(1) Title: Household's Preference and the Subsidy Policy of "Two-oriented Technology"

Speaker: Prof. Zhao Minjuan     Time: 15:00-16:00 pm, June 30, 2017

Venue: Meeting Room C315, The Building of Economics, Management and Landscape Architecture

Abstract: Popularizing water-saving irrigation technology and developing water-saving agriculture are effective measures to improve water use efficiency, alleviate water resource shortage crisis and promote the development of modern agriculture. The response of farmers to water-saving irrigation technology compensation policy directly affects policy implementation effect and its sustainability. Taking the drip irrigation technology in Minqin County as an example, this paper uses choice experiment method to simulate farmers’ policy participation and analyzes their water saving irrigation compensation policy choices and influencing factors in different policy scenarios. The results show that it is not the best choice for the majority of farmers to participate in the compensation policy of water-saving irrigation technology. The future policy needs to further improve the adaptability of technology, strengthen the propaganda, to eliminate farmers’ failure experience and contradiction. The promotion of the standard has a positive impact on farmers' policy participation, and the future compensation accounting standard should take full account of the non-market costs such as transaction costs, learning costs, and extra labor costs, not just the cost of field equipment. The implementation of supporting farmland consolidation projects and the promotion of the largest plot area will help to improve farmers’ participation willingness. Therefore, the future water-saving irrigation technology compensation policy needs to be matched with the corresponding farmland consolidation project in order to form an appropriate scale operation. This study provides feasible ideas for the simulation of policy selection at the micro level, broadens the application scope of the choice experiment and visualizes the questionnaire design, making an innovative attempt to improve the experiment's interest and effectiveness.

(2) Title: Ecological System Restoration Benefits Evaluation of the Continental River in Northwestern China

Speaker: Xu Tao (A PhD Candidate)

Time: June 30, 2017 (Friday)          16:00-17:00. pm

Abstract: Chinese inland river basin not only gave birth to a number of important city nodes on the "Silk Road Economic Belt", but also the most potential development region in the northwest of China. Scientifically assessing the ecological system restoration benefits and incorporating them into environmental policy will help improve the allocative efficiency of eco-governance funding, and accordingly enhance the effectiveness and sustainability of relevant policies. Taking Heihe RiverBasin as an example, this paper describes the selection process of indicators and the questionnaire design to evaluate the ecological system restoration benefits of the continental river by using the choice experiment method, and the RPL model is used to estimate the utility function. Then, we compared the differences in urban and rural residents' preferences and calculated the total amount of ecological system restoration benefits. Results show that: (1) residents want to take some protection and restoration measures to improve the ecological environment, but there are some differences between the urban and rural residents’ choice preferences. The urban residents prefer river water quality, the area of East Juyan Lake and recreational conditions, while the rural residents only have a strong preference on the river water quality and farmland irrigation protection rate. (2) If the ecological restoration measures are taken in the Heihe River Basin, so that the ecological indicators to achieve the optimal state, the average annual willingness to pay for the urban residents, rural residents and the total sample is 495.012 Yuan, 277.319 yuan, and 391.212 Yuan respectively, the estimated total ecological system restoration benefits are estimated to be 247.9 million Yuan according to the total sample, is higher than the calculated value of the urban and rural areas, which is estimated at 231.8 billion Yuan.

Welcome the related professional teachers or graduate students to take part in the forum.

College of Economics and Management
June 28, 2017