HOUSEHOLD WIILLINGNESS TO PAY FOR URBAAN GREEN AREA DEVELOPMENT IN CASE OF WOLKITE TOWN

Abstract

Household’s willingness to pay for urban green area development important to offer the benefits derived from green environment. In spite of their benefit to the urban communities many people live in urban Ethiopia do not understand its significance or the potential It can bring to their city. Further due to fastest growth of population and urban expansion the green resources and open space are over exploited this pose several challenges to the urban natural resource sustainability. Therefore the major objective of this study is to estimate households’ willingness to pay improved for wolkite Town, to achieve this objective the double bounded contingent valuation survey was applied and followed by an open ended question to elicit households willingness to pay for the proposed program through face to face interview of a total of 99 households. The bivariate probit model was to estimate the aggregate willingness to pay urban green area development the Finding of this stud indicate that the green cover of the town has been declining, and there were some measures were taken to replace the plant, however due to urbanization pressure and lack of conservation measures the existing green were destroyed. In this regard all of the households are willingness to pay for the proposed plantation program. The study revealed that Younger respondents, female respondents, married households, high income earners, stayed for long years in the town were found and those households who said community is responsible for green area plantation Therefore one important implication drawn from this study is that since households are willing to pay for the proposed program the authority in collaboration with the town administration is recommended to implement the proposed program for sustainable green environment developmen