South Koreans’ willingness to pay for restoration of Gomsoman Tidal Flat

Gomsoman Tidal Flat (GTF) in South Korea has been designated as a marine protected area in 2007, a Ramsar wetland in 2010, and a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 2013. However, as some area of it had been destroyed the Government plans to restore the destroyed area of the GTF. The objective of this article is, therefore, to investigate the public value of accomplishing the plan applying the contingent valuation (CV), a technique that asks randomly chosen people about their willingness to pay (WTP) for the accomplishment. For this purpose, a CV survey of 1000 households was conducted using a one-and-one-half-bounded dichotomous choice question format for a method of WTP elicitation and yearly household income tax for a payment vehicle. Since a number of interviewees (60.5%) reported zero WTP values, a spike model was adopted to analyze the gathered CV data with zero WTP observations. The mean household WTP was statistically significantly estimated to be KRW 3170 (USD 2.7) per year. The yearly national value is worth KRW 63.3 billion (USD 53.9 million). The benefits ensuing from the accomplishment are much greater than the costs involved in it.