Resumen de Eliciting farmers’ preferences and willingness to pay for land use attributes in Northwest Ethiopia: A discrete choice experiment study

Wubante Fetene Admasu, S. Van Passel, Jan Nyssen, Amare Sewnet Minale, Enyew Adgo

• This study investigates farmers’ preferences and willingness to pay for cropland attributes in Bahir Dar, northwest Ethiopia. A choice experiment is used to elicit farmers’ preferences between different land use attributes, including a monetary attribute. The study was conducted in the croplands that are threatened by land expropriation for urban expansion. A survey was undertaken with 144 farmers in four rural kebeles surrounding the city (Addis Alem, Weramit, Wereb and Zenzelima). In the survey, respondents were provided with hypothetical land purchasing decisions, with three alternatives (i.e., two hypothetical parcels and an opt-out option). A choice experiment was undertaken to measure farmers’ interest in different types of croplands, which varies with respect to irrigability, number of trees per ha, soil erosion resistance and water holding capacity of the cropland. Estimation of two mixed logit models was carried out. The estimation results show that, although the farmers did not show strong preferences for each attribute of the cropland, many farmers in the area showed interest in the proposed alternative croplands. Farmers show more interest for the land that is irrigable, gentle slope and with medium water holding capacity. The results also indicate that farmers assign highest marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) (79.01 ETB per square meter) for irrigated land, followed by medium water holding capacity with MWTP of 52.13 ETB per square meter. We believe that the results of this study would help land use policy and decision makers in the study area to consider the various attributes of cropland in land use planning, including land expropriation programs, which assures the sustainability of ecosystem services.