Abstract:

The ecosystem of paddy field not only serves function of food production, but also the functions of landscape，leisure and tourism. As an important part of the total ecosystem services of paddy field, the value of landscape, leisure and tourism of paddy field should not be ignored. Revealing this value of paddy field can be a good reference for making policies on paddy field protection and utilization. To evaluate the landscape，leisure and tourism value of paddy field in Jingzhou city, the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) was used to be associated with a questionnaire. In this study, 500 respondents were surveyed by random sampling method, and 489 valid questionnaires were recovered. In these 489 respondents, the percentages of men and women respondents were 542% and 458%, respectively, and 591% of the respondents were 25 to 55 years old. 663% of the respondents come from urban. Moreover, around 46.4% of respondents had ever received education in university or college, and around 378% of respondents had income levels of 2 000 to 3 000 Yuan per month. This survey indicated that respondents who know the landscape and leisure tourism function of paddy field ecosystem was only 35%. But 738% of respondents would like to pay for the landscape，leisure and tourism value of paddy field. Further, 61.1% of respondents considered that the traveling is their fundamental purpose. At the same time, 787% of respondents believed the landscape, leisure and tourism function of paddy field was endowed with nostalgic feelings. Correlation analysis showed that the willingness to pay (WTP) for landscape，leisure and tourism function of paddy field ecosystem was significantly correlated with the education level (P=0000) and monthly income (P=0004) of respondents, and was not affected by sexuality (P=0065), age (P=0053), living place (P=0968) and occupation (P=0415) of respondents. By stepwise regression analysis, we found that the WTP was significantly correlated with the education level (P=0000) and monthly income (P=0004) of respondents. Calculated by CVM, the mean value of WTP of respondents is 17851 yuan per year, and the total value of landscape，leisure and tourism of paddy field in Jingzhou is 443 million yuan per year, accounting for 0.80% of total output of Jingzhou. Thus, the paddy field ecosystem has great potential values, and protecting the paddy field will create enormous value