• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.233-260
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• 2018

The West Coast is known as one of the world's three largest intertidal mudflats but the mudflat ecosystems have been constantly destroyed by various reclamation projects and industrial complexes. This study intends to estimate the economic values of major ecosystem services provided by the Seocheon intertidal flats using a choice modeling method. The benefits of the intertidal flats are categorized as four different attributes: number of migratory birds (related to biodiversity and cultural services), production of fish and shellfish (regulating services and habitats), tourism activities (cultural services), and number of fishing households in local communities (cultural services). Study results show that the general public enjoys the economic benefits of 1.777 trillion won (900 million won/hectare) as of 2015 in order to preserve 1,200ha of Seocheon mudflat. Assuming that future generations continue to enjoy these economic benefits of mudflat conservation, the annual value converted is about 64.7 billion won/year, corresponding to 53.9 million won/hectare per year. Individuals are willing to pay are expected to maintain their entire life in the 1,000 households living in the Seocheon tidal-flat fishing village, with an average of 11,000 won per person and an additional 50,000 tourist activities per year. It was estimated to have the amount of payment of 9,000 won. An individual's marginal willingness to pay was estimated to be about 11,000 won per year for supporting a total of 1,000 fishing households, 6,000 won to provide tourism activities of 50,000 visitors, and 9,000 won to provide the habitats of 90,000 migratory birds. For segmentation analysis, residents of Seocheon did not place significant values for the attributes besides migratory bird conservation. However, those of Gunsan showed relatively low margtinal willingness to pay for conservation of migratory birds and fishing villages but showed similar preferences for the maintenance of tourism activities compared to the general public. The results imply that the introduction of economic incentive system is needed to effectively manage and conserve ecosystem services of specific intertidal flats.