 300 households was selected using a multistage sampling technique followed by a probability proportional to sample size. The result indicated that the mean willingness to pay of the respondents in cash and labor is 178 ETB and 71.51 man-days per year, respectively. On the other hand, the model result indicated that annual income, social position, membership to mahiber/senbete and size of the land near to church forest had a significant and positive effect on the households’ willingness to pay, whereas dependency ratio had a significant and negative effect. The findings imply that policymakers as well as policies designed at national level should consider annual income, dependency ratio, social position, membership to mahiber/senbete and land size near to church forest variables to design conservation practices for church forests.