As the developing world rapidly urbanizes, natural areas such as lakes and wetlands that were once well-used and important for ecosystem service provision have been encroached on by infrastructure growth and degraded by contamination. In order to design healthier cities, it is important to understand urban residents’ preferences for environmental quality and amenities, in part to identify new modes of financing investments in urban natural areas. This study examines urban preferences for lake rejuvenation in the rapidly growing ‘Smart City’ of Coimbatore, India—a city selected to be part of a government sustainable urban development program—and home to a series of heavily degraded lakes. Rejuvenation of these lakes for flood protection, habitat provision, and recreational use is the centerpiece of Coimbatore’s Smart City proposal. We conducted a survey of 1,865 men and women residents of Coimbatore regarding their willingness-to-pay (WTP) for lake rejuvenation, where half of the sample was randomly assigned to receive a message focusing on the recreational benefits of lake rejuvenation only, and the other half received messaging that focused on both recreation and ecosystem benefits (e.g., bird habitat).
Results/Conclusions
Our results suggest that residents’ mean reported WTP for lake rejuvenation (50 INR, or approximately 0.70 USD) is low relative to household income, and significantly lower when respondents are informed about ecosystem benefits in addition to recreational benefits. Men also report higher WTP for lake rejuvenation than women, although women report equal or greater concern about urban environmental quality and services. The low WTP values overall appear to reflect contextual issues rather than actual preferences though, in particular cultural expectations about government responsibility for environmental amenities, trust in NGOs, and cash constraints faced by women. Our findings suggest that the key assumptions underlying payment-based studies of WTP may not hold in a lower income country setting.