Willingness-to-pay for Borivli National Park: Evidence from a contingent valuation

A study was conducted to survey the residents of Bombay and elicit their willingness to pay for the maintainance and preservation of Borivli National Park (BNP) using the Contingent Valuation (CV) method, The CV method has come under considerable criticism on account of biases that are either inherent to, or generated by the survey process, The present study acknowledges those, and adopts techniques to either circumvent or then minimise them. The authors pay special attention to hypothetical bias, starting point bias, embedding effects and part-whole biases. The authors argue that indeed it is possible to improve the quality of a CV by using special survey as well as statistical techniques so that CV results can be used for the purposes of realistic decision making. This validation of the CV becomes an important objective of the study. Despite India being a developing country with medium to low income levels, the evidence suggested that people are willing to pay for preserving environmental amenities. Having statistically adjusted for embedding and anchoring effects, households are willing to pay exclusively for BNP, on average, Rs 7.5, per month, for the next five years, Extrapolating to the city of Bombay, this amounts to a substantial Rs 20 million each month for the next five years, or a present discounted value of in excess of Rs 1 billion, suggesting a strong interest in environmental conservation.